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An inspection of youth justice work with children and victims in Blackpool

Published:

Foreword (Back to top)

This inspection is part of our programme of inspections across youth justice services (YJS) in England and Wales. [1] In this inspection we have inspected and rated work with children and victims in Blackpool Youth Justice Service across two broad areas: the quality of work done with children working with the YJS and the quality of work done with victims.

Overall, Blackpool YJS was rated as ‘Requires improvement’.

We found strong work to achieve positive change for children across assessing, planning, and delivery. YJS staff and managers were committed and motivated to achieving positive outcomes for children, families, and victims. There was a family approach to working with children known to the YJS, and practitioners and partnership staff knew their children and families well. Practitioners had a depth of understanding of how trauma impacted upon children’s emotional wellbeing and ensured they adopted a trauma-informed approach. It was positive to see the prioritisation of building trusting relationships with children as part of the planning process. Inspectors found examples of practitioners working alongside children, ensuring that their opinions and voices were heard, and positively influenced the work undertaken with them. We also found evidence of practitioners actively considering children’s learning, maturity, and diversity needs. Planning and delivery to keep children and the community safe were also consistently strong.

Overall, partnership working was a strength. Practitioners had a good understanding of the services required to support children’s range of needs and utilised these well. Planning was aligned and well-coordinated across the partnership, and we found that staff from all agencies were tenacious and proactive in engaging children and their families.

Assessing to keep the child and community safe needed to improve. Practitioners recognised children’s risks of exploitation and understood contextual safeguarding approaches appropriately. However, they did not always consider children’s previous behaviours which could impact upon their safety or the safety of others. There were also missed opportunities to consider victims’ views, restorative justice approaches, and to keep actual and potential victims safe.

Service leaders acknowledged that they needed to prioritise the strategic oversight of work with victims, and to develop an enhanced offer based on analysis, evaluation, and feedback from victims. The YJS understood the importance of high-quality provision for victims and was passionate and committed to improving its offer.

This inspection makes a number of recommendations to enable the YJS to improve further.  

Martin Jones CBE

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

Ratings (Back to top)

Fieldwork started June 2025Score 6/12
Overall ratingRequires improvement

Work with children

2.1 AssessingInadequate
2.2 PlanningGood
2.3 Implementation and deliveryOutstanding

Work with victims

V1 Work with victimsRequires improvement

Recommendations (Back to top)

As a result of our inspection findings, we have made six recommendations that we believe, if implemented, will have a positive impact on the quality of youth justice services in Blackpool. This will improve the lives of the children in contact with youth justice services and better protect the public.

Blackpool Youth Justice Service should:

  1. improve the analysis and quality of assessing to ensure consistent and
    high-quality activity to keep children and communities safe
  1. strengthen the quality and consistency of management oversight so that it drives improvements in the quality of assessing activity across the service.

Blackpool youth justice executive board should:

  1. understand the over-representation of care-experienced children known to the YJS and proactively undertake activity to prevent them coming into the criminal justice system unnecessarily
  1. work with Lancashire Police to improve work on victims consenting to contact from agencies, by better understanding the profile and diversity needs of victims and developing a detailed analysis of why some victims do not consent   
  1. prioritise the strategic oversight of work with victims and ensure there is accurate recording, analysis, evaluation, and consistent management oversight in place
  1. review the victim offer and make sure it prioritises victim safety processes as well as meeting their diverse needs.  

Background (Back to top)

We conducted fieldwork in Blackpool YJS over a period of a week, beginning 02 June 2025. We inspected cases where the YJS had commenced work with children subject to bail or remand, court disposals or out-of-court disposals between 03 June 2024 and 04 April 2025. We also conducted 14 interviews with case managers.

We inspected the organisational arrangements for work delivered with victims and looked at cases where the YJS had undertaken contact with victims between 02 December 2024 and 31 January 2025. We also conducted interviews with staff and managers responsible for the delivery of this work.

