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

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 Lambeth YJS across two broad areas: the quality of work done with children working with the YJS and the quality of work done with victims.

Overall, Lambeth YJS was rated as ‘Good’.

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 change for children and families, 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 evidence of practitioners working alongside children, ensuring that their opinions and voices were heard, and positively influenced the work undertaken with them. We also found examples of how effectively children’s lived experiences and their diversity needs were understood. Planning and delivery to keep children and the community safe were also consistently strong.

Partnership working was a strength. Practitioners knew what services were required to support children’s range of needs and utilised these well. There was clear evidence of practitioners offering children access to positive activities, alongside delivering targeted interventions addressing attitudes and interactions. Planning and the delivery of interventions were aligned and well-coordinated across the partnership, and we found that staff from all agencies were proactive in engaging children and their families.

Whilst assessing activity to keep the child and community safe was generally undertaken well, it could be further strengthened. A range of factors that affected the safety of children and the community were recognised and understood, but these were not always fully analysed. Assessing did not consistently consider changes in children’s behaviour which could impact upon their safety or the safety of others. There were also some 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 and operational oversight of work with victims 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 October 2025Score 9/12
Overall ratingGood

Work with children

2.1 AssessingGood
2.2 PlanningOutstanding
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 four recommendations that we believe, if implemented, will have a positive impact on the quality of youth justice services in Lambeth. This will improve the lives of the children in contact with youth justice services and better protect the public.

Lambeth Youth Justice Service should:

  1. strengthen assessing to ensure consistent and high-quality activity to keep children and communities safe.

Lambeth Youth Justice Partnership Board should:

  1. review the structure of victim work within the service and make sure it is sufficiently resourced to drive improvements and deliver high-quality work to victims
  2. work with the Metropolitan Police to better understand the profile and diversity needs of victims and develop a detailed analysis of why some victims do not consent to sharing their contact details       
  3. strengthen and develop the victim offer, include the voice of victims to inform service delivery, and ensure that processes are fully delivered, embedded, and understood across the partnership.

Background (Back to top)

We conducted fieldwork in Lambeth YJS over a period of a week, beginning 06 October 2025. We inspected cases where the YJS had started work with children subject to bail or remand, court disposals or out-of-court resolutions between 07 April 2025 and 06 June 2025. We also conducted 18 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 07 October 2024 to 08 August 2025. We also conducted interviews with staff and managers responsible for the delivery of this work.

Lambeth is a borough in south London, England which forms part of inner London and has its civic centre in Brixton. There were 317,600 residents and it had the ninth largest population in London. Lambeth’s population is diverse and multicultural with 7.3 per cent being Asian and Asian British, 24 per cent Black British African or Caribbean, 8.1 per cent mixed heritage or multiple ethnic, 40 per cent White British, 15 per cent identified as ‘White other’, and 5.7 per cent as ‘all other’. There were 63,200 children living in Lambeth and 39 per cent lived in poverty after housing costs.

The youth justice service was located within Lambeth’s children, families and education services. The assistant director for youth justice and partnerships had responsibility for the YJS and reported to the director for integrated children’s commissioning and youth services. The YJS was overseen by the youth justice partnership board, which was co-chaired by the corporate director for children, families, and education and a detective superintendent from the Metropolitan Police.

The YJS had its own office in Brixton. Security guards met people as they entered the building. Children using the building had requested that everyone should be scanned using a security wand to enable them to feel safe when they attended. It was a suitable space for children and families and included a fully fitted medical room. An outdoor garden was being designed and developed by children.

The YJS had its own health team and delivering services to meet children’s health needs was a significant strength. The health provision was multidisciplinary and included access to a child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) practitioner, psychiatrist, speech, language, and communication therapists, general practitioner, nurse, and substance misuse worker. We saw the positive impact of the team in helping children and their families. This included examples of speech, language, and communication therapists sharing children’s communication profiles so that all agencies understood how best to engage them, as well as CAMHS offering case consultations and advice to partners to help in their work with children and families. We also saw the importance that health practitioners gave to using the priority pathways for children when they had finished contact with the YJS, so that they could continue to access mainstream health provision. 

