Hackney scored far below the national average during an inspection of youth offending work, in results released last week.
The borough received “substantial improvement required” grades in all three of the main categories evaluated as part of a nationwide inspection of youth offending programmes, started in April 2009.
A representative sample of 39 cases was surveyed in order to gauge how often youth offending work in Hackney was carried out to a satisfactory level.
“We judged that child protection was done well enough 47 per cent of the time,” said assistant chief inspector Julie Fox who was involved in the inspection.
“With the public protection aspects, minimizing each individual’s risk of harm to others was done well enough 43 per cent of the time, and the work to make each individual less likely to reoffend was done well enough 58 per cent of the time.”
The national average was 68 per cent for child protection work, 63 per cent for minimizing risk of harm to others and 71 per cent for reducing the likelihood of reoffending.
Comparatively, in September last year, Islington received 47 per cent, 53 per cent and 55 per cent respectively for those three categories, while Tower Hamlets received 64 per cent, 49 per cent and 71 per cent.
Although Hackney’s scores are lower than neighbouring boroughs, Ms. Fox said that the inspection was done during a transitional period, during which a new case management system was being introduced. While many of the cases managed under the old system performed poorly, Ms. Fox considered the new system to be an improvement.
“We saw two different methods of working,” she said. “The majority of the cases inspected had been supervised under the older case management system but a few had been worked under a recently introduced ‘core unit’ model, known as Young Hackney. This new method of working, which had been rolled out immediately before the inspection, had required fundamental changes in how the service was delivered and was showing considerable promise.”
Cllr Rita Krishna, cabinet member for child services, echoed this sentiment.
“Youth offending work is a top priority for Hackney Council and we’ve made fundamental changes to the way the service is delivered in recent months. This inspection took place during this major change and there was a resulting impact on our scores.”
She added: “It’s very encouraging to see reductions in the number of young people who enter the justice system for the first time and of those who re-offend. We are pleased that inspectors have confidence in Young Hackney and I am confident that our systems and our staff are well placed to provide a high quality service that, if inspected now, would achieve higher scoring.”
Canadian expat multinerd currently living in London. Follow @aendrew and at http://www.aendrew.com.