Blackpool is a small, densely populated seaside town within the county of Lancashire in the North West of England. There are 142,700 residents, of whom 27,900 are under the age of 18. A significantly smaller percentage of Black and ethnic minority individuals live in Blackpool compared to the North West and rest of England. It is the most deprived local authority on the index of multiple deprivation scale, with life expectancy and healthy life expectancy rated as the lowest in England. Education outcomes are poor, particularly for children during their secondary education. In recognition of the challenges the area faces, there is a focus on regeneration in the town with projects to increase employment opportunities and improve housing conditions.

As part of Blackpool’s children’s services, the YJS sits in adolescent services, which is a multidisciplinary service supporting vulnerable children and young people. The head of adolescent services has strategic responsibility for the service alongside other service areas, including substance misuse and sexual health services, children leaving care, youth employment advisors’ team, and family workers. They are supported by the service manager for adolescent services. The YJS is overseen by the YJS executive management board, which is led by an independent chair, and supported by an operational partnership board.

The YJS is co-located in the central family hub alongside the wider adolescent service and early help services. Practitioners also have access to a wide range of community venues, including family hubs in the north, central, and south of the town and the care-leavers’ hub, ‘The Core’, in the town centre.

Blackpool Council has one of the highest rates of children in its care in England and there are a large number of children’s residential homes in the area. The local authority has planning restrictions to limit the potential for new residential homes to open. Eighteen per cent of the children known to the YJS during 2024/2025 were care-experienced children. Some work on care-experienced children is being done on a pan-Lancashire basis, however, the YJS needs to better understand and analyse the over-representation of care-experienced children and put in place effective processes across the partnership that prevent them coming into the youth justice system unnecessarily.

During our inspection we heard about the work the service was undertaking with its early intervention offer and its efforts to identify children at the earliest opportunity.

There had been a strategic and operational focus on addressing youth antisocial behaviour and criminal activity in Blackpool. This activity took a multi-agency approach led by the police and involving community members. As part of the context visit, we saw examples of work within local communities that showed how the partnership was focusing on creating safer places and spaces for children and their families. Inspectors met local residents in a recently built youth centre who explained the positive impact that the work had had on their lives, on local businesses, and across the neighbourhood. To support this work, the YJS had developed a tiered intervention panel to provide a multi-agency response to children whose behaviour regularly received police attention. 

At the time our inspection was announced the YJS was working with 31 children subject to a community sentence, and 13 subject to a youth conditional caution, youth caution, community resolution or other out-of-court disposal. There was one child in custody. The profile of children included: 6.8 per cent from a Black and ethnic minority heritage; 9.1 per cent female; 76.2 per cent had an education, health, and care plan (EHCP) or special educational needs and disability (SEND) support; 2.3 per cent Blackpool care-experienced children lived within the area and 9.1 per cent lived outside of the area; 78.8 per cent had substance misuse issues; and 18.2 per cent had a child in need plan.

At the time of the inspection, the YJS and police were still developing their approach to the use of Outcome 22[2] for suitable ‘no comment’, and silent interviews to enable equal access to diversion. Although the numbers were decreasing, the first-time entrant rate was 276 per 100,000 of the 10 to 17 age population of Blackpool YJS, which was above the rate for the North West region during January 2023 to December 2023. There had been a decrease in the YJS reoffending rates, which between July 2022 and June 2023 were 31.6 per cent compared to 32.0 per cent for England and Wales.

Domain two: Work with children (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at 15 cases where the YJS has worked with children, subject to bail, remand, community sentences, resettlement or out-of-court disposals.

2.1. AssessingRating
Assessing is well-informed and personalised, effectively analysing how to achieve positive change and keep children and the community safe.Inadequate

Our rating [3] for assessing is based on the following key questions:

Does assessing sufficiently analyse how to:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?67%
keep the child and the community safe?47%

In the majority of inspected cases, assessing activity to achieve positive change was detailed, comprehensive, and analytical. The active participation of children was promoted and there was clear evidence of co-production with them. For out-of-court disposals, assessments were written ‘to the child’ using clear and simple language to help each child understand their assessment and what was being written about them. We found that practitioners were proactive and creative in involving children and identifying their strengths and motivations, which they utilised well in informing their assessing activity.

