The Backstop Journals » Children & vulnerable adults

Justice minister undecided on the role of youth offending teams

Backstop — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:35:19 +0000

Children & Young People Now reports that justice minister Crispin Blunt has said that the role youth offending teams will play in the future is still up for debate.

Despite speculation that youth offending teams could take on a mainly commissioning role and that more frontline roles would be handed over to the voluntary sector and private providers, Blunt said no decisions had been made.

He said that there were “further opportunities for stakeholders to shape this autumn’s green paper” into justice reforms. He added: “I’m not in a position to say what the systemic answer will be regarding youth offending teams, that’s why we are in the process now of examining all the options.”

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Cuts will ‘decimate’ Connexions

Backstop — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:24:52 +0000

Children & Young People Now reports that universal advice and guidance for young people in England is being “decimated” as Connexions services brace themselves for cuts of at least 20 per cent. A survey of Connexions services, which provide careers advice and guidance to young people, reveals more than one in 10 face budget cuts of up to 50 per cent, with one in seven stating they are suffering reductions of £2m or more.

“For these cuts to take place half way through the year you have got to at least double the figure to make the required level of saving,” claimed Paul Chubb, director of Careers England, the membership body for careers guidance organisations. “You cannot, under any circumstances, describe cuts of this magnitude as efficiency savings. What we are seeing is the decimation of a universal public service for young people.”

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Teenagers get less help from social services due to lack of resources

Backstop — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:57:02 +0000

The Guardian reports that neglected and abused teenagers are not getting enough help because social services that are short of resources often prioritise vulnerable younger children, according to research published today. The three-year study into the protection of maltreated 11- to 17-year-olds said there was an urgent need for a shift in approach to ensure they were kept safe.

While the spotlight has frequently fallen on the experiences of abused young children, particularly in the wake of the Baby P scandal, over a fifth of serious case reviews – held when a child or young person dies or is seriously injured – relate to those aged over 11. But the study, by the Children’s Society, the NSPCC and the University of York, found that the older children got, the less likely they were judged to be at risk and made subject to child protection procedures.

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Neglected children should worry all of us

Backstop — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:53:41 +0000

Deborah Orr writes for the Guardian discussing new findings published by the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. They have mapped differences in the brain chemistry of adolescents diagnosed with conduct disorder, which affects 5% of teenagers and is a marker for the development of incurable personality disorders in later life. This suggests that such high-profile child killers as Sean Mercer, the killer of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, are medically incapable of understanding the emotional effects of their behaviour.

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Call for review of indeterminate sentences for children

Backstop — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:47:20 +0000

Children & Young People Now reports that a call has been made for indeterminate sentences to be reviewed on the back of a report highlighting concerns about the impact on offenders and their families. Statistics released by the Prison Reform Trust show that the number of 10- to 17-year-olds detained indefinitely for public protection has increased by 170 per cent in three years.

The report, published by the Prison Reform Trust, alongside the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at King’s College London, states that indeterminate sentences leave offenders in a “bureaucratic limbo” where they have no means of working towards their release.

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It calls on the government to look into abolishing the sentence as part of the forthcoming sentencing policy review.

Other options mooted include narrowing the criteria for an indeterminate sentence to ensure it is used less often or providing sufficient resources to improve the process of releasing offenders from the sentence in a fair way.

Penelope Gibbs, director of the Prison Reform Trust’s campaign to reduce child imprisonment, said: “These are ridiculous sentences for children. They condemn them to a sentence without a particular end.

“That is an absolutely shocking abuse of the rights of the child. For them to be locked up and not understand when they will be released must be absolute torture for them.”

25% of young people ‘will be Neets’

Backstop — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:27:00 +0000

The Mirror reports that around a quarter of young people will go through periods of being out of work, education and training during the two years after they hit 16, according to a new report. The figure, published by the Audit Commission, is higher than the Government’s “snapshot” of 9%-10% of 16 to 18 year-olds who are not in employment, education or training – known as Neets – at any one time. Neet status is often linked to problems later in life. Studies suggest a young man who has been a Neet is four times more likely to be out of work, five times more likely to have a criminal record, six times less likely to have qualifications and three times more likely to be depressed.

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Youth sector commissioning programme scrapped

Backstop — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:56:26 +0000

Children & Young People Now reports that the government has announced it is to scrap plans for a new commissioning framework for youth sector programmes. Since 2008, the Labour government had been developing Youth Sector Support Framework Agreements, which attempted to streamline the way in which youth sector programmes were commissioned out. But the new government has now emailed all organisations involved in developing the agreements saying they will not go ahead.

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Child prison restraint rules to be disclosed

Backstop — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:31:10 +0000

The Independent reports that child protection groups today welcomed the decision to disclose the contents of a secret manual governing the use of physical restraint in child prisons. The Youth Justice Board (YJB) agreed to hand over the instructors’ manual detailing techniques used in secure training centres. The document includes descriptions of “distraction” techniques, which deliberately inflict pain. Carolyne Willow, CRAE’s national co-ordinator, said: “The YJB and the Ministry of Justice have had six long years to bring everything out into the open. “Until now, we’ve seen a compulsive reliance on secrecy and an absolute failure to face up publicly to the disgraceful and unlawful treatment of children the state officially describes as vulnerable.”

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Youth Justice sector still awaits policy anouncements

Backstop — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:51:50 +0000

According to an article in Children and Young People Now a Howard League spokesman suggests this quiet period might be positive. Meanwhile professionals seek some direction and the Ministry of Justice confirms YJB future is unclear.

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Comment: Dole queue beckons for Britain’s young

Backstop — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:25:51 +0000

David Blanchflower of the Guardian comments on the latest data release on the labour market from the Office of National Statistics which showed there were 926,000 young people under 25 who were unemployed, giving an unemployment rate of 19.6%. He also says that job schemes for the young have taken the first big hit in George Osbourne’s deficit reduction cuts and that this is “dogma over common sense”.

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