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

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 Luton Youth Partnership Service (YPS) across two broad areas: the quality of work done with children working with the YPS and the quality of work done with victims.

Overall, Luton YPS was rated as ‘Good’.

We found skilful work across assessing and delivery to achieve positive change for children and to keep children and communities safe. YPS staff and managers were committed and motivated to supporting positive change for children and families, and practitioners and partnership staff knew their children and families well. It was positive to see that building trusting relationships with children was prioritised, and inspectors found evidence of practitioners working alongside children to ensure that their opinions and voices were heard. Practitioners took time to understand children and talked to them about their lived experiences. They considered factors that affected children’s safety, identified key vulnerabilities in children’s lives, and were responsive to the emergence of new concerns.

While planning was generally undertaken well, it could have been strengthened further. Planning activity did not always consider the pace at which children could engage positively. We found that some children had many professionals involved in working with them, which was overwhelming for them and did not support a trauma-informed approach. There were also missed opportunities within planning activity to consider victims’ views, restorative justice approaches, and to keep actual and potential victims safe.

The YPS benefited from strong partnership relationships, and we found a strong commitment by the YPS and its partners to promote participation, co‑production, and community engagement. We saw high-quality delivery of work by health partners, including mental health, wellbeing, speech and language, and substance misuse specialists, which supported the work of the YPS effectively. Education, training, and employment was prioritised, with a clear focus on securing opportunities that helped children reconnect with learning or access vocational pathways. However, gaps in resources, particularly the absence of seconded probation staff, had contributed to missed opportunities to understand fully the risks posed by key adults in children’s lives, to ensure that children were kept safe.

Work with victims took an individualised, responsive, and sensitive approach and the victim work practitioners were passionate and committed to improving the offer for victims. However, improving the quality, consistency, and strategic oversight of victim work needed to be a priority, alongside ensuring that victims’ experiences were better understood, their voices strengthened, and their safety protected robustly.

Martin Jones CBE

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

Ratings (Back to top)

Fieldwork started March 2026Score 7/12
Overall ratingGood

Work with children

2.1 AssessingGood
2.2 PlanningGood
2.3 DeliveryGood

Work with victims

V1 Work with victimsRequires improvement

Recommendations (Back to top)

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

Luton Youth Partnership Service should:

  1. improve planning to ensure consistent and high-quality activity to achieve positive change for children and to keep children and communities safe
  2. strengthen the quality and consistency of management oversight so that it drives improvements in the quality of planning activity.

Luton Youth Partnership Service Strategic Management Board should:

  1. work with the Probation Service to make sure it meets its statutory duties and improve information-sharing about key individuals in children’s lives
  2. prioritise the strategic oversight of work with victims and ensure that there is accurate analysis, evaluation, and consistent management oversight in place
  3. work with Bedfordshire Police to get a better understanding of the profile and diversity needs of victims, and develop a detailed analysis of why some victims do not consent to having their information shared 
  4. strengthen and develop the victim offer, review victim safety procedures, include the voice of victims to inform service delivery, and ensure that processes are fully delivered, embedded, and understood across the partnership.

Background (Back to top)

We conducted fieldwork in Luton YPS over a period of a week, beginning 09 March 2026. We inspected cases where the YPS had started work with children subject to bail or remand, court disposals, or out-of-court resolutions between 08 September 2025 and 07 November 2025. We also conducted interviews with case managers and line managers, in the absence of the case manager.

We inspected the organisational arrangements for work delivered with victims and looked at cases where the YPS had undertaken contact with victims between 10 March 2025 and 09 January 2026. We also conducted interviews with staff and managers responsible for the delivery of this work.

Luton is a large town and borough, located 32 miles north-west of central London, and is a unitary authority in Bedfordshire. According to the Office for National Statistics, in July 2025, there were 239,090 residents in the population. At the time of this inspection, the youth population figures for this diverse and multicultural borough showed that 47.5 per cent were Asian and Asian British, 11 per cent Black British African or Caribbean, eight per cent mixed heritage or multiple ethnic, and 29.6 per cent White British. Luton has experienced significant deprivation and was ranked 70 out of 317 local authorities in the 2019 Indices of Multiple Deprivation. Key issues included low incomes, high unemployment, and poor health.

During our inspection, Luton YPS was part of Luton’s quality and improvement service, which formed part of the children’s social care, children, families, and education directorate. There was a YPS head of service, supported by a deputy head of service; a performance, systems, and information manager; a business and finance manager; and three practice managers. The YPS was overseen by the strategic management board (SMB), which was chaired by a chief superintendent for Bedfordshire Police. The SMB was also accountable for an operational tasking group called the ‘local accountability meeting’. The YPS had its own office, based centrally in Luton, and was co-located with other children’s services agencies. It also had access to a youth space called ‘TOKKO’, where children could socialise as well as engage with professionals.