Practitioners took time to understand their children. We found that practitioners talked to children about their lived experiences and considered their diverse needs well. Practitioners showed a depth of understanding of how children’s culture and heritage influenced their sense of identity and considered how trauma had impacted upon their emotional wellbeing.

There was a whole-family approach to working with children known to the YJS, and practitioners and partnership staff knew their children and families well. Inspectors found examples of the high priority given by practitioners to develop and maintain effective working relationship with parents and carers, which enabled them to get a better understanding of children’s familial context and wider networks. Parents and carers were fully involved in assessing activity and were encouraged to participate in reviewing a child’s progress throughout their involvement with the service. Practitioners also used this information to inform their engagement with children, which enhanced overall assessing activity. During a multi-agency case discussion, we also saw evidence that partners had a strong understanding of each other’s assessments and recognised the needs of the family as a whole.

We found that information from the YJS education, training, and employment worker had a positive impact on assessing activity. They were the conduit for accessing
up-to-date information from educational providers, including schools and SEND teams, which was utilised well to analyse children’s learning and educational needs.

Assessing activity included a health assessment completed by a safeguarding nurse with each child. They worked with children to identify health needs, provided health education, and supported access to emotional mental health services, as required. YJS practitioners had been trained in identifying speech, language, and communication needs in children, and we found that they assessed and fully explored children’s needs appropriately as part of the assessing activity.

However, the quality of assessing activity for the safety of the child and the community was variable. Whilst the YJS had strong relationships with its partners and there were clear procedures for sharing information and established pathways to ensuring information was accessible and available to achieve safety for children and the wider community, this did not always translate into sufficient practice. We found instances where information was not consistently utilised, updated or analysed in assessing activity.

Practitioners could access and use information from children’s social care, early help, the Awaken child exploitation team, police, health, education, and the substance misuse and sexual health service to help provide a holistic picture of children’s strengths and needs. However, we found some examples where there was an over-reliance on obtaining information from records rather than effective communication with other practitioners working with the child, particularly children’s social care. This meant information on the child was not always up to date or reflected changes to their circumstances. We also found some instances where opportunities to check with agencies about adults known to children were missed, which would have given a fuller understanding of the key individuals involved in a child’s life, as well as the potential risks they presented to them. 

We found some examples where information was gathered from other agencies, but it was not adequately analysed to inform assessing activity to keep the child safe. This included where children were victims of domestic abuse, had gone missing or who had parents who were misusing substances.

Practitioners had a good understanding of children’s risks of exploitation, understood contextual safeguarding approaches, and worked closely with the Awaken team. However, in some cases, the potential risks to keeping children safe were not sufficiently analysed and did not always consider appropriately previous concerning behaviours that put the child’s safety at risk, for example their emotional regulation, mental health, and wellbeing. In some cases where children had received an out-of-court disposal or were living out of the area, we also found instances where assessing activity was too brief, lacked analysis, and did not offer a full picture of the child’s situation.

In most cases, assessing activity did not sufficiently identify the concerns or analyse the support and interventions needed to keep the community safe. We found examples of an underestimation of the level of risk the child could present to others, and lack of an understanding of how potential changes in their behaviour should be addressed to keep the community safe. In some cases, identifying how to keep other people safe, for example, family members when a child had been violent within the home, had not been recognised or analysed effectively. Assessment of the needs and safety of victims was considered in too few cases. Inspectors found examples of missed opportunities to consider victims’ views or restorative justice approaches, and to keep actual and potential victims safe.

There was a partnership framework for working with children who displayed harmful sexual behaviour, and practitioners from different agencies were appropriately trained in this area. However, the partnership needed to ensure that assessments were appropriate and timely in all relevant cases.

