Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
9:15 am
Brendan Finegan: As Bob Reitemeier has already said, this is an opportunity to place emerging activities at a local level between children’s services and youth justice. It will allow them to work together to tackle the most troubled and troublesome young people and families in their community. The issue of resources is tricky, but we already have measures for that in the Act and we will encourage local areas to decide how to spend their resources in the best way. For the children in some cases, we would advocate just such an intensive fostering order as being the best way to invest that money.
We are talking with our colleagues in the Department for Children, Schools and Families who are running a similar fostering model for young people who are looked after. All too often, looked-after children are youth offenders. We think that there are opportunities to join with initiatives such as those used by the Department for Children, Schools and Families to extend the range.
We are having conversations about extending the range at a national level, but we also know that at a local level, choices can be made about how to make the best investment. One option that we are proposing is that children’s services and youth offending teams could work together to invest their current spend in families that are problematic. The evidence from the United States, from which this research is developed, is very promising on crime and other social policy aspects.