Working with children to prevent crime needs better evaluation, say inspectors

The work to turn children away from crime needs to be more focused and to be evaluated better, said independent inspectors who have today published a joint report on youth crime prevention.

Many adults in the criminal justice system began offending in their childhood or early teens at a time when a number of factors made their offending more likely. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, HM Inspectorate of Probation, the Care Quality Commission and Healthcare Inspectorate Wales examined the approaches to child crime prevention, visiting seven local authorities and examining 75 individual cases where children aged 8 to 13 had been referred for interventions to prevent offending.

Inspectors confirmed that a number of factors in a child’s background can make that individual more likely to offend. The report emphasises that it is difficult to turn some of these children away from crime, but details many examples of prevention work that were having a positive impact on children’s lives.

Inspectors found impressive partnership working and considered approaches to youth crime. However, better coordination and improvement in identifying what works, both locally and nationally, is needed.

Inspectors were pleased to find that:

the quality of key workers was impressive, including their knowledge of and commitment to the children they were working with;
once a child had been identified and assessed, entry onto a prevention programme was generally swift; and
the scope of interventions varied widely and there were some very simple, inexpensive but successful interventions.
Inspectors believe some processes could be refined and better managed, and were concerned that:

there was little co-ordinated evaluation of interventions which have achieved longer term success;
a number of aspects of the underpinning processes and assessment frameworks were overly bureaucratic;
health services were not integrated to the same extent and did not always see themselves as key to prevention; and
the short-term nature of some funding and the different reporting requirements caused concerns about future continuation.
The inspectors said:

“The scope of interventions to prevent youth crime varied widely. Some work was very simple, inexpensive but successful. In some cases, however, it was difficult to understand why a particular intervention was made as it did not appear to address the issues raised at the child’s assessment. The quality of intervention plans ranged from those which were clear, time bound and reviewed to having no plan at all. A significant minority of these plans lacked detail, outcome milestones and an exit strategy. There was little evidence of any local evaluation either of individual interventions or of the longer term outcomes for children. Better evaluation would enable everyone to see what works and improve the ability of practitioners to turn young people away from crime.”

A copy of the report is available at www.hmic.gov.uk or from our website:
http://www.cqc.org.uk/aboutcqc/howwedoit/workinginpartnership/maternity,childrenandyoungpeoplesservices/youthoffendinginspections.cfm