We found that whilst management oversight met the needs of the case in the majority of the cases inspected, a more proactive and robust approach was needed to gain consistency in safety across all assessing activity.

2.2 PlanningRating
Planning is well-informed, holistic and personalised, focusing on how to achieve positive change and keep children and communities safe.Good

Our rating [4] for planning is based on the following key questions:

Does planning focus sufficiently on how to:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?87%
keep the child and community safe?73%

The YJS prioritised planning and collaborating with children to achieve positive change. It was encouraging to see that building a trusting relationship with children was integral to the planning process. Inspectors found many examples of practitioners working alongside children and ensuring that their opinions and voices formed part of planning activity. There was evidence in nearly all cases that plans had been co-produced with children, resulting in a strong understanding of their strengths, aspirations, and goals. Children had contributed to discussions on the proposed interventions, and the places and spaces where they felt safe. Feedback from the children we spoke to also confirmed that they had felt listened to, included, and were given choices as part of the planning process.

We found planning built on children’s interests and skills and was responsive to their needs. Planning showed that the practitioners knew their children well, considered their personal circumstances, and understood their motivations and strengths. For example, in one of our multi-agency case discussions, we were given examples where a number of professionals working with a child ‘checked-in’ with the residential home and each other before seeing the child, to ascertain how they were feeling, provided updates to each other, and ensured the child experienced a coordinated approach by all involved.

To support children to engage, practitioners considered where they lived, the accessibility of their local area, and the best way to deliver interventions. Practitioners proactively engaged parents and carers in the planning process, and families continued to be involved when planning was reviewed and changed. In most cases, practitioners knew what wider support services were available for children to access in their local community when their involvement with the YJS ended. Inspectors noted positive examples of practitioners planning with the child for the early revocation of orders based on the good progress the child had made.

We found evidence of practitioners considering children’s learning, maturity, and diversity needs. Planning was aligned with work that was happening with other agencies, including early help, children’s social care, Awaken, and the substance misuse and sexual health service. The YJS education, training, and employment worker understood the issues children were facing with some of the schools, and advocated strongly to ensure that they were getting their educational entitlement. They worked alongside schools to help children stay in mainstream education and included schools in safety plans to encourage children’s attendance and engagement. Inspectors noted the close work with the YJS education, training, and employment worker and the youth employment advisors from ‘The Platform’ to put plans in place to ensure that post-school-aged children were accessing provision that met their educational, training, and employment needs. For a child who had been in a custodial establishment, we found good communication with their key workers and evidence of collaborative planning, with children’s social care and professionals arranging joint visits to the see the child. We saw that agencies shared information and responded appropriately to incidents that had happened in the establishment.

There was strong communication across agencies, and we saw practitioners seeking information from other professionals to make sure that planning stayed relevant to the child’s current situation. There was evidence of positive multi-agency working with children’s social care and health practitioners to keep children safe. We found that in most relevant cases practitioners had considered what was needed to reduce concerns about children’s vulnerability, victimisation, and exploitation. This was supported by discussions at the daily meetings looking at child exploitation and the close working relationship with Awaken. These conversations contributed to planning activity which ensured that children who were missing from home, at risk of, or being, exploited criminally and/or sexually, and any adults of concern were discussed.

There was also the tiered intervention panel, the YJS multi-agency risk management meeting, and the child resolution panel. These meetings ensured that information was shared, and all agencies were up to date with the child’s circumstances. Information provided by the police outlining children’s behaviour and activities in the community was evaluated, and planning activity was responsive to any potential increased risks to the child’s safety.

Multi-agency meetings also helped practitioners planning for children and family’s involvement with agencies across the partnership.

Inspectors found that planning included collaborative work with other agencies to address the key factors needed to keep the child safe. These agencies included ADASH (substance misuse and sexual health service), child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), education provision, and referrals to children’s services. Examples showed that children who had speech, language, and communication needs had been referred to a specialist therapist, and we saw a positive relationship with children’s social care with joint planning through attendance at multi-agency statutory meetings.

