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

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 Gloucestershire Youth Justice Service (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, Gloucestershire YJS was rated as ‘Requires improvement’.

There was a clear approach to working with children and victims in Gloucestershire, grounded in collaboration and co-production. Relational approaches were key and were successful in facilitating positive change with children. However, there was an inconsistent approach in work to achieve safety for the child and the community. Consideration of broader harm reduction strategies were sometimes absent.

Assessing was used well to understand the aspects of children’s lives which had contributed to their behaviour. The structural barriers that children faced were considered in assessing, and the impact of these on achieving positive change was understood. We found impressive work which recognised and supported children with health needs. However, there was an inconsistent approach to identifying previous harm related behaviours, which resulted in underdeveloped analysis of what was needed to keep children and communities safe.

Planning was undertaken with other services and there were several multi-agency forums and processes in place. However, there needed to be a greater focus across these forums on co-ordination and proactive planning, particularly in relation to keeping children and the community safe, to ensure the multi-agency approach was effective. We found actions were not consistently identified, followed through or responsive when children’s circumstances changed.

Services were delivered in safe, accessible spaces and there was a strong focus on meaningful and tailored prosocial activity. However, delivery needed to align better with the timescales in which children were involved with the service, with a clearer focus on exit planning and onward referrals, to ensure children did not finish interventions with unmet needs. In addition, the service needed to respond more proactively when there was new information about children’s circumstances or changes in safety concerns.

We saw a responsive and individualised approach in the delivery of victim work and there was a strong offer of restorative justice. However, the strategic approach was still developing and there needed to be greater scrutiny of data and information at the management board and more focus on the quality assurance of work, particularly work which supported victim safety. Gloucestershire police also needed to ensure they fully understood the YJS victim offer and provided greater detail in the victim information they provided to the YJS.

Martin Jones CBE

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

Ratings (Back to top)

Fieldwork started December 2025Score 4/12
Overall ratingRequires improvement

Work with children

2.1 AssessingRequires improvement
2.2 PlanningRequires improvement
2.3 Implementation and deliveryRequires improvement

Work with victims

V1 Work with victimsRequires improvement

Recommendations (Back to top)

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

Gloucestershire Youth Justice Service should:

  1. review quality assurance arrangements to ensure that all harm-related behaviours to the child and to the community are consistently identified, analysed and evidenced across assessing, planning and delivery
  2. ensure relevant non-convicted behaviours are taken into consideration and appropriately analysed to inform assessing activity to keep the child and community safe
  3. ensure interventions are appropriately sequenced to reduce harm to the community or the child and develop robust multi-agency exit strategies if there are unmet needs at the end of children’s interventions
  4. ensure there is consistently high-quality consideration of victim safety in all work delivered by the service.

Gloucestershire Youth Justice Service, Gloucestershire Constabulary and Restorative Gloucestershire should:

  • develop a comprehensive service level agreement that enables effective monitoring and evaluation of practice, roles and responsibilities, and performance monitoring and data collection
  • review and evaluate victim engagement rates to understand the reasons why victims do not engage with the YJS after giving consent.

The Youth Justice Management Board should:

  • analyse and understand the reasons why the YJS works with high numbers of older children and ensure the partnership has a clear understanding of transitional safeguarding arrangements when children turn 18-years-old
  • continue to work together to reduce the disproportionate numbers of Black and global majority children entering the youth justice system
  • gain a greater understanding of victim need and characteristics to improve understanding of whether resourcing arrangements are sufficient to deliver high-quality, personalised offers of support.

Background (Back to top)

We conducted fieldwork in Gloucestershire YJS over a period of a week, beginning 08 December 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 09 June and 08 August 2025. We also conducted 17 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 09 June and 08 August 2025. We also conducted interviews with staff and managers responsible for the delivery of this work.