We found through multi-agency case discussions, YJS practitioners and partner agencies knew the children they were working with well and spoke positively of them and their families. All practitioners wanted to give children as many opportunities as they possibly could to enable them to excel and maximise their engagement with the services delivered. There was appropriate focus on when children finished their involvement with the YJS to make sure that there were plans in place with all agencies for children and their families to continue to access the support they needed.

Inspectors met with children working at the Clink Cafe run by The Clink Charity. Children were completing various hospitality qualifications, ranging from front-of-house to becoming qualified chefs. Their education and training took place in a live cafe and restaurant that was open to the paying public.

We heard about the work of the youth engagement service who worked alongside partners to identify areas of antisocial behaviour. Using their outreach service, they were responsive to attending these places and engaging with the children who were there. Inspectors were also impressed with the ‘safe road, safe way home’ project. The project had arisen because children had identified unsafe travel routes on their journeys home after YJS or school sessions, and had spoken about their fears about exploitation, violence, and unsafe public transport. The project was co-designed by children with support from YJS staff, safer neighbourhood teams, and community mentors. Children co-created campaign visuals, slogans, and social media messaging, and provided education as well as being mentors to other children in the community.

At the time our inspection was announced, the YJS was working with 41 children subject to a community sentence, seven on remand, 17 on bail support, four subject to a youth caution, three on a youth conditional caution, and seven on a community resolution or other out-of-court resolution. There were three children sentenced and in custody. The profile of children included: 91 per cent from a Black and Global Majority background; 12 per cent girls; 19 per cent had an education, health, and care plan (EHCP) or special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support; and 25 per cent had substance misuse issues. Eight per cent were care-experienced children living within the area and 20 per cent were care-experienced children living outside the area. Eleven per cent had a child protection plan; and 17 per cent had a child in need plan.

Prior to the inspection, the YJS and its partners had specifically focused on the rate of first-time entrants to the criminal justice system to see, as a partnership, what they could to reduce the numbers of children becoming involved with the YJS. They set up a first-time entrants operational group, co-chaired by the YJS and the police. All children who came into contact with the police were reviewed as part of the prevention and diversion panel to see what early help support could be put in place by agencies. The safeguarding partnership had also completed a multiagency audit of children who had become first-time entrants. As a result, a partnership dashboard was developed to monitor children’s profiles and their life events to ensure that services were offered at the right time by the appropriate agency. The YJS had identified that its first-time entrants’ rates were beginning to see a downward trend, although it was still higher than the London region and England and Wales figures. There had been a slight increase in the YJS reoffending rate, which between July 2022 and June 2023 was 27.3 per cent compared to 32 per cent for England and Wales.

Domain two: Work with children (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at 19 cases where the YJS has worked with children subject to bail, remand, community sentences, resettlement or out-of-court resolutions.

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

Our rating2 for assessing is based on the following key questions:

Does assessing sufficiently analyse how to:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?100%
keep the child and the community safe?68%

In almost every inspected case, inspectors found that assessing activity for achieving positive change was thorough and analytical, with the appropriate level of detail. The YJS consistently accessed information from agencies such as education, the police, children’s social care, and health. Additionally, information was gathered about children’s speech, language, communication, religion, culture, and neurodiversity needs. The YJS utilised and assessed the information collected to inform its decisions, and this helped practitioners to understand where changes were needed to achieve positive change in the lives of children and their parents or carers.

Practitioners were proactive in involving children and their parents or carers in assessing activity. They asked suitably probing and insightful questions, being professionally curious to ensure their conclusions were supported by a richness of information. This co-production ensured that the voices of children and parents or carers were central in assessing activity.

In most inspected cases, analysis of children’s personal circumstances, experience of education, family background, and history of trauma was a strength. Additionally, practitioners had explored the impact of children’s early adverse childhood experiences, being victims of modern-day slavery, and experiences of prejudice and discrimination. This allowed them to gain a fuller understanding of any recent and past experiences that had affected the child’s behaviour and lived circumstances. Practitioners recognised children’s diversity needs and analysed them well to build a comprehensive image of how their lived experiences had affected them. The time and care which they took to assess these issues was impressive and provided a holistic understanding of the child.

