One minute guide: Youth Justice Inspections

Inspections of Youth Justice Services are carried out by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) and evaluate youth justice services (YJS) within a local area.

There are two domains within the youth justice inspection framework. Domain one looks at organisational delivery including governance and leadership, staffing, partnerships and services. Domain two covers the assessing, planning and delivery of YJS work with children, and the extent to which this work achieves positive change for the child and works to keep children and communities safe. The victims’ standard within inspections focuses on the services to victims rather than work with the child, considering whether this work is high-quality, individualised and responsive, and the extent to which organisational arrangements drive this work.

Youth justice services could be subject to two different types of inspection:

• Inspection of Youth Justice Work with Children and Victims (IYJSWCV) – includes one week of on-site fieldwork by a team of inspectors, evaluating only domain two and the victims’ standard. This type of inspection makes up the majority of inspection activity carried out by HMIP each year
• Inspection of Youth Justice Services (IYJS) – takes place over two weeks of on-site fieldwork by a team of inspectors, evaluating domain one as well as domain two and the victims’ standard

What an inspection involves

Both inspection types include a three-and-a-half-week announcement period between notification of the inspection (usually on a Wednesday) and the inspection fieldwork. During this time, the YJS will be asked to provide a range of data, documents and information about their work and the children and victims they work with. Inspection activity includes:

• inspectors speaking to children and their parents and carers about the work of the YJS, and giving them an opportunity to participate in the inspection
• focus groups with practitioners to explore particular topics or lines of enquiry
• Showcase slot – this is an opportunity for the YJS to highlight effective practice in relation to the HMIP standards for work with children and victims. Youth justice services may choose to highlight innovative projects or programmes, or to showcase areas of work that inspectors have previously identified as needing improvement
• Context visit – inspectors recognise that different locations for delivering youth justice provision have different impacts, for example geographical or socio-economic. Inspectors ask each YJS to arrange a context visit to a service delivery location, to give them a better understanding of the circumstances, factors and environment each YJS works in
• Multi-agency case discussions (MACDs) – during the announcement period, the inspection team will identify two children they want to look at in more detail, and ask the YJS to undertake a multi-agency case discussion with practitioners who work with the child, and report to inspectors on strengths and areas for development within the work. During the fieldwork, inspectors will then meet with these groups of practitioners to triangulate what they have been told about the casework from the initial findings

What practitioners need to know

Practitioners across the Children and Families workforce will have different levels of involvement with a YJS inspection, depending whether they work for the YJS, or whether they have children within their own caseload who have YJS involvement. Whether you are asked to make a direct contribution to the inspection or not, please bear in mind that when an inspection is taking place, YJS colleagues will be heavily involved and may not be able to contribute to some of the other work they would usually do, or to respond to questions or queries.

If you are asked to contribute to the inspection, for example to join one of the focus groups with inspectors or one of the multi-agency case discussions, please respond to any requests for information or to attend meetings as a priority, and please speak to your line manager to explain the situation if this is likely to create pressures elsewhere; inspection timescales for the provision of information tend to be short, so it is important that we respond quickly.

If you are asked to speak with inspectors, please try and focus on the three key priorities that inspectors are looking to evaluate:

1. Supporting children to achieve positive change (Child First).
2. A shift in language; moving away from talking about risk, to talking about safety concerns.
3. Keeping children, victims and communities safe.

From other inspection activity across children and families, we know that our staff are our greatest asset. Please remember that nobody knows your children or your caseload better than you, and you should be proud of the difference you are making to each child’s life.

After an inspection

At the end of the inspection fieldwork, the YJS is given feedback by inspectors, where the ratings for each domain that has been inspected are confirmed and the evidence for each of these ratings is discussed. The possible ratings for each domain are: inadequate, requires improvement, good or outstanding.

For the shorter youth justice work with children and victims inspections (IYJWCV), the report is published on the HMIP website ten weeks after the inspection fieldwork is completed. For the longer inspections of youth justice services, the report is published eleven weeks after the inspection fieldwork is completed. Generally, it is expected that each YJS will be inspected every four-and-a-half to five years.

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