Gloucestershire YJS provides interventions for children, families, and victims living in the county of Gloucestershire, the tenth largest of the 153 upper tier authorities in England and Wales. The county is split into six districts: Tewkesbury, Cotswold and the Forest of Dean being predominantly rural and Gloucester, Cheltenham and Stroud being largely urban. Gloucestershire has a lower proportion of 0–19-year-olds and a higher proportion of people aged 65+ when compared to the rest of England and is less ethnically diverse (12 per cent) than the regional (14 per cent) and national (32 per cent) averages. Health outcomes for children in the county are positive. Disparities persist along lines of deprivation and ethnicity, although deprivation overall is low and child poverty rates are below England averages.

Many of the children who are involved with the YJS are older adolescents and the most recent Youth Justice Board (YJB) annual data2 indicates that Gloucestershire’s proportion of children aged 15-17 is notably higher than regional and national averages. Children from Black and global majority communities are also disproportionately represented within the YJS’ caseload; 26 per cent of the YJS cohort between April 2024 and March 2025 were from this background. At the point of inspection this racial disproportionality was equally prominent for children on both pre and post-court interventions.

Until October 2024, the YJS was integrated within the Targeted Youth Support Team, a service that had been commissioned by Gloucestershire County Council and delivered by Prospects, part of the Shaw Trust charity. The service transitioned back into the council. Many staff transferred and the last 12 months has seen a period of harmonisation, where the workforce has been integrated and aligned within the council. There has been support for the YJS and management board during this period from North Tyneside Council, as part of sector-led improvement activity funded by the Department for Education (DfE), and at management board meetings from the YJB.

The YJS now sits within the Children’s Safeguarding and Care Directorate. The responsible assistant director has a portfolio that includes East Gloucestershire (Stroud and Cotswolds), The Turnaround for Children Service (TACS), Front Door (including EDT, Missing and Exploitation) and the Youth Support Service, which includes the Youth Justice Service. The YJS itself is overseen by a Head of Youth Justice and Communities, who also has responsibility for the Exploitation and Complex Engagement Team, who work with vulnerable adolescents at risk of exploitation. This service is aligned to the YJS.

YJS operational activity is led by two team managers who manage staff including assistant team managers, case responsible officers (CROs) and senior CROs working directly with children and delivering interventions. There is a youth justice education lead, prevention CRO, and seconded police and probation officers. Programme officers lead reparation activity and other positive activities, along with a dedicated activities team. Several health staff are seconded to or employed by the service, including a physical health nurse, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) clinical staff, forensic psychologist, speech and language therapists (SALTs) and practitioners focussing on sexual health and substance misuse. All health staff are managed by a health team manager. Victim work is supported by an organisation called ‘Restorative Gloucestershire’, overseen and funded by the police. At the time of our inspection there was a vacancy for a victim worker within the YJS, though a recruitment process was underway.

Gloucestershire have delivered a ‘Children First Pathway’ (not to be confused with the ‘child first’ approach to youth justice) since 2018. This is a targeted approach to diversion activity which seeks to use robust out-of-court resolutions as a means of keeping children out of the youth justice system. This approach has affected first time entrant rates (FTEs) positively and for the period between January and December 2024, the rate stood at around half the comparable regional and national rates.

The YJS undertakes its own local analysis of re-offending and reports that their Children First Pathway has had an impact on re-offending rates, which are lower for children who have been through this route. The overall picture with re-offending is positive and, despite some fluctuations, YJB data indicate that the overall percentage rate of reoffending has been on a downward trajectory. Re-offences per offender are currently in line with the national average. Custody rates are low, though the small numbers of children in custody mean that even just one or two children can make rates fluctuate significantly.

The service was part of the previous YJB south-west region Enhanced Case Management Consortium.3 Although funding for this consortium has stopped, the service is continuing to employ a forensic psychologist to support a formulation-based approach to interventions and to facilitate clinical supervision with staff. We also heard about the strategic priority to enhance and improve education, training and employment outcomes for YJS children, through plans to employ a strategic youth justice education lead in the local authority and the re-launch of the management board education subgroup.

