Agenda item

1.            Ms Gillett introduced herself and her role as Head of the Youth Offending Service (YOS). She had been the Head of Service since the service had first been established and had set up the first pathfinder children’s trust and other projects. 

2.            Essex YOS had received an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted rating at its most recent inspection, for the way in which it worked collaboratively with children’s and families teams and other partners and its steady and consistent approach. She pointed out, however, that any inspection represented only a snapshot in time, and at the time of the inspection the number of NEETs (young people not in education, employment or training) had been very high.

3.            Although Kent and Essex shared many common issues around youth offending, their service models were different, with Essex having its within its Youth Justice system. Essex took the view that its YOS needed to include a wide range of skills to match the complexities of the work it tackled.  Much work was done with children and families as youth crime was part of a larger picture of troubled families coping with issues such as low aspirations and lack of positive role models. In establishing a YOS, it was important to realise that this was on ‘shifting sands’, as the challenges it faced would change constantly, eg county lines and knife crime. Essex was particularly vulnerable to these threats and had been a target for county lines activity and increasing youth crime for the past 3 or 4 years. It had to have regard to, and fully address, the level of risk when deploying its services, and would do this by liaising fully with its partners and the police. It would look at work being done by the Met police and in cities such as Liverpool and Manchester but had to accept that violent youth crime was also happening in Essex and Kent.

4.            Work with children’s services would help to identify young people who were at risk of being groomed. In Essex there were many independent providers of services for children and young people, including those providing supported accommodation.  London Boroughs bought up large numbers of properties in Essex and placed families there, who then became the responsibility of Essex services.  These families might bring with them organised crime from inner London, which Essex then had to deal with. 

5.            The county lines model was very nimble and could change its operating model quickly to keep up with changes in activity, which was an important advantage. It was important also to develop an appropriate multi-agency crime framework which could be shared by community safety partnerships, the County Council, the police, etc, under the banner of ‘Safer Essex’, to address violence and vulnerability.  Multi-agency teams built to put this framework into operation would include an officer seconded from the YOS as well as a Detective Inspector from Kent Police, a co-ordinator and, hopefully soon, a data analyst, to understand what needed to be done to address youth crime.

6.            There were two things which would support this work: the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) and understanding intelligence.  The NRM offered a way by which any professional body which had identified a child who had been trafficked/was at risk of being trafficked, could inform the National Crime Agency (NCA) of this. Modern-day slavery legislation had required better information sharing between the police, YOS and Children’s Social Care.  It was estimated that there were approx. 134 county lines ..whats?.. in Essex and 40 – 50 urban street gangs. In terms of understanding intelligence, Essex and the Met shared information so Essex could take prompt and appropriate action. However, there was some work still to be done to make this information sharing as effective as possible, and the analyst who was shortly to join the multi-agency team would help with this.

7.            Essex also needed to understand the adult drug network and the extent to which it drove the night-time economy.  It was important to make drugs trafficking as difficult as possible for criminals as well as helping the public to understand where the drugs they might buy had come from and how the night-time economy they enjoyed could be supporting the drugs trade.

8.            Essex YOS had seen the rates of youth crime rise, although they were still lower than the rates experienced by many other local authorities. It had too many NEETs and young people with very low aspirations of achieving GCSEs, college and work. They needed to be helped to raise their expectations.  Young people would realise that they could make £3,000-4,000 a week selling drugs. Although some might have no academic qualifications, they would use the skills they did have to perpetrate crime.

9.            In looking at how to address knife crime, it was important to define local areas and what would and would not work in each.  Some very local solutions could work by involving the ‘moral voice’ of the community.  First-tier authorities could collaborate with other tiers and unitary authorities to identify regional issues and spread activity locally.  Sharing and using information about national trends could involve the local Police and Crime Commissioner.

10.         Ms Gillett then responded to comments and questions from the committee, including the following:-

a)    Essex’s bespoke approach and the agility and responsiveness of its models were praised;

b)    asked about the role of elected Member representatives and relationships with them, Ms Gillett explained that Members became involved in the Monitoring and Scrutiny Committee, via which they were fully briefed and understood the issues. It was vital that Members understood the issues around tackling youth and knife crime. The relationship between the Council’s Leader and the Police and Crime Commissioner was good;  

c)    asked about partnership working with the British Transport Police, Ms Gillett said the information flow between that and the County Council could be improved;

d)    in some areas of Kent, youth crime had started to be committed more by better-educated and more affluent young people from local grammar schools, who were nevertheless attracted by the money which could be made.  Asked if this meant people needed to change their perception of, and future approach to, youth crime, Ms Gillett said the same pattern had been observed in Essex, and the YOS teams were having conversations with schools to address this.  It was known that school premises were used to recruit others to carry and pass on drugs, so parental awareness was key as any young person could find themselves becoming involved in this activity.  Those involved placed not only themselves but their families at risk of retaliation, and families need to be helped to build some resilience against this;

e)    asked if children were easier to discourage from crime if they were given the right deterrent early enough, Ms Gillett said that primary schools tended to be smaller than secondary schools and had a closer relationship and hence better engagement with local families.  A project called ‘Power’, funded by NH England, had sought to build resilience using emotional health and wellbeing services, and the YOS would work with schools to build capacity to take this on. The multi-agency approach often used by public health authorities, known as the ‘public health model’, could be copied to great effect in tackling youth crime;

f)     a view was expressed that teenagers in rural communities who spent time alone at home on social media, rather than going out with friends, perhaps due to reduced local bus services, may be more at risk of being drawn into criminal behaviour as a result. Ms Gillett said that social media could indeed fuel and glamourise criminal behaviour. Content could be created and shared by young people but encrypted to prevent it from being accessed by parents or professionals.  The criminal justice system lagged way behind the speed of change of young people’s use of social media, and any prosecutions for online grooming or other misuse would take about 18 months to bring to trial; and

g)     asked about the rates of exclusion from county and academy schools, and if these had any impact on young people’s criminal activity, Ms Gillett said that most schools in Essex were now academies and the relationship between them and the County Council was very different to that with the few Council-run schools remaining.  The many young people who had been excluded from school, some purely to improve the school’s results, and the number being home-educated, reduced the opportunity which the YOS had to work with these young people, as well as opportunities to try restorative practice or mediation.  An honest dialogue was needed to find out what was going on in schools.

11.         The Chairman asked Ms Gillett  what Kent could do to best address knife crime, and how best practice could be shared, and Ms Gillett said that key stakeholders and partners could be gathered around a table to build joint working and agree core principles. Young people were everyone’s business, and multi-agency working was vital, involving police forces, the Primary and Secondary School Headteachers’ Associations and Children’s Social Care services.  It would help if children in care could be moved around the county less as this could make it harder to monitor any potentially risky links they might be making.  Practice should always be informed and supported by evidence.  Ms Gillett offered Kent the support and help of the Essex YOS team if this would be helpful in addressing knife crime.

12.         The Chairman thanked Ms Gillett for giving her time to attend and help the Select Committee with its information gathering.  She was advised that she would shortly be sent a written summary of the issues raised in the interview for checking and comment.