Overall, planning to keep the child and community safe was strong. However, in a small number of inspected cases planning to keep the child safe was stronger than planning to keep communities safe. Where this occurred, this was impacted by gaps in assessing activity; where risks had not been identified or analysed as part of assessing activity, practitioners did not then take sufficient account of them in planning.

Greater emphasis was also needed upon ensuring that planning consistently considered the specific needs of victims and potential victims. We found that recognising wider risks to other people and planning for children’s potential future harmful behaviour were not always fully considered. For example, some practitioners had not considered family members who may have been at risk of violence from the child, and there needed to be greater emphasis upon ensuring all agencies consistently agreed their joint priorities, roles, and responsibilities should concerns about the child’s risk to others escalate.

2.3 DeliveryRating
High-quality, well-focused, personalised and coordinated services are delivered, achieving positive change and keeping children and communities safe.Outstanding

Our rating [5] for delivery is based on the following key questions:

Does the delivery (and review?) of well-focused, personalised and co-ordinated services:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?93%
keep the child and the community safe?80%

The delivery of services to achieve positive change was a strength. Delivery was child-centred and trauma-informed, with interventions focusing on children’s strengths and protective factors. We saw the high priority that practitioners gave to developing and maintaining effective working relationships with children, encouraging them to participate and engage. Practitioners promptly recognised barriers to engagement; this proactive approach enabled early resolution and repositioning of work that needed to be completed to achieve positive change. Practitioners were skilled at developing positive working relationships with parents and carers, and we saw examples of a whole-family approach to ensure that the needs of others in the child’s household were supported.

Parents and carers were included appropriately in the delivery of services to children and were involved in reviewing their progress. Children were offered the opportunity to attend activities and interventions that were adapted to meet their needs, innovative, and tailored to help motivate and engage them. Practitioners used reparation and intervention sessions to help children build relationships and integrate into the community. The wide range of projects enabled children to be matched to activities based on their interests. We found evidence of practitioners adapting interventions to meet children’s learning needs and revisiting work with them to check that they had understood previous sessions. For children who had speech, language, and communication concerns, practitioners had developed communication passports with them that could be shared with other agencies.

Practitioners had a good understanding of the services available to support children and worked alongside other agencies to ensure that the services delivered met the child’s needs. These included substance misuse and sexual health service, police, Awaken, safeguarding nurses, speech and language therapist, early help, and children’s social care. We found that staff from all agencies were tenacious in proactively trying to engage children and their families in the interventions delivered.

Partnership working was a strength, and we were impressed by The Platform – a youth hub for employment and training where accredited youth employment advisors support children and young people aged 16-25. Alongside other agencies, services included pre- and post-employment support, and skill-building activities to meet the child’s needs, so that they felt motivated and encouraged to take up education, training, and employment opportunities. We also saw an example where the YJS education, training, and employment worker had helped a family to appeal against their child’s school exclusion.

Inspectors noted that the interventions identified in children’s plans were delivered consistently. We saw various interventions that practitioners could offer children, which were discussion-based and tailored to each child. These included motoring interventions, the ‘One Punch’ programme linked to youth violence, and using ‘Romance Academy cards’ for discussions about healthy relationships. Children were involved in creative activities, including cooking meals for young homeless people in Blackpool and creating self-care gift bags which could be given to other children.

Work to keep children and the community safe was also a strength. Inspectors found that practitioners understood the trauma that some children had experienced and worked on building their relationships at the child’s pace. In one example, a practitioner made a video of the youth centre where the child’s referral order panel would take place, including introducing the panel members so that they would know what to expect and feel more at ease. Practitioners had access to the adolescent service mental health practitioner who was co-located with the YJS and available for case consultation as well as providing brief interventions, where required. Although timely access to CAMHS was a challenge, we saw examples where children were accessing YoutherapY (part of CAMHS that offered a weekly, drop-in counselling service for children).