During our fieldwork context visit and showcase slots, the YJS demonstrated its approach to reparation activity and addressing speech, language, and communication need, and we saw evidence of the showcased work reflected in some of the children’s files that we inspected. We also spoke to a victim who articulated their experience of the restorative approach taken by the YJS. We met ‘The Music Works’, a third sector partner supporting YJS children and providing pro-social opportunities, with a wide-ranging offer of engagement through arts and mentoring opportunities.

Domain two: Work with children (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at 21 children the YJS had worked with, 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.Requires improvement

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

Does assessing sufficiently analyse how to:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?90%
keep the child and the community safe?62%

The strategic approach of the YJS had a clear focus on promoting inclusion, belonging, embedding the voice of the child, and prioritising co-production practice across the YJS. We saw this approach being operationalised effectively within assessing activity to achieve positive change.

Collaboration with children was central to assessing activity. Practitioners focussed on building strong and trusting relationships with children which facilitated the holding of sensitive conversations and enabled the exploration of children’s needs. We saw the voice of the child demonstrated clearly in written assessments, and the joint identification and assessment of factors which could make a positive difference. Where children had articulated issues with trust, we found time had been given to exploring with them who might be best placed to support their emotional wellbeing and work with them to facilitate positive identity shift5

Collaboration with partner agencies or those who might be involved in the future was also apparent. Appropriate information was accessed from a range of sources such as Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) to help inform assessing activity. This enabled practitioners to consider what support was already in place and the impact it had. Social workers were consulted and children’s services records reviewed, to support practitioners in developing a holistic understanding of the circumstances of the child.

This collegiate approach to understanding children’s circumstances was particularly prominent in the analysis of children’s health needs. The partnership had identified the importance of better understanding the health and education needs for this cohort of children. Consequently, a Health and Education Intervention Panel, comprising a range of health and education professionals, had been established. We saw the panel used effectively to produce detailed health and education assessments containing relevant information. This information was then used to inform assessing, planning, referral and signposting activity. The detail in the health assessments was impressive.

Assessing to achieve safety for the community and the child was not so consistent and was an area of practice that needed to be developed.

The YJS did not consistently identify and analyse what was needed to achieve safety for others, or consider sufficiently all appropriate risks. We found an inconsistent approach to analysing and understanding previous behaviours, particularly where there were instances of repeated contact with the police, but where decisions were made not to progress investigations, resulting in ‘no further action’ (NFA) outcomes. In some instances, the NFAs may have been connected to incidents where the child was genuinely not involved in wrongdoing, and it was appropriate for these to be discounted. However, in other instances, such as where victims may not have wished for matters to be taken further or decisions not to proceed were made on the basis that support and service involvement for the child was already in place, there were some serious allegations and potential patterns of behaviour that needed additional consideration and analysis. We saw instances of repeated concerns or previous serious allegations of violence, sexually harmful behaviour, and fire setting, where factors had not been considered or sufficiently analysed. This meant historical and unaddressed patterns of behaviour were not consistently considered when determining potential harm and were overlooked when assessing what was required to achieve safety.

We also found that consideration of victims and what was required to keep them safe needed improvement. This was particularly prevalent when previous patterns of behaviour were not sufficiently understood or explored. When victims were known to children or had ongoing contact with them, there needed to be greater consideration and analysis of the potential for ongoing concerns. In addition, given that many victims the service had worked with over the last 12 months were also children, the service needs to monitor the operationalisation of its ambitions to embed the voice of these children into practice and ensure their voices are consistently considered or apparent in assessing activity.

We found some evidence that practitioners were confident when using the YJB Prevention and Diversion Tool (PDAT) to review and re-analyse their assessments. However, re-evaluation and responsivity to change was not undertaken consistently. Where changing circumstances may have increased safety concerns, such as the child contacting a victim again or where they experienced new incidents of vulnerability or potential risk to themselves, these were not consistently followed up or considered. Similarly, there needed to be greater responsivity to positive change, such as during sustained periods of desistance and stability.

