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

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 Rotherham 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, Rotherham YJS was rated as ‘Requires improvement’.

The inspection took place during a period of significant change for the service. The YJS had recently been realigned with the Family Help Service to strengthen integration with the wider partnership, and its structure, roles and responsibilities were under review. Practitioners, managers, and senior leaders promoted a reflective learning culture and there was a sense of optimism that the proposed changes would create opportunities to strengthen services for children and victims.

The YJS prioritised engagement with children and their parents or carers, which was a strength of the work we inspected. Practitioners were skilled and committed to building relationships that enabled them to identify children’s strengths and goals. However, practice did not consistently identify and analyse children’s diverse and individual needs.

Assessing, planning and delivery did not always capture the underlying reasons for children’s behaviour. Practitioners needed to focus more on tailoring and sequencing support to meet individual circumstances, particularly for children subject to shorter out-of-court resolutions.

Through its own audits, the YJS had recognised the need to improve the consistency and oversight of practice to keep children and communities safe. Indeed, our inspection found that assessing activity was sometimes descriptive rather than analytical, did not consistently draw on all available sources of information, and did not always identify or verify critical safety factors. In several instances, insufficiencies in assessing had impacted the effectiveness of planning and subsequent delivery of services to keep children and communities safe.

In contrast, victim work was impressive. The commissioned service demonstrated a strong commitment to learning and development, which had led to improvements in processes and pathways. Practitioners and managers working with victims were passionate, dedicated, well integrated into the YJS, and respected within partnership arrangements. There was a clear strategic partnership commitment to further developing the collation and sharing of information pertaining to victims’ protected characteristics.

In this report, we make seven recommendations to support the YJS in developing its work with children and further enhancing its work with victims.

Martin Jones CBE

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

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Ratings (Back to top)

Fieldwork started March 2026

Score 5/12

Overall rating

Requires improvement

Work with children

2.1 Assessing	Inadequate
2.2 Planning	Requires improvement
2.3 Delivery	Requires improvement

Work with victims

V1 Work with victims

Outstanding

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Recommendations (Back to top)

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

Rotherham Youth Justice Service should:

1. continue to improve assessing, planning, and delivery of casework, to ensure individualised, consistent, and high-quality activity to keep children and communities safe
2. review quality assurance arrangements to ensure that all harm-related behaviours to the child and to the community are identified, analysed and evidenced across assessing, planning and delivery 
3. ensure consistent high-quality diversity practice that recognises, analyses, and responds to the intersectionality of children’s and parents’ or carers’ diverse needs
4. continue to develop oversight and scrutiny of the out-of-court resolution process to ensure consistent decision-making and a shared understanding of its impact on children and families.

Rotherham Youth Justice Partnership Board should:

5. continue to support the review of the YJS to ensure it continues to be appropriately structured, resourced and supported to improve the quality and oversight of work with children
6. review the use of formal and informal out-of-court resolutions to ensure that all children’s needs are appropriately assessed and the most suitable pathway to accessing support is identified
7. continue to develop processes to ensure victims’ protected characteristics are collated and shared with the YJS at the point at which consent has been provided.

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Background (Back to top)

We conducted fieldwork in Rotherham YJS over a period of a week, beginning 23 March 2026. We inspected cases where the YJS had started work with children subject to bail or remand, court disposals or out-of-court resolutions between 24 March 2025 and 23 January 2026. We also conducted 24 interviews with practitioners and managers.

We inspected the organisational arrangements for work delivered with victims and looked at cases where the YJS had undertaken contact with victims between 24 March 2025 and 23 January 2026. We also conducted interviews with staff and managers responsible for the delivery of this work.

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (RMBC) covers a large and diverse area of South Yorkshire. At the time of the 2021 Census, it had a population of 276,595, including 27,779 children aged 10–17. The Census also reported that Black and minority ethnic children accounted for 15 per cent of Rotherham’s youth population. Data provided by the YJS at the time of the inspection announcement did not indicate that this group was disproportionately represented within the YJS overall. However, the YJS had identified an over-representation of Black and mixed-heritage boys in the post-court cohort. It had found that this related to a single incident and did not indicate an emerging pattern of concern in Rotherham.

On the day of the inspection announcement, the YJS was supporting 58 children, including one subject to licence conditions, one remand, 28 court disposals, three youth cautions, and 25 community resolutions or other out-of-court resolutions, including Outcome 21. The YJS also worked with additional children on a preventative basis.

