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THE HAMILTON SHERIFF YOUTH COURT PILOT: THE FIRST SIX MONTHS

SECTION FIVE: SERVICES AVAILABLE TO THE YOUTH COURT

INTRODUCTION

This Section of the report describes the services made available to the Youth Court by North and South Lanarkshire Councils. Included are services that were in place when the Youth Court was established along with other services that were planned. The final part of the section considers the views of key stakeholders with respect to the quality and range of services provided. The information on existing services is taken from North Lanarkshire Council, South Lanarkshire Council, Hamilton Sheriff Youth Court (2003) and the Scottish Executive (2003).

EXISTING AND PLANNED SERVICES: NORTH LANARKSHIRE

1. OINTOC (Offending Is Not The Only Choice)

OINTOC is a 23-session programme developed by the Cognitive Centre Foundation for young people, which includes a core groupwork programme with the capacity to be used in individual and family sessions. It makes use of IT, in particular CD-ROM. Further programmes relating to violence reduction and substance misuse can increase the density of intervention for the higher-risk group. Key aims are to reduce the chances of associating with others who support anti-social activity and to reduce the chances of the young person committing new offences. The programme focuses on the following:

• family support
• communication
• problem solving, including clearing obstacles, alternative thinking and options, selective information gathering and consequential thinking
• operant behaviour - how people learn
• cognitive restructuring, where they learn to apply skills in real situations.
• socio-moral reasoning - relating behaviour to reasons and values
• offence reconstruction
• victim awareness.

2. Rushes (Young Persons' Addiction Services)

Rushes provides a harm reduction model of intervention with an initial assessment and modular intervention programme, which includes education and individual counselling input. It is aimed at 12 to 18 year olds at risk of secure care or custody or of serious or persistent offending. Rushes is currently expanding its service but is an established project in Bellshill. It was set up as an urban project in 1996 and received mainstream funding in 2000.

3. Remand Fostering

This is intended as a positive alternative to custody. Rather than be held in custody and influenced by other offenders, young people on remand are placed in a specialised foster placement outwith their own community. The scheme is not considered to be an easy option: conditions should be strictly adhered to and those involved will be challenged on their attitudes and behaviour as well as being required to take decisions and accept personal responsibility. Remand fostering is in the latter stages of the tendering process.

4. Family Group Conferencing

Conferences include the victim or some representation for the victim. The resultant plan addresses any identified reparation issues on the part of the victim and provides suitable supports to prevent the young person re-offending. Family Conferencing focuses on work with younger children and families where risk factors leading to subsequent offending are identified. This early intervention strategy is considered to benefit all members of the family rather than focussing on one young person with an established pattern of offending behaviour. Family conferencing is in the latter stages of the tendering process.

5. Video Interactive Guidance (VIG)

This service is provided for parents and young people aged 14 to 21, for whom relationships are stressed or broken down. The project builds upon and enhances positive interaction through the use of video clips of interactions between parents and the young person. The clips are edited and the evidence of changing interactions is used to encourage parents and the young person to "own" the progress. VIG has been operational since June 2003, although only one family was participating in this programme in summer 2003. An increase in referrals was anticipated following the end of the holiday period and the issue of a reminder to social work teams.

6. Restorative Justice Services

Integrated with the community service orders scheme, the Restorative Justice Service provides individual and group work programmes as well as restorative placement opportunities. This is for young people subject to supervision orders from the Children's Hearings or probation orders or structured deferred sentences from the Youth Court who are required to fulfil a requirement relating to community reparation and restoration. The Restorative Justice Service is in the start up phase, with the co-ordinator having been in post since summer 2003.

7. Other Programmes

Other locally developed thematic programmes focusing on offending behaviour with a cognitive underpinning will be utilised as demand requires, including the following:

• INCLUDEM intensive intervention services for 14 to 17 year olds (in partnership with South Lanarkshire) and the INCLUDEM Home Project for the most vulnerable looked-after and accommodated young people aged 14 to 18. INCLUDEM has been a service provider since 1999.
• SACRO mediation and reparation services (in partnership with South Lanarkshire)
• Community Service and New Start (Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme)
• Active Steps Programme: sports and cultural programmes targeted at young persons with an offending profile (at bidding stage)
• Community Alternatives Programme at Kirknowe: group work for young people subject to Youth Court disposals, using OINTOC (see above)
• Barnardo's CHOSI Scheme: an intensive intervention and support service for young people aged 14 to 17, which provides individual and groupwork programmes targeted at young people who require a high level of support, or are at risk of secure care or involvement in the criminal justice system. In 2002-03 it worked with 54 young people at an average cost of 180 per person per week. Barnardo's CHOSI project has been in partnership with the local authority for over a decade.
• Some staff in Children and Families social work teams were working in conjunction with youth justice staff in delivering another cognitive behavioural programme, Reasoning and Reacting.

