Bracknell Forest Youth Justice Plan 2024 to 2027 - 3.2 Performance over the previous year

The Bracknell Forest Youth Justice Team is a small service working with low numbers of children which means that caution should be applied in terms of the quantitative data.

The 2023 calendar year caseload for the Youth Justice Team consisted of:

• 14 Referral Orders
• 13 Out of Court Disposals (an increase of 28.6% on 2022)
• 90 Prevention Service referrals
• 87 Community Resolution referrals by the police
• 14 of the Prevention Service and Community Resolution referrals were adopted onto the Turnaround programme which met the target set for Bracknell Forest by the Youth Justice Board

The average case load for a full-time youth justice case workers in 2023 was between 12 to 15 children. Case workers manage a combination of children from the statutory and prevention cohorts. It is notable that the levels of complexity of cases in both cohorts has increased which has placed a demand on resources and capacity. Following an observation from the Inspectorate that ‘caseloads were at the higher end of what they had seen during the inspection programme’, an independent capacity review will take place as part of the 2024 to 2027 Youth Justice Plan.

The Youth Justice Team received no complaints in 2023. Individual staff received positive feedback from children and parents alike using the ‘How Was It for You’ form at the end of each intervention with children and parents reporting feeling listened to and well communicated with.

‘I think there was a lot of trust between K and his case worker, and he would readily confide in her and wanted to please her with his behaviour. I liked our open chats and could easily use her as a sounding board. I wish we could keep her in our lives longer.’

‘They listened and spoke about the things we wanted to know and made it easy to understand.’

First Time Entrants 

First Time Entrants (FTE)  are children who have received a first substantive outcome following offending behaviour.

Although the number of FTE increased from 16 in 2022 to 2023 to 22 in 2023 to 2024, the overall 6-year trajectory of FTE per 100k children in Bracknell Forest remains low.

Of the 22 children in this year’s cohort, 31.8% (7 cases) were females which is a significant rise from 2022 to 2023 where the overall representation of girls was 12.5%. The majority of the offences committed by girls were violence against the person. This will be monitored and responded to accordingly as part of the training and operational plan for the coming year.

White British children made up 77% of the FTE cohort. White European Children, members of the Romani Traveller Community and a child identifying as White and Black Caribbean made up the remaining 23%.

Eight (36.4%) of the FTEs were Children Looked After or became Children Looked After during the youth justice intervention. This was due to concerns about their safety and wellbeing. The Youth Justice Team continues to work closely with Children’s Social Care and care providers to support them. Bracknell Forest has had good success in supporting Children Looked After in all domains of their life, including support to promote desistence from offending. The Youth Justice Team’s Senior Practitioner is a member of the multi-agency Life Chances Team and identifies Children Looked After who would benefit from preventative work at an early stage.

The 22 FTE’s offences most comprised of violence against the person (54.5%). Five of the violence offences (41.6%) were for possession of a weapon. This is in line with national trends in FTEs in 2023. Of these 22 FTE:

• 7 received a Referral Order
• 1 child received a Conditional Discharge 
• 14 received Youth Cautions or Youth Conditional Cautions

A summary of FTEs in Bracknell Forest from 2018 to 2023 is below:

A comparison between Bracknell Forest and its ‘Youth Justice Family’ in 2023 is below:

Reoffending

Reoffending rates remain low overall with no reoffending amongst the children in the 2022 to 2023 cohort (21 children). 

Early indicators suggest that there will be an increase in reoffending in 2024 given the quarter 1 data and profile of the new cohort (27 children). Eleven of the 27 children in the cohort are Children Looked After which is a significant increase from last year. The Life Chances Team and the Youth Justice Team will work together to prevent offending and reoffending in this cohort of children.

The table and graph below reflect the 1 incident of re-offending which took place in 2023 to 2024.