Data provided by the YJS on the day of the inspection announcement showed that 12.3 per cent of the YJS cohort were girls, which aligned with the national average. However, trend data indicated there had been a longstanding pattern of over-representation of girls. Data included in the YJS plan 2025–2029 indicated that between April 2024 and March 2025, 36.6 per cent of the YJS cohort were female. Performance reports presented to the YJS Partnership Board also evidenced consistent over-representation over the previous 12 months. Data presented to the YJS Partnership Board in January 2026, covering July 2025 to September 2025, showed that 29 per cent of the YJS cohort were female and that 41 per cent of offences committed by girls were categorised as sexual offences. The YJS clarified that these all related to peer-to-peer storing or sharing of images. For boys, the equivalent data showed that sexual offences accounted for 26 per cent of all offences, and that 31 of 37 sexual offences related to peer-to-peer storing or sharing of images.

Children reported to the police for peer-to-peer storing or sharing of images received an Outcome 21 police disposal and a referral to the ‘Be Share Aware’ educational programme delivered by Family Help. The partnership demonstrated a commendable commitment to providing educational support in these circumstances and this was effective in significantly reducing repeat behaviours. However, the Partnership Board and the YJS needed to undertake a deeper analysis to ensure that the circumstances surrounding the behaviour were fully understood before pursuing a justice pathway rather than a safeguarding pathway.

The YJS supported children with a range of complex needs and vulnerabilities. They worked collaboratively with children’s services, including the Evolve specialist exploitation team, to ensure that concerns relating to harm outside the home were addressed effectively through child in need and child protection frameworks.

The YJS Partnership Board was chaired by the Service Director of Community Safety and Street Scene. Board members and senior leaders were invested in the service, and took a collective approach to raising the profile of the YJS across strategic partnership forums. The Children and Young People’s Directorate benefited from support from the Commissioning, Performance and Quality team. An Ofsted inspection of local authority children’s services in November 2025 rated the authority as outstanding. The Rotherham local area partnership SEND inspection in September 2024 concluded that arrangements typically led to positive experiences and outcomes for children and young people with SEND. The YJS had achieved the SEND Quality Mark Award and was working towards the enhanced Quality Lead Award.

The inspection took place during a period of notable change for the YJS. Over the previous 12 months, there had been changes at both operational and strategic levels. The YJS had recently been realigned with the Family Help Service (formerly Early Help), led by a head of service. This different senior leadership capacity was intended to strengthen alignment between the YJS and the wider partnership, bringing together prevention and statutory functions. This reflected Rotherham’s commitment to providing a cohesive prevention and diversion offer for children. A restructure of the YJS team was also in progress, with plans to embed the prevention and diversion offer within the team.

Operationally, the recruitment and training of new YJS staff were supported by a comprehensive workforce development plan, which identified a range of opportunities to embed learning related to youth justice legislation, knowledge, and skills.

Remedi was commissioned to deliver victim services, reparation and referral order panels. The YJS benefited from secondments and specialist roles, which included a police officer, a probation officer, a speech and language therapist and a nurse. It had developed a priority pathway with the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) neurodevelopmental team, although leaders acknowledged that further work was needed to meet children’s holistic health needs. As part of the Family First Partnership Programme, Rotherham had commissioned a needs assessment of the local child population and intended to use the findings to support a more targeted focus of the YJS resource to meet children’s needs.

In August 2024, a large-scale disorder occurred in the Manvers area of Rotherham, and in many other towns and cities in England. Through the inspection showcase meeting, context visit, board presentation, and victim focus group, inspectors heard about the significant impact on direct victims, the local community, wider community, and emergency workers. We heard powerful accounts from a child and a parent about the impact of these events. Inspectors were impressed by the approach taken by the partnership to deploy an immediate, medium-term, and long-term response to support community recovery and healing.

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Domain two: Work with children (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at 24 cases where the YJS had worked with children, who were subject to bail, remand, community sentences, resettlement or out-of-court resolutions.

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

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

Does assessing sufficiently analyse how to:	% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?	63%
keep the child and the community safe?	46%

Audits completed by the YJS had identified the need to strengthen analysis and professional curiosity in assessing practice, which aligned with our inspection findings. Training had been commissioned, and during discussions with inspectors, practitioners reflected that their assessing skills had developed since the period covered by the inspection case sample. Practitioners and managers told us that the practice of writing to the child was in the early stages of development at the time of the inspection sample.