There was a positive relationship with ADASH (substance misuse and sexual health service). The inspected cases showed a range of interventions that took place with children, which included education work, harm-reduction sessions, and distraction techniques. There was also a close connection between the YJS and Awaken, and we saw examples of joint home visits to families to ensure that parents and carers were aware of children’s vulnerabilities to exploitation.

In a minority of cases where it was relevant, not enough services were delivered to ensure actual and potential victims were protected. Practitioners did not always prioritise the safety of victims. We saw some instances of victims’ work that was generic and not relevant to a child’s offending or offence, or limited discussions about the potential impact of the child’s behaviour on the wider community. This area needed focus to ensure consistency of practice with actual and potential victims.

We saw timely and effective information-sharing between partners, including the YJS, police, Awaken, ADASH, children’s social care, and health, which resulted in a clear response to support the delivery of services to children and a strong approach to working together to keep children and communities safe. When interventions with the YJS were coming to an end, we found agencies jointly agreeing the exit plan so that children and families would continue to be supported by partners and have access to universal provision.

Inspectors were informed of multi-agency operations to respond to community safety incidents, including offering reassurance to communities after incidents had happened. We heard examples of collaborative and effective responses following incidents of antisocial behaviour and serious youth violence, and it was clear that there were strengths across the partnership when working with children in their local communities.

Work with victims (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at nine victim cases where the YJS has offered a service to victims who have consented for their information to be shared.

Work with victimsRating
Work with victims is high-quality, individualised and responsive driving positive outcomes and safety for victims.Requires improvement

Our rating [6] for work with victims is based on the following key questions:

V 1.1 Is work with victims high-quality, individualised and responsive? 

V 1.2 Do organisational arrangements and activity drive a high-quality, individualised and responsive service for victims? 

Strengths:

  • Work with victims remained a priority in the YJS partnership plan for 2025/2026.
  • The youth justice executive board had oversight of victim work, and it received victim data as part of the regular performance reporting requirements.
  • A demographic analysis of the victim cohort was monitored by both the YJS executive and operational boards, and they received reports on victim feedback.
  • Representatives on the executive board took a strategic lead on promoting and overseeing work with victims.
  • The YJS had a victim action plan which had been presented to the executive board and identified the areas that it needed to focus on to improve this area of work.
  • Victim work was understood across the partnership, and there were clear links with other strategic areas, such as the community safety partnership.
  • The YJS police officer was part of the newly recruited police officer training and delivered regular briefings to ensure that police officers understood the restorative offer from the YJS.
  • The YJS had reviewed its victims’ policy, which set out the arrangements and parameters for the delivery of restorative processes and work with victims.
  • There was a full-time victim worker, and a team manager involved in victim and restorative work. Both had experience of restorative justice approaches and working with victims. Both had completed restorative justice training.
  • It was clear from the victim work focus group that practitioners were passionate and committed to their work, and wanted to provide a high-quality service to victims which was responsive to their needs.
  • Work with victims took an individualised and sensitive approach, especially in cases of harmful sexual behaviour.
  • The victim worker could signpost and refer victims to other services, and examples were given where victims were offered these services when appropriate. This included a service, Nest Lancashire, commissioned to provide support to victims who were children.
  • The YJS provided a varied range of reparation activities which meant that victims had a wide choice when considering options for indirect reparation.
  • There was evidence of community-based victim initiatives and partnership work, and strong links with the community safety partnership. 
  • The service had been proactive in working with corporate victims, and this had helped to improve the relationship with local businesses and the local community.
  • An information pack was available for victims which explained the services on offer.
  • The YJS victim policy and its service to victims had been reviewed through an external audit, and the service had regular audits of work with victims using a victim standard quality assurance audit tool.
  • The views of victims were sought at the end of the YJS intervention. The recent introduction of an online victim feedback survey had resulted in an uptake in the responses from victims.

