Youth Justice Board for England and Wales
Other
Action Taken
The Youth Justice Board has updated national guidance to support practitioners in using self-assessment tools appropriately when engaging with children. The updated guidance covers topics such as bail, custody, family and health. (AI summary)
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Dear Mr Davies Regulation 28 Prevention of Future Deaths letter Re: Jake Adam Cahill, deceased Thank you for your letter of 1 February outlining your decision to issue a report to prevent future deaths following the inquest into the death of Jake Cahill. As a mother of young teenage boys, I read your report with profound sadness at the tragedy of Jake’s death and wish to extend my most sincere condolences to Jake’s family and friends for their unimaginable loss. We accept your recommendation that the Youth Justice Board (YJB); ‘reviews the guidance and procedures relating to the distribution and completion of the self-assessment form [AssetPlus] given to young persons’ In addition, I wish to assure you that the Youth Justice Board (YJB) has reviewed your conclusions fully and is committed always to engage with findings of investigations such as yours to ensure that where there is direct or indirect learning for the youth justice system, we can act upon this to promote continuous learning and support the prevention of harm. As an independent public body appointed by the Secretary of State, we have a statutory responsibility to oversee the whole of the youth justice system. Through the consolidation of our statutory functions, we support youth justice services to coordinate and deliver the provision of youth justice services. The YJB’s leadership of the system also places us in a unique position of being able to triangulate learning from the investigations of others with our own assessments and understanding of the system we lead. We fully recognise the importance of considered and appropriate engagement with children throughout the youth justice system. With this in mind we have to find the balance between issuing central direction and guidance, and supporting practitioners to exercise professional judgement in order to encourage the skills and knowledge that support direct work with children. AssetPlus itself is an assessment and interventions framework that focuses on the professional judgement of practitioners with the aim of enabling better-focused, holistic end-to-end assessment and intervention plans to improve outcomes for children. In the early days of the Covid 19
pandemic when public services were having to find new ways of working remotely, the robustness and appropriateness of interventions and tools were tested. The self- assessment tool is key for engaging the child and their parent/carer but not envisaged for children to complete independently, however the AssetPlus user guidance did not explicitly prohibit this, and it is not unreasonable to conclude that unsupported engagement with questions about suicide and self-harm could have a significant impact on a child. For the YJB, accordingly, my priority has been to ensure that all youth justice services are aware that AssetPlus should not be used for unsupported self-assessment, and to instruct any that were doing so to cease immediately.
Acting upon your findings, we have written to all youth justice services asking them to consider their approaches to undertaking AssetPlus self-assessments and to remind them of the key principles in conducting self-assessments with children. This correspondence has been shared with you at Annex A.
I accept the need to review the AssetPlus guidance and we are already committed to reviewing this in the coming business year. In responding to your findings, this work will include within its scope, guidance that is specific to conducting self-assessments with children; particularly where they are more challenging to engage or where circumstances beyond the control of practitioners or the service dictates that these may have to be undertaken at a distance.
We are also in the process of revising our case management guidance to the sector, please see case management guidance extract on assessment process at Annex B, which provides youth justice service practitioners and managers with practical advice on how to work with children in the youth justice system. We are planning on publishing a revised set of guidance later this year and will include additional text on how best to conduct self-assessments.
My colleagues and I are absolutely committed to providing youth justice services with the guidance and support they need to deliver to the best of their ability. I believe the measures set out above strengthen the safety and wellbeing of children in the youth justice system and, I hope, offer you assurance that the lessons learned from Jake’s death will be effective in preventing any such tragedy from happening in the future.
pandemic when public services were having to find new ways of working remotely, the robustness and appropriateness of interventions and tools were tested. The self- assessment tool is key for engaging the child and their parent/carer but not envisaged for children to complete independently, however the AssetPlus user guidance did not explicitly prohibit this, and it is not unreasonable to conclude that unsupported engagement with questions about suicide and self-harm could have a significant impact on a child. For the YJB, accordingly, my priority has been to ensure that all youth justice services are aware that AssetPlus should not be used for unsupported self-assessment, and to instruct any that were doing so to cease immediately.
Acting upon your findings, we have written to all youth justice services asking them to consider their approaches to undertaking AssetPlus self-assessments and to remind them of the key principles in conducting self-assessments with children. This correspondence has been shared with you at Annex A.
I accept the need to review the AssetPlus guidance and we are already committed to reviewing this in the coming business year. In responding to your findings, this work will include within its scope, guidance that is specific to conducting self-assessments with children; particularly where they are more challenging to engage or where circumstances beyond the control of practitioners or the service dictates that these may have to be undertaken at a distance.
We are also in the process of revising our case management guidance to the sector, please see case management guidance extract on assessment process at Annex B, which provides youth justice service practitioners and managers with practical advice on how to work with children in the youth justice system. We are planning on publishing a revised set of guidance later this year and will include additional text on how best to conduct self-assessments.
My colleagues and I are absolutely committed to providing youth justice services with the guidance and support they need to deliver to the best of their ability. I believe the measures set out above strengthen the safety and wellbeing of children in the youth justice system and, I hope, offer you assurance that the lessons learned from Jake’s death will be effective in preventing any such tragedy from happening in the future.