Resettlement provision for children and young ... - Ministry of Justice

inadequate. Other specialists who had attended meetings for some of our case sample included
resettlement brokers and Connexions.
4.26 Young people in our case sample had attended each of their training planning meetings. The
attendance and involvement of other relevant internal and external staff was more varied.
Apart from our sample of cases, we were not able to ascertain the overall attendance at
training planning meetings of relevant people as the majority of establishments did not collect
this information. The only figure consistently collected was attendance by external YOT case
managers.
Case supervisors
4.27 All fieldwork sites had teams of dedicated case supervisors or offender supervisors whose task
was to oversee individual young people’s training and resettlement plans. They were the main
link with external YOTs and other external providers and were responsible for arranging
training planning reviews and coordinating the setting and delivery of young people’s targets.
There were significant inconsistencies in how case supervisors were managed and supervised
internally, particularly in teams which consisted partly of seconded YOT staff and partly of
prison service staff. These groups were often managed separately by their own organisations,
making consistent and agreed good practice difficult to achieve. These issues may help to
explain the variance in practice we observed across establishments and case supervisors.
4.28 Case supervisors attended all training planning meetings, but outside of these meetings
engagement with young people varied by establishment and supervisor. Several supervisors
had very good knowledge of the young people and their resettlement needs and saw them
regularly. In some cases young people saw case supervisors on a daily basis, but this was
only when they were vulnerable or had a behavioural problem or where case supervisors saw
young people around the prison. For example, case supervisors said:
‘I see him during training planning review meetings. I also see him around the prison
and if he had issues I would meet with him but he is well behaved.’
‘I have seen him every other day as he has struggled in custody and been bullied.’
4.29 There were some worrying examples where case supervisors knew little about the young
person and had had minimal contact with them. At one establishment this was said to be due
to staff shortages. This was particularly true where case supervisors had changed throughout a
young person’s sentence. At one establishment case supervisors had less contact with the
young people on that unit; resettlement brokers had effectively taken over the role of liaison
between the young person and the YOTs. Although case supervisors were less engaged,
young people were receiving a good service from their resettlement broker.
4.30 Working practices vary across the 157 YOTs and by establishment. Despite this, all heads of
resettlement reported that they had developed good links with YOTs, usually through their
casework teams working closely with YOT case managers on individual cases. However there
were no joint protocols specifically addressing how different establishments and their group of
core YOTs could work most effectively together.
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