Management oversight plays a crucial role in supporting practitioners to undertake consistently high-quality assessing activity, that is responsive and effective. Whilst there is a clear footprint of management oversight in recording, this is not consistently effective, particularly at points when review, re-evaluation and reassessing were required. There needs to be a greater focus on ensuring work is consistently proactive and responsive to change.

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

Our rating for planning is based on 6the following key questions:

Does planning focus sufficiently on how to:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?81%
keep the child and community safe?62%

Planning to achieve positive change was a consistent strength. Planned goals and objectives reflected a ‘child first’ approach. Practitioners actively considered and planned for environments where positive identity shift could be facilitated. We found positive role modelling and relationship-based practice was key to planning.

There is a clear recognition of the impact that structural barriers can have on the child’s development, particularly access to appropriate education, training and employment (ETE) opportunities. We saw a strong footprint of the YJS ETE worker who contributes a depth of understanding of children’s needs and advocates on their behalf.

We saw a focus on planning to align work with other services, and referral to mainstream services. The service has access to a forensic psychologist who is used to co-ordinate the partnership understanding of the factors relevant to planning. They supported planning by formulating hypotheses of how best to work with a child. There had been a slight hiatus in provision earlier in the year, due to contract changes, but once resolved, it was clear practitioners were proactively considering the added value the forensic psychologist consultation or formulation could bring to enhance partnership planning.

Equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) were well considered in planning activity. Appropriate discussions on their heritage, culture and identity take place with children from Black and global majority backgrounds . Practitioners took time to understand children’s needs and backgrounds. Skilled and enthusiastic SALTs provided additional support, identifying how best to engage children with communication difficulties. This work supported youth justice practitioners and schools. Communication passports are developed to aid the partnership understanding of children’s needs. Practitioners also undertook activities to ensure children understood their plans, getting children to articulate or repeat actions and incorporating activity-based objectives into planning, which reflected children’s responsiveness and supported their likelihood of engagement.

Planning to achieve safety for both the child and community was less consistent and needed further attention. The YJS recognised the importance of effective safety planning, but the measures put in place to achieve this were not consistently effective. For example, those children classified as high risk, were discussed at regular multi-agency safety planning meetings, held by the YJS. These meetings were well attended by relevant services and partners, but appropriate actions were not consistently agreed or completed. Therefore, whilst the forum facilitated the sharing of information across services, it did little to promote and enhance effective action planning.

In some instances, planning to achieve safety for the child and for the community had been impacted by shortcomings in assessing and we found crucial considerations for safety were not included in some planning activity. What was required to keep other people safe was not consistently recognised and in some instances was overlooked. We saw instances when children had harmed others, where there was a limited consideration of the external controls needed to promote safety, such as regular liaison with the police or monitoring of relationships. Internal controls were not always considered, and planning did not consistently focus on all elements of children’s behaviour to ensure that children and victims could be effectively supported. Potential work to address specific harm-related attitudes was sometimes overlooked and there was a lack of professional curiosity at times. Planning did not always examine the behaviours needing to be addressed or consistently explore how to address the risks associated with repeating patterns of behaviour.

Many of the interventions we inspected were of short duration and were out-of-court resolutions or short community orders. Attention to the available timescales, coordination with other agencies’ planning, and sequencing was key, but this was not done consistently well. Greater emphasis needed to be given to clarifying role responsibilities when working with other services to promote safety. We saw instances where, although aware of parallel planning with agencies such as social care or CAMHS, proposed activity was not consistently aligned or coordinated. Planning lacked specificity in sequencing which left gaps in understanding how future harm reduction activity could be achieved.

