Actions speak louder: A second review of healthcare in ... - HMCPSI

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER
Next steps
As we stated in our first report, children and young people who have offended or are
likely to offend, often have greater health needs than the general youth population.
These health needs can contribute strongly to offending behaviour, whether they are
overt or not. It is therefore very important for health services to meet these needs as
much as possible in order to reduce, or assist in reducing, offending behaviour and
to maximise the possibility of positive change in a young person’s life.
Although Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation will continue to inspect and report
on youth offending teams, the methodology is changing and the contribution by the
Healthcare Commission (or the Care Quality Commission which will take over this
responsibility from April 2009) is likely to alter accordingly. The replacement system
of youth offending inspections will involve two component parts; the first will be
a three-year cycle of core case inspections and the second will be a programme
of thematic inspections. It is anticipated that the Care Quality Commission will
contribute to the former on a risk-assessed basis, but will be fully involved in
both the development of the methodology and in the execution of the latter
thematic inspections.
It is clearly vitally important for both the Care Quality Commission and HMI
Probation to monitor and evaluate the progress made following this report and
the recommendations it contains. The inspectorates also need to ensure that
recommendations made to individual YOTs in inspection reports have been acted
on appropriately, and where this has not been done, to follow this up with
remedial action.
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