Assessing activity explored children’s strengths (what they liked doing, what they hoped to achieve, and what made them feel positive and settled) and protective factors, providing a detailed analysis of how to achieve positive change. In almost all the inspected cases, analysis of children’s capacity for change, engagement with the service, and community integration was a strength. Practitioners focused on how children were spending their days, what leisure activities they were involved in, including their sporting pursuits, interest in creative arts, and their aspirations for education, training, and employment. Furthermore, in all the inspected cases, consideration of the child’s levels of motivation and attitudes was a strength.

The suitability of children’s living arrangements was a particular high priority for the YJS. During several presentations that inspectors attended, it was evident that there were meaningful relationships with the housing department in Lambeth to secure suitable accommodation for YJS children and families.

The YJS had largely established effective relationships with its partners, and inspectors found clear protocols and arrangements to keep children and the wider community safe. Positive arrangements had been put in place to help practitioners to use the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) and the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) where required. Daily risk intelligence briefings from the police also informed the quality of assessments.

However, while the overall quality of assessment work to achieve positive change was strong, a comprehensive analysis of how to keep the child and community safe was not evidenced fully in all the inspected cases. In the cases where work could be strengthened, inspectors found that the YJS did not always provide a thorough analysis or explanation of the factors that directly impacted on safety for the child. Assessments needed to ensure that all those who needed to be kept safe were recognised and identified. Risks to and from family members needed to be better understood. We found instances where risks to family members who had experienced violence within the home had not been consistently assessed, potentially leaving them vulnerable. The YJS had produced a range of structured processes and tools to support this aspect of assessment, including mapping and case formulation frameworks aligned to contextual safeguarding. However, the YJS did not always fully utilise these tools, which meant that risks posed to and from children were not consistently identified.

Practitioners acknowledged a range of factors that affected children’s safety, such as the impact of peer associations, weapons carrying, histories of exposure to traumatic incidents including considerable violence, and emotional wellbeing. The section on ‘understanding behaviour’ in the assessment tool was largely comprehensive. We saw instances where assessing activity considered both the nature and context of risks, including likelihood and imminence, and identified key vulnerabilities such as exploitation, victimisation, and adverse childhood experiences. However, we found some cases in which a change in a child’s circumstances and information about their activities in the community, were not fully considered, and there needed to be a greater focus on identifying children’s vulnerability to exploitation.

There also needed to be a strengthening in the quality of assessing activity that analysed whether work could be undertaken collaboratively with the child’s parents or carers that would help keep the child and the community safe.

We found that whilst management oversight met the needs of the case in the majority of cases inspected, a more proactive and robust approach was needed to gain consistency and improve the quality of work when assessing the safety of children and the community.

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

Our rating3 for planning is based on the following key questions:

Does planning focus sufficiently on how to:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?100%
keep the child and community safe?84%

Planning activity to achieve positive change for children was a notable strength. Inspectors found that practitioners had consistently explored children’s personal lived experiences as well as their social environment and wider family circumstances. This helped them to prepare plans that were meaningful to support positive change. However, not all children were actively engaged in co-producing planning activity. This was an area of practice that needed to be developed to give children the joint opportunity to identify the work and activities required to help them achieve positive change.

Practitioners ensured that planning activity took account of the pace at which children could positively engage with interventions. This approach established a platform from which work could be purposefully completed and lead to improvements in the lives of children. Planning activity also included appropriate timelines and clear sequencing for delivery so that children did not feel overwhelmed. Given that the YJS had access to a broad range of services and practitioners involved with children, it was critical that children felt able to build healthy relationships. This aspect of work was done well.

Practitioners were aware of the structural barriers children faced due to their vulnerabilities and complex needs. They prioritised planning activity to overcome these barriers and explored how children could build resilience. Planning contained opportunities for children to engage with new activities (such as summer activities programme), enhance employment skills (through the Clink Café project, for example), and make use of services in the community that they felt were of interest to them, such as sports activities, attending a gym, boxing and music programmes. Practitioners prioritised timely transition to universal wellbeing services, CAMHS, mentoring, and services to support longer term employment goals.

Practitioners were effective in considering how children’s diversity needs would be met. Inspectors found some impressive evidence of practitioners taking care to explore what might hinder their engagement with both children and their parents or carers. For example, they discussed needs relating to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), developmental language disorder, speech, language, communication, ethnicity, dual heritage, autism, religion, severe medical conditions, and neurodiversity. Communication profiles were completed for children and shared across agencies to help them plan how to engage them.

