‘Significant progress’ made in Rotherham Youth Offending Team told it ‘requires improvement’

Rotherham Youth Offending Team (YOT) was inspected by the HMIP under the service’s new ‘small YOT’ framework in September 2020.

Three of the 12 standards were deemed to be “inadequate”, including organisational delivery, court, and out-of-court disposals.

Rotherham YOT works with children aged 10 to 17 who are serving court sentences, or who have received cautions or community resolutions.

The HMIP made five recommendation to improve the service, including ensuring that board members “understand the specific needs of children” known to the service, and ensure partnership understands the reasons for the “significant number of looked after children” known to the service.

Emma Ellis, service manager of the YOT, told a meeting of Rotherham Council’s improving lives select commission on September 21 that the service has made some “really significant progress”, adding that “we’re really proud of all the progress made”.

“We’ve done a huge amount of staff training,” added Ms Ellis.

“It never hurts to refresh some of the key training around how we assess young people.

“We were confident at the start that no young people were at risk. However, we needed to change some of the processes and practices in order to make sure that we evidence that better.

“We look for a child first, offender second approach.”