The partnership working was a strength. The health provision was multidisciplinary and included access to a general nurse, child and wellbeing practitioners, a speech, language, and communication (SLC) therapist, and a substance misuse worker. A seconded child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) practitioner was due to take up post after the inspection. We saw the importance that health practitioners gave to using the priority pathways for children. We found many examples of excellent work from the SLC therapist, who provided consultations and guidance as well as helping practitioners to create interventions to engage children based on their needs. They liaised with schools and had completed classroom observations to see how children’s needs were being met in educational establishments. The work with post-school-age children was also positive, with education, training, and employment workers motivating and supporting children so that they could engage with suitable education, training, and employment opportunities.

The Probation Service should provide through secondment a half-time probation services officer and a half-time probation officer to the YPS. Neither of these roles were filled, and funding had been agreed in the meantime to replace this resource. Although arrangements were in place with the Probation Service for arranging children’s transitions and accessing information, we saw instances where a fuller analysis and greater understanding of key adults in children’s lives was needed to ensure that children were kept safe.

We found, through case discussions, that YPS practitioners and partner agencies knew the children they were working with well and spoke positively of them and their families. All practitioners wanted to give children as many opportunities as they possibly could, to enable them to excel and maximise their engagement with the services delivered.

The YPS was creating opportunities for children to take part in meaningful activities to build their engagement and resilience. One example was developing a partnership with Suez, a waste management company, which involved working in the recycling shop as well as doing graffiti art on the waste containers. Another example was the Boys2Men programme for boys at risk of, or who had experienced, criminal exploitation, including gang affiliation, grooming, trafficking, and county lines involvement. Inspectors heard about the work being done in areas of antisocial behaviour through the Tackling, Reducing and Ending Exploitation (TREE) project. Practitioners in this project worked with community partners and the targeted youth service to provide outreach activities in specific areas.

The YPS had led on the Knife Angel event in August 2024, where they worked in partnership with victims of knife crime and their families, and community and statutory agencies, to bring the Knife Angel to Luton. This had been successful in highlighting the issues surrounding knife crime and the negative effects of violent behaviour on communities. Various programmes continued to be funded through the Knife Angel legacy fund resource.

At the time our inspection was announced, the YPS was working with 91 children overall, including those on prevention programmes, out-of-court resolutions, and subject to court orders. Not including the prevention programmes, there were 15 children subject to a community sentence, one child sentenced and in custody, one child on remand, one child on bail support, and 11 on a community resolution or other out-of-court resolution. No children were subject to a youth caution, or a youth conditional caution. Seventy-one per cent of the children were from a Black, Asian, and minority ethnic background; 14 per cent were girls; 34 per cent had an education, health, and care plan (EHCP) or received special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support; and 75 per cent had substance misuse issues. No children were care experienced and living within the area, and 14 per cent were care experienced and living outside the area. No children had a child protection plan, and four per cent had a child in need plan.

Analysis of YPS performance data showed that the number of first-time entrants to the formal youth justice system was below the average for the Eastern region and for England and Wales. The proportion of children who reoffended and the frequency with which they reoffended were higher than the average for England and Wales, although trend data was affected by the small numbers involved.

Domain two: Work with children (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at 15 cases where the YPS had worked with children who were subject to bail, remand, community sentences, resettlement, or out-of-court resolutions.

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

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

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

In the majority of inspected cases, inspectors found that assessing activity for achieving positive change was thorough and analytical, with the appropriate level of detail. Practitioners were proactive in involving children and their parents or carers and there was clear evidence of including children and capturing their views as part of the assessment process. We found that practitioners identified children’s strengths and motivations, which they used well in informing their assessing activity. This co-production ensured that the voices of children and their parents or carers were central in assessing activity.

Practitioners accessed information from agencies such as education, the police, and children’s social care. Practitioners used the weekly health specialist meeting to collate information from the child wellbeing practitioners, the SLC therapist, the nurse, and the substance misuse worker to inform their assessing activity. Additionally, information was gathered about children’s heritage, religion, culture, and neurodiversity needs. The information collected was assessed and used to help practitioners understand where changes were needed to achieve positive change in the lives of children and their parents or carers.

Assessing activity included healthcare practitioners screening children’s general health, emotional mental health, and wellbeing; SLC; and substance misuse needs. They engaged children and families proactively, and worked with them to identify children’s needs, as well as delivering interventions, offering consultations to practitioners, and supporting access to appropriate services, as needed. They worked closely with YPS practitioners, and we found that children’s healthcare needs were explored fully as part of assessing activity. We found that practitioners were confident in recognising children with neurodiversity needs and the impact of these on their current behaviours.