EXISTING AND PLANNED SERVICES: SOUTH LANARKSHIRE

1. Bail and Accommodation Support

A service is being commissioned for those young people who will require support to live in the community. Expressions of interest have been sought from interested providers. The service was expected to become available during Autumn 2003.

2. Intensive Support Services

South Lanarkshire Council already commission INCLUDEM to provide services to chaotic young people who need support outwith normal working hours and who are at high risk of custody, secure care or residential school. The average cost per placement is 5,200. This service has been in place since 2000. It works with 58 young people (contracted numbers on a year by year basis for both North and South Lanarkshire) but the cumulative number of actual service users will be less as some young people require more than a year's input.

3. Pathway

Pathway has been developed by the Youth Justice Board and offers a structured approach to working with young people who offend. South Lanarkshire staff intended it to be used with young people subject to a probation order or structured deferred sentence. It was expected to become operational in 2003.

Pro-social Action & Thinking Way provides a comprehensive modular cognitive-behavioural programme to address offending behaviour. It can be delivered either to individuals or groups. The programme is suitable for the 10-18 year old range. There are over 70 sessions in total, but each module can stand alone to enable flexibility in delivery. The modules are:

working it out - 10 sessions which use the ideal building block approach to enable young people to develop skills in problem solving - consequential thinking, information gathering, decision making, etc.;

learning new skills - social skills training, providing young people with the opportunity to develop the essential pro-social life skills necessary for the improvement in interpersonal relationships;

thinking things through - 10 sessions to facilitate skills in social perspective taking, values enhancement, understanding attitudes and skills in self regulation;

considering others - 10 sessions to teach skills which underpin empathic thinking and behaviour;

working with others - sessions to develop co-operation with others, followed by project work to engage in and practice pro-social behaviours, which provides the opportunity for youth justice teams to develop links between the programme and other areas such as work with families, mentoring and reparation.

4. Restorative Justice

Restorative Justice is expected to form an integral part of work with young people. There are different forms of service available:

• SACRO Reparation and Mediation Scheme: operational from 2002, this work is normally undertaken as diversion from prosecution for low-risk offenders, but in the context of the Youth Court could be used as part of programmed activity. It involves the young person (subject to the victim's agreement) providing some form of reparation directly or indirectly to the victim. The average cost of an intervention is 800. In 2002-03, 49 young people completed a programme.
• Community Service: this can be a specific disposal of the court. A community service resource assistant will develop options relevant to young people, and will work alongside the Youth Court social workers to develop appropriate in-house reparative packages as part of programmed activity.
• Giveback: is a scheme developed by INCLUDEM, which aims to raise victim empathy and involve the young person in appropriate reparative activities. It is aimed at the most persistent and chaotic group of young offenders.

5. Befriending, Mentoring and Throughcare

This service will be commissioned from the independent sector. It recognises that young people can desist from offending when involved in programmed activity but may require support to sustain pro-social behaviour after completing the order. The aim of this service is to support social inclusion - encouraging young people to engage in community based activities including positive use of leisure, employment, training and education.

6. Support to Parents and Carers

South Lanarkshire Council is developing appropriate support services to parents which will also be available, where relevant, to those appearing before the Youth Court. As part of the wider development of family support services, young people who themselves are parents will also have access to relevant support services.

PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL WORK AND OTHER RESOURCES AVAILABLE TO THE YOUTH COURT

Services available

Social workers commented that they were generally satisfied with the range of resources available to the Youth Court. Groupwork and individual programmes were being developed to meet the needs of young people in the Youth Court and placement coaches had been introduced in one local authority to support workers and young people.

"It gives you a more joined up thinking, a more holistic approach." (social worker)

"It's the first time I've ever worked in social work where you can say I guarantee I will get you counselling, I will get you a drug counsellor, I'll get you an alcohol counsellor...and we know the services, whereas before it was very hit and miss." (social worker)

Issues had arisen however, regarding broader community resources. In particular, the accommodation needs of young people had caused some difficulties due to the lack of sufficient appropriate resources available.