Consideration of the needs and wishes of victims was not always evident. This was compounded by logistical factors as practitioners were not consistently aware of work being undertaken with victims; not all had access to or routinely looked at information in the case management system’s victim module where much victim information, including their risk assessment, was stored. In addition to this, crucial risk and safety information was not consistently utilised. We saw examples where consideration of how family members could be kept safe when there had been intra-familial harm was overlooked and planning where risks to victims had been minimised. We found instances where the focus on promoting identity shift within the child who had harmed was not effectively balanced with ensuring the needs of everyone affected by their behaviour were fully understood and planned for.

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

Our rating7 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?86%
keep the child and the community safe?57%

The YJS took a trauma-informed8 approach to delivery to achieve positive change and took time to understand the children they were working with. This meant that there was a focus on developing and maintaining positive working relationships with children which encouraged their active participation and engagement. Work was undertaken in safe and accessible settings. The Vibe Youth Centre was a vibrant, welcoming building at the heart of the community and practitioners showed persistence and compassion in their work. We saw evidence that children were having sensitive discussions with staff because they saw them as trusted adults. However, we found that some partners were not always fluent in their language and understanding of trauma informed practice. This was an area where the management board could improve efficacy by continuing to support and develop the use of this approach.

The relational approach to achieving positive change was supported by a focus on children’s strengths during delivery. Children were encouraged to engage in constructive activities. Meaningful reparation activity was facilitated and there were effective links with an activities team, which provided a wide suite of prosocial activities with the potential to continue once a child’s intervention with the YJS had finished. Inspectors were particularly impressed by the YJS partnership with The Music Works, a third sector organisation providing mentoring and support via music-based programmes. The YJS seconded staff to the organisation, which had an extensive understanding of child first and engagement approaches, and used this expertise well in developing effective interventions.

We saw sufficient alignment and coordination with the delivery of other services to achieve positive change, including exit planning and referral to universal services in a reasonable majority of cases. It is of note, however, that the YJS has a notably higher proportion of children aged 15-17 than many regional and national services and so potentially higher proportions of children needing to transition to adult support services. Transitions to probation were well supported. However, we saw some gaps in the partnership’s understanding of the importance of transition planning and pathways of support for young adults were not always expeditious. A clearer focus on this period of transition would enhance exit planning further.

Delivery of support for the safety of the child and the community was not as consistent as support for positive change. Whilst the relational approach of the YJS created trust and a sense of security for children, which can positively promote safety, activities alongside this which supported safety also needed to be prioritised. Relationships take time to develop and the short duration of many interventions in Gloucestershire had an impact on relationship building and high-quality delivery. We saw some examples of appropriate sequencing of work but this was not consistent and some children finished interventions with unmet needs connected to harm, safety and vulnerability. Whilst we do not expect YJS to meet or address all of the children’s needs, particularly when children are involved in interventions of short duration, they needed to ensure work that promoted the safety of the child and the safety of others was prioritised across the partnership and that forward planning, exit strategies and onward referrals were in place to support children once intervention ceased.

There was also the recognition that on some occasions the priority given to focussing on achieving positive change had overlooked some of the critical elements required to keep the child and victims safe. Sufficient attention was not consistently given to the protection of actual and potential victims in the delivery of services. Shortcomings in assessing and planning to achieve safety meant that we saw some examples where risks had not been fully explored and protective support had not been put in place. Sometimes potential risks had been identified but due to the minimisation of potential harm, appropriate measures had not been considered. Where inspectors saw a lack of consideration for a victim, there were instances of overemphasis on maintaining a positive relationship with the child. This meant that in some cases not enough was being done to ensure that momentum was maintained, delivery sequenced, and enforcement action appropriately undertaken. In addition, issues of vulnerability, victimisation and exploitation were delivered with too few children. We saw instances where appropriate safety planning had taken place, but the required actions from multi-agency forums were not put in place. We also found examples where work delivered across the partnership needed to be better aligned or co-ordinated, and greater clarity was needed on what was being delivered by others working with the child.