In the large majority of inspected cases, children and their parents or carers were actively engaged in assessing activity. Practitioners were working hard to build positive relationships with children, and in several instances, this had led to a stronger understanding of children’s strengths, goals and protective factors.

The complexity of children’s diverse needs was recognised and analysed in too few cases. We found some examples where aspects of a child’s individual needs and protected characteristics were identified but not holistically analysed, meaning that the intersectionality of diversity factors was not fully considered. For example, we found instances where assessing explored a child’s neurodiversity but did not explore previous experiences of trauma and being in care. In other instances, gender identity was considered but there was limited recognition of the child’s ethnicity, heritage, and culture. Inspectors also found some examples where assessing did not sufficiently prioritise the use of independent interpreters to support meaningful engagement of parents and carers.

The YJS had established information-sharing pathways with the police, children’s services, education, health, and probation services. However, practitioners did not consistently access the information available from the partnership. When they did access it, they did not always sufficiently analyse it to gain a holistic understanding of the child’s previous and presenting behaviours. For example, several children had been open to children’s services on child protection or child in need plans, but practitioners were not always aware of the underlying concerns. This limited their ability to understand the impact on the child and their parent or carer.

Information about a child’s education was available but not always accessed consistently. In several instances, practitioners relied too much on information provided by the child, or their parent or carers, about school or college attendance. As a result, they had sometimes identified education as a protective factor without verifying actual attendance or engagement. Children known to the YJS could be referred to the Complex Children in Education Panel, and we saw several examples where this contributed positively to joint assessing of needs and safety. However, not all staff were fully aware of this pathway, and their understanding of how to access education support and information was variable. Similarly, practitioners were not always accessing information from the Probation Service to verify its involvement with parents, carers, or other significant adults involved in the child’s life.

Assessing to achieve safety for the child and community was sufficient in too few cases. Factors that impact on a child’s physical, emotional and psychological safety were not consistently recognised or understood in all cases. For example, the impact of adverse childhood experiences, including exposure to domestic abuse, neglect, parental incarceration, and physical or emotional abuse was not always holistically analysed to understand the implications for the child’s sense of safety.

Children’s current and previous harmful behaviours were not always analysed to understand the context, likelihood or imminence of such behaviours occurring in the future. Inconsistencies in information-gathering and analysis of behaviours related to the safety of the community sometimes resulted in an underestimation of risks. In some instances, children with complex needs and behaviours that indicated high levels of concern were not discussed at the YJS‑led multi‑agency review of safety meetings.

The response to changing circumstances was variable. Inspectors found examples where evidence of emerging violent and aggressive behaviour in the home had not been drawn together to understand the impact on parents, carers or younger siblings. Positively, we also found examples where the YJS had responded well to concerns about exploitation, with effective cross-boundary information-sharing and a partnership approach to assessing and re-assessing concerns relating to both the child and the community.

Where victims’ needs and wishes were known, we saw several positive examples of how these had been incorporated into wider assessing activity with the child. The YJS had acknowledged that the recording and evidencing of this aspect of work could be strengthened.

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

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?	75%
keep the child and community safe?	63%

Practitioners sought to engage children in planning activities, and in several instances, we found a responsive approach that considered children’s speech, language and communication needs, as well as their maturity. Education, health and care plans (EHCPs) supported YJS planning activities, and we found several examples where the Complex Children in Education Panel had helped to address barriers to accessing or maintaining education placements. Developing greater consistency in this approach would strengthen planning activities to support positive change.

Children’s interests and protective factors were considered, and where this was done well, we found examples where these informed timely exit planning and support in accessing universal services beyond the duration of the disposal or order. However, there were opportunities to strengthen this area of work, given the range of preventative services available in Rotherham.

Planning was not always personalised to the child’s individual needs and circumstances. Inspectors found examples where the requirements of out-of-court resolutions were generic and not tailored to the child. At times, the volume of requirements within a short disposal was unrealistic, and practitioners struggled to balance the need to build a trusting relationship with the child with the need to deliver the extensive requirements of the out-of-court resolution plan.

