Youth Justice Board Review

MOJ’s Youth Justice Policy Unit (YJPU), in consultation with the YJB, should seek secondary legislation to amend the YJB’s function to ‘monitor the operation of the youth justice system’ to ‘to promote and drive continuous improvement across the youth justice system’.

The roles of the YJB and MOJ’s policy team should be clearly defined as per Diagram 1, in summary:
The YJB’s role is to share data, insights and trends and to continue to independently advise ministers.
MOJ’s policy team’s role is to provide impartial advice to the Minister for Youth Justice, and to draw on the YJB’s independent expertise to set out systems, strategies or options for policy to implement. This should be achieved by closer and more open, joint working between policy and the YJB.

YJPU, in consultation with the YJB, should seek secondary legislation to amend the YJB’s current function relating to grants to youth justice services to include a section on ‘advising relevant ministers across departments of the fulfilment of partner agencies’ statutory duties and financial commitment to the youth justice system’.

MOJ’s YJPU and the YJB to consider submitting advice to ministers on the potential for multi-year funding to youth justice services and consider a revision of the youth justice funding formula. This should be undertaken in consultation with the YJB to ensure that any revised formula is future-proofed, has clear and concise reporting criteria and reduces inefficiency by avoiding multiple funding streams from different parts of the department.

The YJB should work to develop the grant conditions for allocations to youth justice services to ensure that conditions lever change, enable best practice and drive innovation. This should be shared and discussed with the relevant MOJ functions. The YJB should also clearly articulate to the department how it is monitoring the grant and the level of partner agencies’ financial contributions to ensure value for money.

MOJ’s YJPU, in consultation with the YJB, should take this opportunity to amend legislation to reflect the functions of the YJB as they stand and formally transfer those relating to custody to YCS.

The YJB should remain in its current form as a non-departmental public body (NDPB).

A board that retains its current overall size and which places emphasis on the recruitment of members with current or very recent senior leadership of roles carried out by statutory partners, that is, policing, children’s services, probation, NHS, a multi-academy trust or similar, and an academic from the youth justice sector. Recruitment should also consider appointing members with a proven and successful background in senior governance roles including HR, finance, IT, and a lead member for Wales, plus an independent chair of significant standing and seniority. Appointment letters and terms of appointment for members would be revised to clearly set out: board member activity, their role in promoting good governance, their role in driving forward system improvement, and the board’s overall objectives.

The YJB should seek inward secondments from local authority partnerships and frontline staff.

The YJB should review its senior staffing structure, in line with the overall recommendations of this report, making any changes required in response to the changes recommended in this report.

The YJB should seek to analyse and publish AssetPlus data. This information should then be used by MOJ’s YJPU to inform policy decisions, and by youth justice services to develop greater insight into their services and improve decision making on the needs of children and young people.

The YJB to publish data around the new KPIs as soon as possible and share the data regularly with youth justice services, MOJ’s YJPU and other government departments to inform decision making. The YJB to undertake greater engagement with the sector around how these KPIs fit with its performance oversight framework and how it will be used to enable increased accountability from statutory partners.

Twelve months after the first publication of the new KPIs, the YJB and MOJ’s YJPU should work together to review and assess how useful the KPIs have been in: (1) facilitating better partnership working and service improvements, (2) sharing best practice, and (3) identifying where to target support.

The YJB to fully implement the recommendations made in the GIAA report on the Performance Oversight Framework.

The YJB to review the structure of its regional oversight team so that it has the right level of expertise, can assess performance, intervene where required, prioritise sharing best practice and drive continuous improvement.

The YJB should develop internal KPIs that focus on:
• the quality of youth justice services, as graded by HMIP
• outcome measures – a reduction in children and young people in custody, reoffending and first-time entrants
• equality measures – including, but not only, racial disproportionality and in particular the impact of poverty as a driver for youth crime, which has been under-recognised
• value for money – as measured by NAO
• a series of HR benchmarks around recruitment, retention etc. matching Civil Service norms
• the success and impact of the YJB’s oversight framework
• The YJB’s ability to hold other organisations to account

Teams across MOJ (including financial strategy and planning, finance business partners, YJPU, and the Public Bodies Centre of Expertise Partnership Team) and the YJB, to undertake a strategic assessment of the efficiency options identified and determine which options are feasible.