Practitioners took time to understand the children and their personal circumstances, including their experience of education, and their family background. We found that they had explored the impact of children’s early adverse childhood experiences, history of trauma, and experiences of prejudice and discrimination. This allowed them to gain a fuller understanding of any recent and past experiences that affected children’s behaviour and lived circumstances. We also found instances where practitioners had explored children’s faith and heritage, and demonstrated recognition of the importance of these to a child’s identity.

Inspectors found examples of the high priority that practitioners had given to developing and maintaining effective working relationships with parents and carers, which enabled them to get a better understanding of children’s familial context and wider networks. However, this was not consistent across all the cases we inspected, and we found that sometimes there was a focus on one parent, rather than including both, and this was especially evident when one of the parents did not have English as their first language. 

Assessing activity explored children’s strengths, and practitioners focused on how children were spending their days, what leisure activities they were involved in, including their sporting pursuits, interest in creative arts, and their aspirations for education, training, and employment. In nearly all the inspected cases, analysis of children’s capacity for change, engagement with the YPS, and community integration was a strength.

Practitioners acknowledged a range of factors that affected children’s safety, such as the impact of peer associations, weapon carrying, histories of exposure to traumatic incidents, including considerable violence, and emotional wellbeing. We saw instances where assessing activity considered both the nature and context of risks, and identified key vulnerabilities such as neurodiversity, emotional regulation difficulties, substance misuse, and victimisation. When custodial or remand situations were being considered, practitioners outlined how this could create further risks for children, including reprisals from others, increased violence, and negative peer influences.

While the overall quality of assessment work to achieve safety was generally strong, a comprehensive analysis of how to keep the child and community safe was not evidenced fully in all the inspected cases. In the cases where work could be strengthened, inspectors found that the YPS did not always provide a thorough analysis or explanation of the factors that impacted directly on safety for the child. Assessing did not sufficiently ensure that all those who needed to be kept safe were recognised and identified. Risks to and from family members were not understood well enough We found instances where risks to family members who had experienced violence within the home had not been assessed consistently, potentially leaving them vulnerable. The YPS did not have seconded probation workers and inspectors found that there were missed opportunities to gather information for a fuller understanding of the key individuals involved in a child’s life and the potential risks they might have posed.

The YPS had largely established effective relationships with its partners, and inspectors found clear protocols and arrangements to keep children and the wider community safe. Assessing activity was informed by police intelligence, with information used and analysed to ensure that all agencies were up to date with the child’s and family’s circumstances. However, in too many cases information had not been obtained from victims, or the needs and wishes of victims had not been considered as part of the assessing activity. This meant that the voice of victims and their sense of safety could not be taken into account by the YPS and there were missed opportunities for restorative interventions to be considered. In addition, assessing activity was not sufficiently strong in analysing whether work could be undertaken collaboratively with children’s parents or carers that would help keep the child and the community safe.

We found that, in too many cases, management oversight did not meet the needs of the case. A more proactive and robust approach was needed to gain consistency and improve the quality of work when assessing the safety of children and the community.

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

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

Planning built on children’s strengths, created opportunities for change, and was responsive to their needs. Inspectors found that most children were engaged actively in co-producing plans, and practitioners explored what might hinder engagement with both children and their parents or carers. They considered children’s learning needs from the information in the EHCPs and discussed factors relating to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; SLC; and neurodiversity. Practitioners completed ‘communication passports4 and shared them across agencies, so that they could plan how best to engage the children. This included the use of ‘Pegasus’ cards for the police, so that police officers understood the child’s specific needs when they came into contact with them. However, the range of children’s diversity needs was not considered consistently and there were some missed opportunities to understand and incorporate children’s lived experience, heritage, cultural needs, and language barriers in planning.

It was encouraging to see that building a trusting relationship with children was integral to the planning process, and practitioners took time to understand children’s motivation and ability to change. However, planning activity did not always take account of the pace at which children could engage positively. We found, for some children, there were too many professionals involved and appropriate timelines had not been considered for when other specialist workers would become involved. This approach could have been overwhelming for children and did not support trauma-informed practice. Given that the YPS had access to a broad range of services and practitioners involved with children, they needed to ensure that children felt able to build healthy relationships with professionals.

Practitioners were aware of the structural barriers that children faced because of their vulnerabilities and complex needs. The YPS education, training, and employment workers were tenacious in building relationships with schools and colleges to ensure that children had access to appropriate educational provision. We found that where education provision had broken down – for example, because of a child’s bail conditions – planning activity prioritised re-engagement with school, building positive relationships with schools, and putting safety management plans in place. We found strong provision for post-16 education, training, and employment. The education, training, and employment workers and practitioners considered how to prepare and motivate children to help them to engage with these opportunities. Examples showed that the workers liaised with different education, training, and employment providers to ensure that children were offered various options to meet their needs. For children in custody, practitioners advocated for appropriate educational opportunities being available for them in the establishment.