"I think it's important that a part of that (the national accommodation strategy) has to be the consideration of appropriate accommodation for young people which isn't about creating hostels and isn't about emptying hard to let flats and putting them in there, but is a genuine attempt to appropriately support young people in communities…" (social work manager)

Despite the co-operation between social work and housing departments, the lack of suitable, available housing was noted. There had also been concerns relating to young people with mental health issues, for whom hostel accommodation was generally inappropriate. Young people over 16 years of age were dealt with in the adult health system and it was noted that this may not appropriately meet their needs. This required some degree of flexibility in response.

"One of the problems is that they may not have diagnosed mental health difficulties but they are certainly very emotionally vulnerable and it's how you build in a preventative service that we need to look at." (social work manager)

Social work managers noted that they were responding to service needs as they arose and services were developing on an ongoing basis. One local authority was intending to develop a throughcare service for young people, as well as services for parents of young people. This was likely to take the form of advocacy support for parents and/or the development of parenting programmes that would support the parents of teenagers. The inter-relationship between different aspects of service provision was commented on by one social work manager:

"To some extent (the need to support parents) is tied to the housing problem because young people become homeless because their families can't cope with their behaviour any longer, it's about trying to address that."

Sheriffs were generally content with the package of services and interventions available to the Youth Court, suggesting that they were 'evidence-based' and therefore likely to have some impact upon youth offending. The review process was regarded as a mechanism for enabling young people's responses to the interventions and the implementation of 'packages' to be assessed. The availability of these resources was, along with the fast tracking procedures, viewed as one of the major strengths of the Youth Court pilot.

There were only three areas in which gaps in provision were identified by sheriffs. These included: supported accommodation (especially but not exclusively for bailees as an alternative to a custodial remand); services for young people with mental health problems; and restorative justice initiatives, though it was acknowledged that arrangements for the introduction of the latter were in progress. In this respect, they echoed the concerns expressed by social work personnel with respect to the availability and accessibility of wider resources for young people dealt with in the Youth Court.

Resources

At this stage, resources were viewed as adequate by social workers and social work managers. Given the resources which had been made available through the Youth Court, social workers recounted initial concerns over the low number of referrals. This had impacted on the work allocation of Youth Court social workers allocated within area teams who had been given other tasks to carry out ³⁰.

"I think the difficulty is that we are working in a context where we don't have the 12-15 cases that I was told we would be working with. You have a small number of cases, you're doing intensive work, you're part of an area team. Basically you're het for anything that comes through the door. I've got quite a big caseload, I've got loads of adult cases, people on probation, childcare cases that come through and then the Youth Court case I've got at the moment and I am now struggling." (social worker)

"When we get a report it's due in the next three weeks and due to the other cases that we are getting constantly, the other adult reports, it's quite difficult to do all your visits to the family and to the young person and also do visits to other support workers you are going to be linking in. So I think obviously, maybe I'm not meeting expectations that the sheriffs have in terms of care plans and things like that, but that's the reason for it because we are not just purely working in the Youth Courts." (social worker)

Social workers acknowledged that the low referral rate to the Youth Court was a reflection of the early stage of development of the court but was also perhaps a reflection of the small number of young people who actually engaged in offending behaviour. Social workers commented that the media and politicians had had a considerable impact in developing a youth crime agenda.

"There's not as many people through the Youth Court as they thought. My impression is that they believed there was going to be thousands, hundreds, so they put this big structure in place to deal with this, and there's a trickle of cases." (social worker)

However, the reality of the extent of youth crime was still unclear.

"It's quite interesting, in this area they've started doing some of the analysis of anti-social behaviour and discovered that very little of the anti-social behaviour is from young people. It's from older people over the age of 18 and often over the age of 25 so the perception is distorted." (social work manager)

Similarly, it was acknowledged that a very small number of young people who are 'out of control' can have a significant impact on local communities and can distort perceptions of young people.

SUMMARY

A number of services were already in place or were being developed to support young people (and their families) and to reduce the risk of offending and/or re-offending. Youth Court professionals were generally satisfied with the range of resources available to young people in the Youth Court. Restorative justice was viewed as a positive area of development, while concerns had been expressed regarding the lack of broader community services, in particular supported accommodation and mental health services for 16-18 year olds.

Resources were viewed as sufficient in relation to the number of young people being processed through the Youth Court, indeed it was suggested that the expected number of young persistent offenders had been over-estimated. However, increases in the numbers of referrals and the use made of available resources would be kept under review

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