A proactive and responsive approach to delivery to achieve safety was not consistently evident and there needed to be more emphasis on dynamic and fluid responses when children’s circumstances changed. This could include liaising with the probation service when a child’s parent was known and circumstances changed, or monitoring and reviewing presentations in meetings, or offering additional support when there were concerns about children’s mental health or wellbeing. There also needed to be a more proactive approach to supporting children’s disengagement. We also found instances of unrealistic expectations about what could be achieved during the intervention and this practice felt at odds with a relational, trauma-informed approach.

Work with victims (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at 12 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 rating9 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

  • Overall, the quality of work undertaken with victims by practitioners was sufficient. We saw a responsive and individualised approach in a reasonable majority of victim cases inspected.
  • Victims were discussed at the management board. Performance information was shared quarterly and there were links to strategic forums such as the Police and Crime Commissioner’s Victim & Witness subgroup and victim code of practice scrutiny panel.
  • Restorative practice was a strength and was well supported by Restorative Gloucestershire which provided expertise in implementing restorative processes via an accredited practitioner. We heard positive feedback from a victim about the support they had received.
  • Police used an ‘opt-out’ model to gain consent from victims. This approach enabled support from other services to be offered before the YJS becomes involved. We saw evidence of other services working with some victims before the YJS contacted them.
  • Although the service had been holding a victim worker vacancy since June 2025, there had been no disruption to work. Support from Restorative Gloucestershire had been strong and additional responsibilities for YJS staff had been manageable.
  • The YJS victim offer demonstrated clear eligibility for all victims of children who offend, including direct and indirect victims and victims out of area.
  • A range of services were available for victims. This included restorative interventions, support from the third sector, support from statutory services, such as children’s services, and liaison with organisations such as CAMHS.
  • Restorative Gloucestershire staff had access to a strong offer of support from both their organisation and the YJS. This included support with continuous professional development to maintain accreditation and training opportunities for complex and sensitive work.
  • Plans to involve a victim in recruitment activity were innovative and demonstrated a willingness to include their voice in operational activity.

Areas for improvement

  • A forensic approach to the scrutiny of victim work had yet to be embedded at the management board. Positively, it was acknowledged that the strategic understanding of victim work arrangements needed strengthening.
  • Although the victim policy had recently been updated, there was limited assurance that police staff fully understood the YJS victim offer. For example, the leaflet provided to victims by the police advising them of the support available did not contain details of the YJS offer.
  • Victim information provided to the ‘Children First pathway’ Sergeant and then to the YJS lacked key details which would assist victim workers in planning their initial contact with victims.
  • There were no systematic processes in place to review data comprehensively where operational challenges were apparent. For example, around 50 per cent of victims disengaged after they have given consent. There was no clear understanding of the factors that contributed to this disengagement. 
  • The service level agreement (SLA) between the YJS and Restorative Gloucestershire lacked detail on roles and responsibilities. The job description for the new YJS victim worker included several new tasks, such as a greater emphasis on co-ordinating and evaluating practice and the development of feedback mechanisms for victims. Greater clarity in the SLA would help embed these new tasks. Greater clarity on how performance was monitored and processes evaluated would enhance the agreement.
  • The quality assurance framework for victim work needed to be strengthened so that the quality of work with victims could be measured and evaluated. The efficacy of the YJS initial victim contact methods had not been evaluated and the framework used did not provide a meaningful understanding of what interventions were working well or why.
  • There was limited understanding of the demographics of victims that the YJS worked with. More needed to be done to understand the data that existed and to ensure the police routinely and accurately provided this information. 
  • There were no systematic victim feedback loops in place to inform service improvement. Victims were consulted but this feedback was not brought together and evaluated to develop or enhance service provision.  
  • Victim safety considerations were not always robust. For example, the victim’s voice was not systematically heard in multi-agency safety planning forums through the attendance of a victim worker to feed this back.
  • Inspectors noted that management oversight was not effective in the instances where it was required.

