Inspectors have heavily criticised the youth offending service in Western Bay, giving it the lowest rating of inadequate, and blaming the way the regional service was set up for the root of many of its problems.
The Western Bay Youth Justice and Early Intervention Service was created in 2014, amalgamating the youth offending services of Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Bridgend.
Youth offending teams supervise 10 to 18-year-olds who have been sentenced by a court or who have come to the attention of the police because of their behaviour but have not been charged and instead are dealt with out of court.
However in a scathing report by HM Inspectorate of Probation, inspectors said the governance and leadership of the service was ineffective, none of the three local authorities had taken appropriate responsibility for the work of the service, and there was confusion in processes and procedures leaving some children and young people in unsafe situations.
They found the management board did not understand the needs of the young people, the staff or the service, there was no accountability, and the recently-appointed chairman had only a developing understanding of the issue.
As a result operational managers and staff were left to firefight and respond to the symptoms of “significant systemic problems”.
It resulted in poor casework, with staff lacking the support they needed to deliver well, inspectors said.
Furthermore inspectors said partnership work needed to safeguard children and young people with complex needs was inadequate, saying there were many examples where it was impossible to tell if young children and young people were protected.
And, when issues were identified, the service and partners did not always take necessary safeguarding actions.
Inspectors said that they had found “pockets of good practice” such as the running of the out-of-court disposal scheme, the intervention centre, and the building skills programme.
It added that where good practice happened it tended to be down to the individual efforts of staff and be built on pre-amalgamation schemes.
While noting that work to help children and young people stop offending was the strongest area of work, inspectors said safety and wellbeing needs were often underestimated.
And they said in cases where children and young people had court orders work to identify, plan, reduce and manage risk of serious harm was poor.
Inspectors judged only 37% assessments of risk of serious harm to be accurate, finding a widespread underestimation of risk factors.
In two cases children who had downloaded indecent images of child sexual abuse were assessed as low risk of serious harm and in one case a child’s ability to access the ‘dark web’ was not assessed or understood.
Inspectors said the assessment was too ready to accept the child’s explanation when, in reality, it was “virtually impossible to access material like that accidentally”.
£15m 'wellness centre' ambition for Swansea city centre to help make everyone healthier
They said partnership working with health was very patchy and limited to speech and language advice.
Inspectors identified 12 children and young people who needed mental health support but only three were receiving i, and that was when their needs were acute and sectioning under the Mental Health Act had been considered.
They found 21 children and young people needed substance misuse services but only 16 were receiving help and while 11 children and young people had education, training or employment needs just seven received services.
In their report inspectors said a health representative had not attended a board meeting for 12 months and attendance by other board members was variable and subject to frequent change, pointing out that Careers Wales, who could provide useful assistance, had not yet been invited to attend meetings.
However they praised the service and the police when it came to the out-of-court disposal scheme, saying the joint working was “outstanding”.
Dame Glenys Stacey, the chief inspector of probation, said she expected the management board to take “swift action” to ensure that the service works together to meet the safeguarding and offending needs of children and young people, adding: “Critically, work to meet public protection responsibilities needs to be effective.”
The regional service has now been disbanded with local teams put back in place.
Bridgend had been working towards leaving the service as part of a health board boundary change which took effect on April 1.
And with draft findings of the inspection report showing a failing service it was decided to move back to local teams for Swansea and Neath Port Talbot to help tackle the issues.
This also took place on April 1.
Youth offending teams are statutory partnerships and are multi-disciplinary to deal with the needs of the whole child.
They are required to have staff from local authority social care and education, the police, the national probation service, and the local health board.
The inspection took place in December 2018 with the inspection report published at the end of March.