Planning frequently identified the need for referrals to the speech and language therapist, for mental health support, and for family group therapy. While it was appropriate and important to do this, these objectives were often in addition to a wide range of offence-focused interventions, which created difficulties in prioritising and sequencing planning activity to meet the child’s needs.

Planning to keep the child and community safe was variable. Key factors affecting safety were not always identified or analysed during assessing activity and were therefore omitted from planning. For example, we found instances where substance misuse was directly linked to a child’s offending and safety, yet planning did not include support to address it. In other cases, emerging information about children carrying weapons in the community or displaying aggression within the family home was not sufficiently considered, and planning was not adapted to reflect these concerns.

Where planning worked well, it was collaborative and responsive, with each professional understanding their roles and responsibilities in supporting the child. This was a particular strength when children at risk of exploitation were supported by the YJS, social workers, and the Evolve specialist exploitation team. Multi-agency child exploitation meetings strengthened the coordination of partnership planning, and we saw examples where timely cross-boundary information-sharing and responsive practice by the YJS, children’s services, and the police had been effective in keeping children safe. The use of ‘find me plans’, which included information about a child’s associates and links to specific geographical areas, supported prompt cross‑boundary information-sharing and action once a child was reported missing. Inspectors also found that planning for harm outside the home did not occur in isolation and, where relevant, was effectively supported by child in need and child protection processes.

While we saw several examples of effective planning for the safety of the child and community, we also found instances where the YJS was not fully aware of plans held by other agencies working with the child and their family. This led to fragmented planning on those occasions, limiting the partnership’s ability to respond cohesively to changing circumstances affecting the safety of both the child and the community.

Planning to address specific concerns about actual or potential victims was variable. Where it was done well, planning promoted victims’ safety in school settings and family homes. We also found instances where sensitive planning between the YJS case workers and restorative justice practitioners led to effective mediation and consideration of a victim’s physical and emotional safety. However, this was inconsistent, and there were missed opportunities to implement external controls, such as non-contact requirements, to safeguard victims within the community.

Transition planning from the YJS to the Probation Service was a strength. Joint planning between YJS practitioners, managers, and the seconded probation officer added value by ensuring needs‑led transitions that took account of children and young people’s maturity, support networks, relationships with professionals, protective factors, and the potential implications of transition for future progress.

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

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?	67%
keep the child and the community safe?	54%

Practitioners prioritised developing and maintaining positive relationships with children, which encouraged participation and engagement. They considered children’s strengths and protective factors, and we found several examples where children had been supported to access positive lifestyle activities.

Where service delivery was effective, we saw a coordinated approach to meeting children’s needs, including access to mental health support such as forensic CAMHS assessments, and timely action to address educational needs through EHCP reviews. There were also several examples of children being supported to engage in substance misuse interventions and tailored reparation activities.

The delivery of services to respond to children’s diverse needs was variable. For example, we found several examples of sensitive approaches that considered children’s neurodiversity, such as arranging appointments at the same time, same place and with the same people. Staff considered children’s ability to engage for prolonged periods of time and made adaptations to the delivery of programmes. The YJS had developed gender-informed interventions, and we saw examples of gender-responsive practice. However, this was often considered in isolation from other diverse needs, such as experiences of being a child in care and experiences of trauma or discrimination. Children’s ethnicity, culture, and heritage were not always explored to fully understand their lived experiences and the impact on their identity. Diversity practice would have been strengthened by practitioners considering the intersectionality of children’s and parents’ or carers’ diverse needs.

Through its audit activity, the YJS had identified that timely access to specialist services was an area for development, and this aligned with the findings of this inspection. Referrals for speech, language and communication support were identified through planning activities; however, this support was not always available to the child during the disposal or order, and it was unclear whether this information had been shared with partner agencies to help with ongoing support for the child. Similarly, we found examples where children’s mental health needs were not sufficiently met, and where referrals that did not meet the CAMHS threshold were not escalated or redirected through alternative support pathways.

We saw several examples where children had been supported to reintegrate into education provision; however, delivery to support their engagement in education, training and employment was variable. There were instances where limited responsiveness to disrupted education prevented the YJS from fully using education as a means of promoting the safety of the child and the community.