Planning of work with other agencies was a strength. Inspectors found examples where multi-agency professionals’ networks had worked effectively. Multi-agency case discussions showed that staff across the partnership knew YJS children well and worked together to produce comprehensive plans which took account of each other’s specialisms. Inspectors found examples of timely referrals to the speech and language therapist, CAMHS, and the substance misuse service. There were also several examples of joint planning that had been informed appropriately by children’s education, health, and care plans. Additionally, planning had considered what suitable services children could access once their time with the YJS ended. This approach to exit planning was effective and ensured that children were able to access services to build on the progress they had made. For children in custodial establishments, we found positive communication with their custodial key workers and evidence of collaborative planning. There were regular remand and children’s social care statutory meetings, and agencies considered children’s progress in custody and explored community opportunities for their release.  

Practitioners across the partnership had invested time to make sure they understood children’s capacity to engage and their motivation to complete potential interventions successfully. They were also sensitive in considering children’s attitudes across a range of actual and potential behaviours, and their views on the impact of their behaviour. We saw some examples of victim awareness work reflected in children’s own experiences of victimisation and handled sensitively, helping to support their motivation to change.

Inspectors found some variability in the quality of work to keep children and the community safe. Planning activity did not always identify accurately enough how to achieve safety and stability for the child. In some instances, planning activity was not reviewed and updated when children’s circumstances changed, including bail supervision. Additionally, planning activity had not consistently included a comprehensive review of the relevance of all the information gathered. Conversely, we saw examples of effective planning to keep children and others safe. These included referrals to multi-agency risk management planning meetings, CAMHS, MAPPA, and the production of safety plans. We also found examples where multi-agency responsibility was supported by strategic professionals’ meetings. Partners had also accessed the multi-agency violence and exploitation forum and referred children to the national referral mechanism: a framework for identifying, referring, and supporting potential victims of modern slavery when they believed children were becoming vulnerable to exploitation.

Planning activity did not always address specific concerns and risks related to actual and potential victims. For example, when children moved out of the area there were limited checks on non-contact conditions, and intelligence checks were not consistently comprehensive. It was, therefore, unclear how the needs of victims were addressed in the planning process as circumstances changed. Greater emphasis was needed to ensure that planning consistently considered the specific needs of victims and potential victims. There were also some missed opportunities to consider victims’ views, restorative justice approaches, and to keep actual and potential victims safe. 

Planning work could also be strengthened by exploring how it would be undertaken with children’s parents or carers to keep children safe. This could help planning activity to be more responsive when circumstances changed and allow parents or carers to be proactive in supporting their children. However, overall, the quality of work was consistently impressive.

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

Our rating4 for delivery is based on the following key questions:

Does the delivery of well-focused, personalised, and co-ordinated services:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?100%
keep the child and the community safe?84%

The quality of work to achieve positive change and keep children and communities safe was impressive. Practitioners were skilled at establishing and maintaining positive working relationships with children. A flexible and personalised approach encouraged children to participate and engage safely. We saw examples of practitioners recognising the importance of children being involved in activities alongside structured intervention sessions, and this helped children to engage overall. It was clear that children and their parents or carers understood what practitioners expected of them and knew what to expect of practitioners. Additionally, practitioners swiftly identified structural factors that could have blocked effective participation. This approach enabled them to resolve any emerging needs early and amend work that needed to be completed to achieve positive change. Regular communication with children and parents or carers supported their investment in the delivery of work to attain progress. Interventions were delivered appropriately in a range of locations, and children had contributed to discussions on the places and spaces where they felt safe.

Practitioners understood the context in which children were living. This was considered well in the delivery of services. This included the quality of relationships children had with their immediate and extended families, and the obstacles they were facing in their social environment. Practitioners recognised what children described as the strengths in their lives and what enabled them to thrive, such as educational achievement and positive relationships with others. They then built on this knowledge effectively when delivering services to achieve progress. We saw instances of practitioners engaging children on courses that would support them long-term and build employment-related skills, including completing the construction skills certification scheme and utilising the Clink Cafe programme. Their focus on addressing structural barriers was noteworthy and inspectors found instances of effective liaison with specialist providers, for example health practitioners, to ensure access to services that would lead to positive change.