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

There was a clear vision in place to enable child, parent and carer participation in both the YJS and broader children’s services. Positive feedback from Ofsted during a recent inspection of children’s social care highlighted the efficacy of the broader children’s services approach. The focus of effective participation activity was underpinned by doing what was best for a child, building a pro-social identity and facilitating meaningful collaboration. These ambitions were identified within a recently refreshed participation strategy in the YJS and a designated team manager led on embedding participation in the service.

We saw and heard evidence of children actively participating in work that impacted on service provision. For example, children were involved in reviewing stop and search procedures and the SALT worked with YJS children to review and develop feedback forms. Children were involved in the ‘My Future’ programme, which focussed on 14–16-year-olds excluded from school. Children contributed to a review which resulted in them helping to design a four-week programme of positive activities involving local services and partners.

The authority’s participation team oversaw a group of ‘ambassadors’ who worked with vulnerable children and produced an annual participation report. The ambassadors contributed to several strategic boards, albeit not yet the youth justice management board. Attempts were being made to develop a ‘shadow board’ and the engagement of shadow board representatives to assist the strategic development of services was being supported through a series of focus groups with children and young people who had experienced the youth justice system. The focus groups were being facilitated by a local third sector partner, ‘The Music Works’ in partnership with the YJS and the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, with the aim of reaching over-represented groups in the youth justice system, including those from Black and global majority backgrounds.

This commitment to participation was reflected in the relational approach taken by practitioners in the cases that we inspected. Assessing, planning and delivery all included active participation, co-production and relationship building with the child.

The YJS contacted, on our behalf, children who were working with the YJS 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). We spoke to four children and two parents or carers. We also received text feedback from 10 children and parents or carers.

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and children and their parents or carers spoke effusively about staff and the support provided. One carer said:

“Everything has been brilliant. My child would not be here without them. He would have hurt himself due to his poor mental health. We have been trying for years and years to get help but got nowhere. I had never heard of the YJS but straight away they opened up loads of avenues and ensured my child got the support he needed. My child doesn’t trust people and is suspicious of professionals, but he got on with everyone at the YJS. He is going to miss everyone, but they say he can still call them.” 10

Every person we spoke to said that they felt respected and all those we asked said that they were involved with planning, which reflected our own observations from case records. Children, parents and carers felt that the YJS had helped them and that support had been meaningful. One child noted that:

“They have helped me loads. I now have a stable and comfortable place to stay. I have routine and am doing really well. My case manager has been great, and I honestly can’t think where I would be if not for her support.”

Children, parents and carers could give clear examples of how the support had led to change in their lives, both in their actual circumstances and wellbeing but also in their attitudes and outlook. One carer noted:

“My child always knew what he had done was wrong, but he learned from his case manager and talked about respect for women, and it really changed him. In one session my child had to build a questionnaire about women and their views, and he learned so much from that. He came out of it as a changed person.”

Most people we spoke to could give an example of what was good about working with the YJS. Children, parents and carers noted that it was a caring and flexible organisation that was doing its best to help children understand how to change and where they needed help.

Equity, diversity and inclusion (Back to top)

There had been a targeted approach by the authority to gain understanding in relation to equity, diversion and inclusion and both the YJS and the management board have access to relevant data.

The management board commissioned a six-month project to deepen its understanding of racial disparity within the caseload. The report provided a depth of understanding of disproportionality issues linked to arrest and referral rates, recidivism, diversion, stop and search and school exclusion. This report and the action plan following it underpinned a newly formed disproportionality working group, led by an independent chair, the CEO of ‘The Music Works’. We saw evidence of the proactive approach by this organisation in supporting children from Black and global majority backgrounds in the YJS’ showcase slot during fieldwork.