Interventions delivered to children included crime and consequences, victim awareness, managing emotions and anger, and peer pressure. It was not always clear how the interventions were tailored to children’s individual needs or whether they addressed the underlying causes of their behaviours. For example, a child with extensive trauma who struggled to regulate their behaviour and emotions engaged in a wide range of interventions as part of a short YJS disposal. It was unclear whether the YJS had sufficiently considered adopting a trauma‑informed approach that first built the child’s sense of safety before introducing more structured interventions.

Coordination of services to promote the safety of the child and the community varied. There were strengths in the partnership approach to supporting children assessed as presenting high levels of safety concerns. In these instances, there was a responsive approach to emerging risk factors, involving the YJS, children’s services, police, probation, and restorative justice practitioners. However, in other situations, safety concerns were underestimated, meaning that YJS practitioners were at times left holding risks when involvement from partner agencies could have provided valuable specialist support and intervention for the child and their parents or carers.

Practitioners spoke positively about the support that they received from managers. Managers routinely undertook quality assurance and audit work and there was clear evidence of management oversight in the case records. However, this did not consistently have an effective and positive impact on reducing harm-related behaviours to the child and community.

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Work with victims (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at 15 victim cases where the YJS has offered a service to victims who have consented for their information to be shared.

Work with victims	Rating
Work with victims is high-quality, individualised and responsive driving positive outcomes and safety for victims.	Outstanding

Our rating⁵ 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

• The YJS Partnership Board was well engaged and active in its contribution to work with victims. The chair of the YJS Partnership Board was the Service Director of Community Safety and Street Scene, and the board had the necessary strategic representation to promote YJS victim work across a range of partnership forums.
• The YJS commissioned Remedi to deliver victim services, reparation and referral order panels. South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) commissioned Victim Support to deliver services to victims. Monitoring and reviewing of commissioning had strengthened strategic partnership arrangements. Victim Support services were due to attend the YJS Partnership Board from April 2026. 
• The joint YJS and Remedi Victim and Restorative Justice Policy (April 2025) was underpinned by the Code of Practice for Victims. The development of the victim pathway protocol aimed to provide a consistent, partnership-wide framework for victim work.
• Strategic and operational arrangements for monitoring, evaluating and reviewing victim work were strong. Senior representatives from Remedi were long-standing board members and routinely presented victim performance reports, audit findings and learning from HM Inspectorate of Probation inspections. Operationally, Remedi and YJS managers completed joint audits, identifying strengths, areas for development and actions. The outcome of the audits aligned with the findings from this inspection.
• The quality of work inspected was a strength. Practitioners were appropriately persistent and adaptable in their attempts to engage victims.
• Staff and managers were knowledgeable, passionate and committed to delivering high-quality victim services, and there was a clear commitment to continuous improvement.
• The support available for practitioners working with victims was impressive. It included formal supervision, well-being supervision, and access to counselling. Regular team meetings, regional and national forums promoted reflective practice and shared learning. Those working with victims had access to a range of internal and external training opportunities to promote their ongoing learning and development. Victim workloads were routinely monitored, and contingency arrangements were in place to respond to increases in demand or to cover staff absence.
• Effective arrangements were in place between practitioners working with victims and those working with children. Remedi practitioners and managers were embedded within the YJS team, and this enhanced the profile of victims and supported communication and collaboration with YJS practitioners.
• Victims were offered a range of restorative interventions, including conferences, face-to-face apologies, mediation, shuttle mediation, direct and indirect reparation, letters of explanation and ongoing support. Victims were supported to complete a victim impact statement which, with consent, was shared with the YJS case workers, out-of-court resolution decision-making panels, and referral order panels. Victims were offered opportunities to complete safety plans.
• A resource booklet summarised the range of victim support services available, including mental health, substance misuse, bereavement, and housing. Victims could be signposted to community-based services and to Victim Support. Contact with the restorative justice practitioner was not limited to the duration of the child’s involvement with the YJS.
• Reparation was varied and accredited by AQA awards. Remedi had produced a reparation portfolio that outlined the range of available projects.
• The YJS convened daily triage meetings attended by a YJS manager, restorative justice practitioner and the seconded police officer to analyse overnight information and identify and allocate victims in a timely manner. We heard examples of how the triage forum had assisted in identifying repeat victims, which had resulted in the offer of further tailored support. Victim consent processes were understood, and the seconded police officer provided a vital link between the police and the restorative justice practitioners. The partnership had recognised that there were opportunities to strengthen the recording of victim consent processes.
• Arrangements were in place with the Probation Service victim liaison officer, and although rare, examples were provided of effective information-sharing processes and joint working in relevant instances.
• Remedi provided training to police officers on restorative approaches and victim services.
• Victim feedback and evaluations were routinely collated and shared with the YJS and YJS Partnership Board to inform service development.