Inspectors were encouraged by the dynamic way in which practitioners sought a range of resources to support change. These included creative opportunities such as visits to the House of Commons (youth conference), art projects, Go Ape adventure facility, and Easter and summer sports programmes and projects. Our interviews with children and parents or carers reinforced the view that access to these programmes had supported children to achieve positive change.

When delivering interventions, practitioners applied the knowledge they had gained about the diverse needs of children. Inspectors found overwhelmingly positive examples of how effectively the diversity needs of children were understood. Examples included information from the YJS-linked general practitioner that was used to better understand children’s medical needs, exploration of children’s dual heritage, assessments from the speech, language, and communication practitioner showing how best to achieve positive engagement, and understanding of neurodivergence, post-traumatic stress disorder, culture, and religion. Practitioners also utilised communication profiles appropriately to support this work.

The work completed by practitioners to achieve positive change was aligned with other agencies’ delivery plans and coordinated well. There was evidence of an established partnership (police, health, social care, education, probation) coupled with a respect of how joint working and effective communication were essential in supporting children and their parents or carers. Inspectors found positive evidence of direct safety planning work and collaboration with early help services. For children in custody, collaborative work across agencies meant that they were fully supported during their transition to the probation service and their resettlement needs were met.

The work to achieve safety for the child and the community was largely a strength, and services were consistently delivered to achieve safety and stability for children as cornerstones for change. The range of interventions delivered included: improving and increasing education offers (access to the SPEAR programme, helping young people aged 16-24 get into education or employment);5 one-to-one mentoring to support emotional wellbeing; meetings with the speech, language, and communication therapist and substance misuse and CAMHS practitioners; the completion of sexual health work; examination of offending behaviour; engagement in positive leisure activities (Brixton Topcats basketball); motivational work to maximise engagement; understanding the impact of lifestyles and choices; managing personal safety; and weapons awareness. We saw examples of the family support officer working alongside practitioners delivering interventions to families, and in most of the inspected cases, services were delivered collaboratively with children’s parents or carers to build safety and protection for children and the wider community.

One aspect of delivery which needed a closer focus was attention to issues of vulnerability, victimisation, and exploitation that children faced. We found some instances where these issues had not been fully considered, and some minimisation of the signs that a child might be experiencing potential exploitation. Greater investigative activity was required to be assured that children were safe, and this was particularly relevant when they moved out of the area. Similarly, when children moved out of Lambeth it was not always clear what services were being delivered to keep them and other people safe – more tracking and activity of these areas was needed.

To further strengthen these areas, delivery was also needed to ensure that actual and potential victims were protected. The safety of victims needed to be prioritised. We saw a few instances of victim work that was generic and not relevant to the child, and limited discussions about the potential impact of the child’s behaviour on the wider community.

Practitioners were mostly responsive to change and made sure that revised arrangements were suitably implemented. We saw examples of interventions being adapted in recognition of children’s changing circumstances, including supporting them when their living arrangements altered and when issues emerged in their relationship with family members. Practitioners’ response to addressing children’s non-engagement was measured and timely.

We saw prompt and effective information sharing between partners, including the YJS, police, children’s social care, education, substance misuse, 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 the child’s 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.

