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

4.37 The social worker of looked after children should be invited to all training planning meetings
and encouraged to attend. Where a child will be returning to local authority care, the social
worker will lead on arranging resettlement plans and therefore needs to be involved throughout
a young person’s time in custody. However, we found that responsible home local authorities
were only occasionally represented at initial training planning meetings and attendance at later
meetings was inconsistent, with social workers rarely attending every time. This was
detrimental to the planning for the care and resettlement of looked after children. Case
supervisors reported that they invited social workers to all meetings but that often they did not
attend. Some of the looked after children in our sample said that they had not seen their social
worker at all while in custody.
4.38 Outside of training planning meetings, young people can receive visits, letters and should have
daily access to telephones to make calls, although having enough phone credit to do so can be
a problem. In our survey, two-thirds (68%) of young men said they could use the telephone
every day. Only two-fifths (38%) said they usually had at least one visit from family or friends a
week. Less than half (46%) of young men said it was easy for people to visit them.
Education/training staff
4.39 Learning and skills activities undertaken by young people in custody should be allocated
according to their individual needs and linked to ETE plans for their release. However at most
establishments, case supervisors reported little contact with education staff, and they were
only consistently attending training planning meetings at one establishment.
Example of good practice
HMYOI Parc
There was a learning coach role within the education team who provided help to ensure that young
people with poor literacy received targeted support. They also attended initial training planning meetings
and ensured that information regarding a young person’s learning was shared between the education
department and case supervisors.
4.40 Where education staff did not attend training planning meetings, written contributions were
sometimes submitted, but case supervisors reported that this was rare. This meant that a
young person’s individual learning plan (ILP), set by education, often did not feed into the
training planning process and case supervisors did not always know what activities the young
person was doing, how they were progressing and what, if any, certificates or qualifications
they had achieved. Many case supervisors said they relied either on P-Nomis 38 records, if they
were up to date, or the young person. One case supervisor said:
‘Education had cuts in staff so only attend about 15% of meetings. We rely on entries
on P-Nomis to see what young people have done in education, any qualifications etc,
and it is a bit hit and miss as to how up to date they are. Often when it’s discussed
with the young person they list others they have done.’
4.41 There was some discrepancy between what case supervisors and case files suggested and
what was reported by the heads of learning and skills. Several heads acknowledged that
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