Areas for improvement

• The police did not consistently gather information about victims’ protected characteristics and individual needs. This issue had been recognised and actioned by South Yorkshire Police, the Partnership Board, Remedi and the YJS. The partnership had undertaken extensive work to identify how the new police computer system could improve recording, and there was a shared commitment to strengthening the processes for gathering and sharing information.
• Further analysis was needed to understand the profile of victims who did not consent to contact from YJS victim services.
• Recording of work with victims, and the oversight of that work, needed to be strengthened to evidence the full breadth of the activity and support provided.

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

The Children and Young People’s Directorate, including the YJS, had implemented the Rotherham Four Cornerstones approach to co-production and inclusion, which included welcome and care, value and include, communication, and working in partnership.

Rotherham had a Children and Young People’s Partnership Board that enabled children to scrutinise and advise on a range of local authority plans and strategies. Across the wider directorate, children had led projects and campaigns to raise awareness about vaping, standing up to hate crime and mental health matters. A group of children also led a project on safe travel and produced a video explaining why children and young people did not use buses, resulting in several recommendations to support improvements. In 2025, children supported by the YJS were consulted as part of the redesign of the YJS logo.

The CHANCE (Changing How Adults Notice Children’s Experience) group was a youth-led initiative that brought together children and young people with lived experience of education, social care, youth justice, and the police to influence service improvement. The group was being reviewed and revitalised following a natural pause due to changes in membership and leadership as young people moved on. The YJS and wider partnership were committed to re-energising the group and broadening membership and representation.

The YJS collated feedback from children and parents or carers as part of its evaluation of services and quality assurance processes. Feedback highlighted several barriers to children’s engagement, including difficulties understanding information, remembering appointments, differentiating between the role of the YJS and the police, and the purpose of the support offered. In response, the YJS and speech and language therapists developed a ‘My Journey Journal’ to provide space for children to reflect on their feelings and to track their own progress. The YJS had also developed a caseworker profile document to provide children and parents or carers with an introduction to their practitioner, alongside pen pictures to promote a shared understanding of the child. The My Journey Journal, caseworker profiles, and children’s pen pictures were due to be implemented across the service.

As an example of “you said, we did”, the YJS responded to feedback from children about the negative impact of court delays by raising concerns at the court user forum, where this issue was established as a standing agenda item. The YJS also facilitated pre‑hearing court visits and access to a child‑friendly sensory room to better support children while waiting for court hearings.

The YJS contacted, on our behalf, children who were or had been working with the YJS, 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 directly to several children, parents and carers and we also received text feedback from four respondents. Parents and carers told us that they valued the support provided by YJS practitioners and that they felt listened to and respected. One parent told us:

“Yes, I did get a say in everything that’s happening. We have regular contact with my son’s worker from the Youth Justice Service. I have her number and can call or text her whenever I need to, and so can my son. My relationship, and my son’s relationship, with the worker is really positive.”

Another parent said that the YJS practitioner:

“[redacted] was absolutely brilliant with all the time and the effort he put in supporting my son, regularly updated me when he had been and seen him in school.”

When considering the help and support provided directly to children, we heard that practitioners worked hard to build positive relationships with children, a theme identified in our inspection of case work. One child told us:

“what they’ve done really well is just being there, their support is 120%. They’ve worked with me on things around hate crime. I’ve done reparation baking for charities and for people who needed it. It felt good to give back.”

We were told that the YJS met with children in places and spaces where they felt safe, including at home, in school, or in community venues. Parents and carers told us that they appreciated how appointments were arranged around education, employment and family commitments.

We heard from a parent who shared that they had been informed their child would receive an out-of-court resolution, but the matter was later referred to court. They described the emotional impact this had on their family, compounded by subsequent court delays. However, once the YJS became involved, the parent described the service as “absolutely brilliant” and said they could not fault the level of support and care provided.