Work with victims (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at 12 victim cases where the YJS had offered a service to victims who had 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 rating6 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 was a priority in the youth justice service strategic plan for 2024-2026.
  • There was a lead member for victims on the youth justice partnership board and work with victims was strategically linked to several forums.
  • The board received a range of performance reports, spotlight sessions, and presentations on victim work. The board had reviewed and held regular discussions about improving the quality of services provided to victims.
  • Board members were sighted on the range of restorative justice options available to victims, and there was a stated aim to improve and develop further direct mediation work.
  • The YJS was working in partnership with Catch 22’s commissioned young people’s victim support service to help improve its offer to young victims.
  • The service had produced a comprehensive victims and restorative justice strategy, with accompanying guidance which was supported by an understanding of the most recent code of practice for victims.
  • A dedicated restorative justice group had been established to promote collective responsibility for victim and restorative justice work and had informed the YJS training and development plan.
  • There were clear procedures for working with the statutory victim liaison officer from the probation service.
  • The restorative justice officer was embedded within the YJS team. They attended prevention and diversion panels, worked closely with YJS practitioners, and attended relevant meetings to stay updated about the progress made by children, which they could feed back to victims.
  • Staff directly and indirectly involved in victim work were enthusiastic and committed to the work they did. They were keen to provide high-quality services to victims to ensure they were listened to, and their needs were met. They were dedicated to their roles and wanted to develop and improve their work with victims.  
  • Supervision was delivered using a strengths-based approach, and pastoral needs were dealt with in a responsive and sensitive manner. Supervision was documented and there was space to reflect on practice. Access to clinical supervision and counselling was available.
  • The victim assessment form comprehensively covered the safety needs of victims. This included the impact of the offence, victim concerns (including scales of safety), and level of safety concerns.
  • A range and breadth of activities to support victims was in place. These included indirect and direct restorative justice interventions, signposting to community-based services, and advice.
  • The YJS provided a varied range of reparation activities, giving victims a wide choice when considering options for indirect reparation.
  • Inspectors found mature and considered approaches to addressing the diverse needs and wishes of victims.
  • Evidence from management board meetings and other documents showed there had been ongoing monitoring, evaluating, and reviewing of services to victims.
  • Data showed that the number of victims contacted by the YJS, and victim participation had increased, and this information was regularly analysed and considered.

Areas for improvement:

  • There was variability in the quality of diversity information received by the YJS, and additional demographic details from the police were required to ensure services to victims were personalised.
  • Data reports and performance tracking required further attention and refinement to assist with the improvement of effective delivery of interventions for victims.
  • There needed to be greater timeliness in the YJS initial victim contact and an increase in the uptake of the YJS offer to victims.
  • The overall quality of victim work needed to improve.
  • Although leaders were aware that the victim and restorative justice offer was not meeting expected standards and had made improvements, during the period of the cases we inspected management oversight was not effective, and leaders had not taken full account of the negative impact of staffing issues on the quality of victim work.
  • There had been no regular audits of work with victims using a consistent, victim-specific, quality assurance audit tool.
  • The restorative justice officer needed further strategic and operational support to make sure that victims had a high profile in the service, and that all staff across the organisation consistently considered their needs and wishes.
  • The YJS had acknowledged that there needed to be higher priority to gathering victim feedback, engaging victims in the process, and using their feedback to develop and inform victim services.

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

Lambeth YJS had a strong commitment to hearing from children and families. The local authority promoted ‘child-friendly Lambeth’. One of its priorities was to ensure children were kept safe and secure, and this underpinned its work with children and families. The YJS promoted a relational model, and this was a strength in the cases we inspected. We found examples of practitioners building strong working relationships and engaging children by being flexible in their approach to appointments and helping to solve practical barriers, such as travel and transport issues, to ensure that children felt safe in the places and spaces where they were seen.

In our 2019 inspection of this YJS, HM Inspectorate of Probation recommended that it should capture the views of children and parents or carers so that they could influence future service delivery, and it was positive to see the progress made in this area. The YJS received feedback from children and parents or carers using the end-of-intervention surveys which were co-designed with children. Additional parent or carers feedback was also gathered through the family support service, which offered one-to-one sessions and shared feedback with YJS practitioners to help them shape the support needed. The YJS had developed an accessible online form with a QR code which could be completed anonymously, and it hoped this would improve the feedback response rate.

The YJS had an active children’s participation forum, ‘Impact’, where it heard directly from children about policies and services. This included the co-production of a children’s annual youth justice plan, as well as children receiving training to enable them to be part of staff recruitment processes. Feedback from children and parents or carers was collated; children helped to analyse the information and were involved in presenting the findings at the youth justice partnership board. The feedback the service gathered from children and families highlighted the quality of relationships with practitioners and the positive impact they had on engagement. The service had also taken children to the House of Commons where they were involved in a youth conference and took part in roundtable discussions about breaking cycles of violence and the impact of school exclusion.

The YJS contacted, on our behalf, children who were working with the YJS at the time of the inspection, to gain their consent and 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). We also met with children and heard about the positive impact that working at The Clink Cafe had on them and their future aspirations.