Whilst analysis and planning were positive, there had yet to be a tangible impact from this activity. Black and global majority children remained disproportionately represented within the youth justice system in Gloucestershire. At the point of the inspection announcement, 25 per cent of the caseload were from a Black and global majority background compared with an overall representation of only 12 per cent in the most recent census information for the 10-17-year-old population.11

The YJS had made attempts to address this racial disproportionality; staff had accessed Social Graces training12, and we saw evidence in inspected cases of consideration of children’s ethnicity. However, the service only started working with many of these children once they had already offended and were involved in the youth justice system. The triggers and explanations for these levels of disproportionality are often found much earlier in children‘s lives and are linked to factors in other services such as health and education. Therefore, more needed to be done to understand and address disproportionality at an earlier stage.

Work to achieve positive outcomes for girls has had some level of success. In the last inspection, inspectors noted an over-representation of girls in the post-court cohort of children. The YJS undertook targeted activity to understand and address the reasons for potential gender disparity and in the most recent annual YJB data13 the proportion of girls receiving an outcome compared favourably with regional and national outcomes. Data provided by the YJS at the point of announcement indicated a significantly lower proportion of girls on community sentence compared with out of court resolutions. The YJS approach focused on understanding the reasons why girls displayed offending behaviours and aimed to address these where possible via the ’Children First pathway’ rather than a formal criminal justice route.

A paper presented to the county council by the YJS earlier in 2025 detailed the impact of neurodiversity on children and the YJS response. At the time of this report, 41 per cent of their caseload had special educational need and disability (SEND) and of these children, 37 per cent had neurodiverse needs. Furthermore, 79 per cent of this cohort had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We saw evidence that these needs were being responded to and support offered. The SALT had been used to help personalise support for children and communication passports were in use. The Children’s Autism and ADHD Assessment Service (CAAAS) was set up at the start of the year and, although more resource was needed to assist in enabling consistently quick responses for children with these needs, we saw evidence of its use and efficacy in inspected casework.

The YJS worked with a higher proportion of 15-17-year-olds than other regional and national YJS and 86 per cent of the children whose casework we inspected were aged 15 or over. We were not clear if this high proportion had been analysed and evaluated by the YJS or management board to gain a better understanding of the reason for this and to support the targeting of resources or services more effectively.

The understanding of victims’ protected characteristics was not well developed and were clearly recorded on the YJS case management system in only one of the cases that we inspected. Both the service and police, who initially sourced victim information, were aware of these shortcomings and the need to collate more robust information to help develop services in the future.

Data annexe (Back to top)

Gloucestershire Youth Data Annexe (XLSX, 131 KB)

Press release (Back to top)

Gloucestershire Youth Justice Service rated ‘Requires improvement’

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 Jon Gardner, 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. YJB (January 2025) Youth Justice annual statistics 2023-2024. ↩︎
  3. An approach to managing children utilising psychologically informed case formulations. Case formulations are a process developed in clinical psychology and counselling to develop a comprehensive understanding of an individual’s presenting problems. In a youth justice context, it serves as a tool for making sense of a child’s story, turning the partnership’s varying assessments and analysis into a single narrative that informs intervention choices for everyone working with the child. ↩︎
  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. A key element of the ‘Child First’ approach to youth justice. It promotes children’s individual strengths and capacities to develop their pro-social identity for sustainable desistance. ↩︎
  6. 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. ↩︎
  7. 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. ↩︎
  8. An approach to working with children that recognises the impact of trauma and their lived experience and provides a tailored, specialist response that builds on their strengths and avoids reinforcing the trauma. ↩︎
  9. 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. ↩︎
  10. Quotes are taken directly from children, parents or carers. ↩︎
  11. Census 2021, Office for National Statistics, 2023 ↩︎
  12. Social GGRRAAACCEEESSS (John Burnham, 1993) is an acronym (gender, geography, race, religion, age, ability, appearance, culture, class, education, employment, ethnicity, spirituality, sexuality, and sexual orientation) and tool used to describe aspects of personal and social identity which afford people different levels of power and privilege. ↩︎
  13. YJB (January 2025), Youth Justice annual statistics 2023 to 2024. ↩︎