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Equity, diversity and inclusion (Back to top)

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council’s Inclusion Strategy 2026–2030 focused on bringing communities together to ensure that everyone felt safe and listened to. The strategy aligned with the council‑wide plan 2025–2030 and was underpinned by the Inclusion Strategy Action Plan.

The YJS Plan 2025–2029 identified tackling disproportionality as one of its three service priorities. It set out the YJS and partnership’s aim to address disproportionality at every stage of the justice system by interrogating local data to identify over‑represented groups, including children in care, those with children’s services involvement (including contextual safeguarding), children who had experienced trauma, girls, and children who had experienced school exclusion. The YJS Protocol on Tackling Disproportionality reflected these priorities and defined the roles and responsibilities of practitioners, leaders, and the Partnership Board in identifying and addressing over‑representation.

As part of this inspection, we considered how the service responded to the diverse needs and protected characteristics of children and victims. The range of victims’ protected characteristics was not clearly recorded in any of the inspected cases. The YJS routinely received information from South Yorkshire Police about victims’ age, gender and ethnicity, and there was a partnership commitment to improving the collation and sharing of information on protected characteristics and diverse needs. To mitigate current gaps, Remedi obtained consent from victims to retrospectively collect this information, supporting a clearer understanding of the profile of victims accessing services.

Recording of children’s protected characteristics included age, sex, gender identity, race, ethnicity, religion, and disability. The Partnership Board received information about children’s protected characteristics and diverse needs, and they reviewed the performance data to analyse trends that would indicate concerns linked to disproportionality.

In the inspection of work with children, we found that assessing, planning and delivery considered children’s holistic diversity needs in too few cases. While inspectors saw examples of sensitive practice, this was often limited to exploring a specific diverse need rather than the intersectionality of children’s protected characteristics and individual needs.

The YJS had access to interpreters. However, we found examples where parents and carers did not receive independent and objective interpretation. In these cases, children, their siblings, or other family members were used to translate key pieces of information between families and the YJS. The YJS had recognised the need to strengthen its use of interpreters to ensure that children and their parents or carers could engage meaningfully and effectively in assessing, planning, and service delivery.

Children supported by the YJS had complex support needs. On the day of the inspection announcement, 62 per cent of children had special educational needs, 63 per cent were aged 16 or under and in full-time mainstream education, while 50 per cent of children aged 17 and above were not in education, training or employment. The Complex Children in Education meeting aimed to support YJS children’s educational needs. The YJS had achieved the SEND Quality Mark Award and were working towards the SEND Award Quality Lead.

At the point of the inspection announcement, 17 per cent of YJS children were supported by a child in need plan and 1.5 per cent had a child protection plan. Data provided by the YJS indicated that children known to the service accounted for 24.7 per cent of all reported children’s missing episodes between October 2024 and September 2025. The Partnership Board and YJS recognised the high levels of need requiring multi-agency involvement. There was a commitment to moving the YJS onto the local authority Liquid Logic case management system to improve consistent access, storage and sharing of information to support partnership working.

In response to the over-representation of girls, the YJS had developed a gender-specific programme to support the distinct needs of girls involved in the justice system. Similarly, for males, the YJS had recently developed the Next Gen Men resource, an intervention designed to help boys understand and challenge harmful beliefs about masculinity, to address attitudes related to violence, and to develop prosocial identities.

As outlined in the background section of this report, in August 2024, there was widespread unrest across England, which included large-scale disorder in Rotherham. Local services implemented an immediate strategic response to support community recovery, with contributions from community safety, the children and young people’s service, adult safeguarding and support services, police, housing, neighbourhood teams, community protection teams, and public health. Rotherham subsequently received funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to deliver community cohesion activities to support longer-term recovery.

Children involved in the disturbance were supported by the YJS throughout the prosecution processes. The YJS and Remedi delivered interventions to children convicted of offences linked to the disorder, including a hate crime programme and victim awareness sessions, which considered the appropriateness of direct mediation and reparation.

The YJS had a measured approach to workforce development, designed to support new practitioners without overwhelming them with excessive training demands. The workforce development plan set out provisions for future training in equity, diversity, and inclusion, with a focus on cultural competence, unconscious bias, neurodiversity, speech and language needs, and trauma-informed practice.

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

1. There are two types of inspections carried out as part of the current youth inspection programme across England and Wales: inspections of youth justice work with children and victims (IYJWCV) and inspections 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. 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. ↩︎