The feedback to inspectors from children and parents or carers was overwhelmingly positive; all felt respected and valued by YJS staff and other people working with them. When asked how well the YJS had helped them, they all responded ‘quite’ or ‘very’ well. In response to the question of how safe they felt when working with the YJS, all said ‘very safe’. One child talking about what had worked well for them said7:

“The service was perfect, I’ve never worked with them before, but it was great. They’ve helped me a lot. They tried to do the type of things I was interested in doing. They gave me so many different opportunities. They helped me feel safer.”

When asked about what it was like working with the YJS, one parent commented:

“My child is so impressed they want to become a YJS worker. Their worker has been such a positive role model”.

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

“When I consider some of the racism experiences I’ve faced, this has not been my experience here, and when we talk about racism, workers can relate, and I’ve appreciated the diversity within the YJS team.”

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (Back to top)

Lambeth YJS had a strategic and operational commitment to understanding and meeting the diverse needs of children, families, victims, and staff. Across the partnership, managers and practitioners understood, acknowledged, and tried to address the structural inequalities for all YJS children. This included Black, Asian and minority ethnic children and the racism that they experienced in their lives. In recognition of this, the YJS promoted positive images, literature, and messages within its main office.

The youth justice plan 2024-2026 and its addendum for 2025/2026 acknowledged that there was a high level of Black and Global Majority over-representation within the YJS cohort, with racial disproportionality most evident in custodial sentences. At the time of the inspection, 93 per cent of the children known to the YJS, were from Black and Global Majority communities, with 41 per cent identifying as Black or Black British Caribbean, and 27 per cent as Black or Black British African.

In response, the YJS had an equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) working group, led by staff who promoted the EDI statement, monitored the EDI action plan, reviewed emerging issues, and developed areas of practice. The service had strategies to ensure that it did not place children at an additional disadvantage. These included: developing stop-and-search initiatives with police and partners; deploying workers into police custody suites; recruiting a diverse workforce; monitoring data through the youth justice partnership board; staff training on how an organisation becomes culturally competent; and having diversity as an agenda item at all service meetings. There was also a stop-and-search community monitoring group that was attended by YJS staff as well as local residents who were also YJS community panel members.

In an analysis of victims’ ethnicity data that it had collected, the YJS had found that the majority of victims who had consented to sharing their contact details with the YJS described their ethnicity as White. This data was disproportionately high compared with published data on victims of crime and suggested an under-representation of Black and Global Majority victims.​ The YJS will continue to monitor this through the EDI action plan so the service can ensure it promotes an inclusive offer for all victims. 

Care-experienced children were also overrepresented within the YJS cohort. To address this, the YJS and children’s social care had focused on increasing the number of joint supervisions with YJS practitioners and social workers across the shared caseload​, and there was an audit programme across both departments. The YJS also reported to the corporate parenting board, which monitored the data on care-experienced children.

At the time of the inspection announcement, 12 per cent of children known to the YJS were girls. The YJS was monitoring this data and was involved with the Lambeth violence against women and girls’ group to ensure that appropriate services were available. It had also recognised the need to prioritise prevention of violence and abuse, and the importance of providing early intervention services to girls and their families.

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 only half of the cases inspected, and so initial contact with victims could not always 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 also saw an excellent example where a practitioner had advocated for a child at court and explained their specific neurodiversity needs.

In the inspection of work with children, we found that assessing considered the child’s diversity needs sufficiently in nearly all cases. Practitioners created safe spaces to facilitate conversations with children to understand their lived experiences and, by using a relational model with children, they were able to be responsive and adapt the delivery of services to meet individual needs. There were examples of how practitioners built a strong rapport with children and adapted interventions to the child’s context, strengths, and risks, including their experience of adultification and understanding their neurodiversity needs. Other examples showed how children’s reparation activities reflected their creativity and interests, including attending projects and involving children in various Black History Month events.

Data annexe (Back to top)

Lambeth Youth Data Annexe
(XLSX, 128 KB)

Press release (Back to top)

“Encouraging practice” found at Lambeth Youth Justice Service, rated ‘Good’ following inspection

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 Avtar Singh and 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.

Footnotes:

  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. 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. ↩︎
  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. https://resurgo.org.uk/spear-programme/the-spear-programme/ ↩︎
  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. ↩︎
  7. Quotes are directly from children, parents and carers. ↩︎