Areas for improvement:

  • The process for gathering information on victims’ protected characteristics needed to be strengthened to ensure the support offered met their diverse needs. 
  • There was limited board oversight of victim participation, and the support and interventions that they received.  
  • It was not clear how the YJS funding for delivering victim work was formulated and agreed.
  • There was a lack of clarity on the arrangements for gaining consent from victims for contact from agencies, and the sharing of their details, which required resolution by Lancashire police and the YJS.
  • The victim cohort in terms of consenting to further contact from agencies was not fully understood, and there was no monitoring or analysis into the reasons why victims did not consent.
  • There needed to be greater focus on ensuring and monitoring victim safety, with exploration of how safe victims felt throughout their time supported by the YJS. 
  • Capturing victims’ views so they could be considered as part of licence conditions, and knowledge of the role of the Probation Service’s victim contact service, needed to be improved.
  • The YJS resettlement policy referenced victims but did not explain how they would be involved and considered in the resettlement process.
  • The recording of work with victims was inconsistent and did not always reflect the activities undertaken or the quality of work delivered. 
  • The responsibility for victim work needed to be considered across the whole service to ensure that they had a high profile, and that all staff across the organisation considered their views and wishes.
  • The voice of the victim was not always clear and explicit in the children’s casework.
  • The YJS acknowledged that a higher priority needed to be given to gathering victim feedback, engaging victims in this process, and using their feedback to develop victim services.

Participation of children and their parents or carers (Back to top)

Blackpool YJS had a strong commitment to hearing from children and families. The local authority had adopted a model of participation – Blackpool Families Rock – based on three principles focused on: the ‘heart’, which is how they behaved; the ‘head’, how they thought; and the ‘hand’, how they worked. These principles underpinned its work with children and families, as well as with colleagues. In line with this approach, the YJS wrote its assessments ‘to the child’ in language that was easily understood by them and their families, and they co-produced plans with children.

The YJS received feedback from children and families through the self-assessment questionnaire completed towards the end of the child’s interventions. It had also been trying different digital platforms to gain feedback with various levels of success. In April 2025, the service introduced a new Snap survey – software for creating and analysing surveys – with three surveys, one for children, one for parents or carers, and one for victims, available through a QR code.

The YJS had also developed a children’s version of its annual youth justice plan. It was evident that the service promoted a relational model, and we found that this was a strength in the cases inspected. For example, in a multi-agency case discussion we found that the child had been involved in planning their activities, professionals had taken into account their opinion, and the child had been listened to on what they wanted to prioritise and do. It was evident that the child’s voice was heard by all agencies in the planning process and in the services delivered.

The YJS contacted, on our behalf, children who were working with the service at the time of the inspection, to gain their consent and to enable them and their parents or carers to feed back on their experience of the YJS. We provided a variety of opportunities for children and their parents or carers to participate in the inspection process (text survey, one-to-one meetings, focus groups, and video or telephone calls). During the inspection, we also met two members from a local community in Blackpool and heard about the positive impact partners across community safety, youth justice, police, and early intervention services had had on improving the safety of their neighbourhood.

We spoke with five children and three parents or carers. All but one felt respected and valued by YJS staff and other people working with them, and seven felt that the YJS had helped them either ‘quite’ well or ‘very’ well, with one answering ‘not sure’. All stated that the places where they were seen were either ‘very’ or ‘quite’ safe for them.

The feedback provided by children and their parents or carers to inspectors was mainly positive, although one parent felt that recent communication had been poor. One child, talking about whether they were included in planning for what was going to happen with the YJS, said:

“I wanted help getting into college and staying on the straight and narrow. I have signed up for a college course and not been in trouble.”

When asked how well the service had helped them, another child commented:

“The YJS worker has always been there for me.”

A parent commented:

“[My child] has been treated with respect and has been well engaged in sessions. They are supported at the right pace, and nothing is made too overwhelming. As a parent I feel supported and can contact the YJS worker easily. The YJS is doing for [my child] what it needs to do and supporting them to take the right path.”

When asked how their identity and needs were recognised, another parent said:

“[The worker] talked to their child age appropriately and always involved them in the conversation and explained things so they would understand.” 

Equity, Diversity and inclusion (Back to top)

Blackpool YJS had a strategic and operational commitment to understanding and meeting the diverse needs of children, victims, and staff. As a town, Blackpool was not ethnically diverse and there was no over-representation of Black and ethnic minority children within the YJS cohort. Children were similar in gender to the national cohort and generally reflected local demographics. Disproportionality and children’s characteristics were included in the performance and quality analysis reports, presented at both the YJS executive and operational partnership boards. In March 2025, it was agreed to establish a task-and-finish group to look further into disproportionality and how to develop both strategic and operational responses.

An issue for the YJS in quantitative data on disproportionality was the small number of children open to the service, and therefore one child or a small number of children could make a significant statistical difference. More could be done, however, to monitor disproportionality, and detailed analysis was needed to understand the current picture and to drive a tangible response to ensure that all children with protected characteristics had their needs met. The YJS saw a high number of children overrepresented, including those who were care-experienced. Both the executive and the operational board needed to direct the partnership approach to understanding and addressing the overrepresentation of care-experienced children to ensure they were not brought into the criminal justice system unnecessarily.

As part of this inspection, we considered how the service responded to the diverse needs and protected characteristics of children and victims. Recording of protected characteristics of victims was clear in two-thirds of the cases inspected, and so initial contact with victims could be informed by an understanding of their individual needs.

Recording of the protected characteristics of children consistently considered age, sex, gender identity, race, ethnicity, and disability, and we found practice examples of interventions that were adapted and delivered to respond to children’s individual and diverse needs. We saw an excellent example in one case of ways in which a practitioner was trying to engage a child. By using an enhanced learning style tool, the practitioner realised that the child struggled with eye contact and so adapted sessions so that they were side by side, walking and talking or in the car. In this way, the child could engage but did not have to have eye contact.

In the inspection of work with children we found that assessing considered the child’s diversity needs sufficiently in the majority of cases. The service had completed training with staff on equality and diversity, and we found examples of practitioners creating safe spaces to facilitate conversations with children to understand their lived experiences. By using a relational model with children, practitioners were able to be responsive and adapt the delivery of services to meet individual needs. There was an example of the YJS education, training, and employment worker helping a family to appeal against a school’s decision to exclude the child, and advocating on the child and family’s behalf. Another example showed tenacity in securing increased provision for a child who was subject to a reduced school timetable but was at risk of exploitation when they were not in school.

Data annexe (Back to top)

Blackpool YJS Data Annexe
(XLSX, 132 KB)

Press release (Back to top)

Blackpool Youth Justice Service “committed to improving” following inspection

References and further information (Back to top)

A glossary of terms used in this report can be found on our website.

This inspection was led by HM Inspector Pauline Burke, supported by a team of inspectors and colleagues from across the Inspectorate. We would like to thank all those who helped plan and took part in the inspection; without their help and cooperation, the inspection would not have been possible.

[1] There are two types of inspections as part of the current youth inspection programme across England and Wales. Inspection of youth justice work with children and victims (IYJWCV) and inspection of youth justice services (IYJS). Further information about these inspections can be found on our website Youth Justice Services – HM Inspectorate of Probation.

[2] Where police defer prosecution until the accused has been given the opportunity to engage with an intervention activity.

[3] The rating for the standard is driven by the lowest score of the key questions, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. A more detailed explanation is available on our website Standards and ratings – HM Inspectorate of Probation.

[4] The rating for the standard is driven by the lowest score of the key questions, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. A more detailed explanation is available on our website Standards and ratings – HM Inspectorate of Probation.

[5] The rating for the standard is driven by the lowest score of the key questions, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. A more detailed explanation is available on our website Standards and ratings – HM Inspectorate of Probation.

[6] The rating for the victims’ standard is derived from the scores from case inspection for V 1.1 and the qualitative evidence for V 1.2. Case inspection scores and a more detailed explanation of the rating process is available on our website Standards and ratings – HM Inspectorate of Probation.