With the help of children, the YPS developed the planning tool ‘My Journey’, which provided a visual agreement between the practitioner and the child in planning children’s interventions. We found that practitioners used this well to engage children in planning activity. However, this planning activity was not always aligned with other agencies’ delivery plans. Planning activity with children’s social care services was not evident consistently, and we saw many examples where the YPS had used the escalation process to raise concerns with children’s social care services. Although it was positive that the YPS was challenging children’s social care services’ decisions, the high number of escalations may have reflected a lack of understanding of each agency’s roles and purpose, and highlighted the importance of greater coordination and collaboration in planning. 

Planning activity did not consider consistently which wider support services were available for children to access in their local community. We found that planning for the end of children’s interventions was sometimes limited to signposting to other agencies, rather than collaborative support enabling children and families to access services. For children turning 18, we found some gaps in their support, with children’s social care services withdrawing and no clear transition arrangements to adult services.

The strong provision from healthcare professionals and the screening process helped support planning activity. Healthcare workers supported practitioners in developing plans for how best to engage children, and we saw examples of the positive impact of SLC assessments on understanding children’s needs. Although the seconded YPS CAMHS worker was not yet in post, the child wellbeing practitioners offered support and interventions. Priority pathways to access mainstream health services for YPS children were in place. We found examples where planning addressed children’s emotional mental health and wellbeing, their self-esteem, and their feelings of isolation.

The quality of planning to keep children and the community safe was variable. In most cases, planning activity identified how to achieve safety and stability for children and was reviewed and adapted when children’s circumstances changed. The seconded police officer shared with agencies regular and robust police intelligence regarding children and families, and we saw practitioners seeking updates from other professionals. Information was shared by agencies in various multi-agency meetings, to make sure that planning stayed relevant to the child’s current situation. These included the YPS risk management panel, the multi-agency gangs panel (MAGPan), the daily contextual safeguarding meeting, and children’s social care statutory meetings.

However, we found that planning work by the YPS was not sufficiently strong when exploring how planning would be undertaken with children’s parents or carers to keep children safe. Planning activity took place with parents or carers in too few of the cases and did not enable all involved to be responsive when circumstances changed, or facilitate parents or carers to be proactive in supporting their children.

Restorative justice staff attended various panel meetings to represent the views of the victims. However, in too many cases no information had been obtained from victims for practitioners to consider their safety, needs, and wishes as part of planning activity. Opportunities to consider restorative justice approaches were being missed and we found that plans did not consistently address specific concerns and risks related to actual and potential victims. Planning activity did not always consider how the risk to victims presented on a day-to-day basis – for example, ongoing contact with victims in school settings or vulnerable potential victims in the community. Safety planning needed to be more explicitly coordinated between the workers supporting the child who had harmed and the restorative justice staff, to ensure a joined-up, robust risk management plan that protected victims and reinforced their sense of safety. 

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

Our rating5 for delivery is based on the following key questions:

Does the delivery of well-focused, personalised and coordinated services:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?73%
keep the child and the community safe?80%

Practitioners knew the children and their families well and we saw the priority that they gave to developing and maintaining effective working relationships with children. They showed persistence, flexibility, and positive engagement skills, encouraging children to participate and engage. Practitioners identified swiftly structural factors that could have blocked effective participation. This approach enabled them to resolve any emerging needs early and amend work that needed to be completed to achieve positive change. Practitioners also developed positive working relationships with parents and carers. Feedback from the children we spoke to emphasised how important they found their relationship with their YPS practitioners and how much they had been supported and helped by them.

Trauma-informed approaches to working with children were not evident consistently and sequencing the involvement of other professionals was not always based on children’s needs. We saw instances where children had not been clear about the roles of the professionals supporting them, and a cohesive and coordinated approach, which children and families understood, was needed.

The interventions identified in children’s plans were mainly delivered consistently. We saw various structured interventions that practitioners could offer children, and these were discussion based and tailored to each child. There was evidence of practitioners delivering programmes which included sessions on weapon awareness, victim awareness, and the consequences of offending. However, we found that the importance of involving children in activities alongside structured intervention sessions was not recognised consistently, to help children to engage. Improved access to positive activities and more innovation and creativity in the interventions delivered with children, building on their skills, hobbies, and interests, was needed. 

Practitioners had a good understanding of the services available to support children, and these included education, training, and employment; healthcare; substance misuse; emotional mental health and wellbeing; and SLC provision. Engagement with the YPS healthcare team resulted in access to timely support and the offer of interventions to help children with mental health, emotional wellbeing, and substance misuse concerns. When SLC issues were identified, there was a clear process to access timely provision. We saw examples of adapted materials and visual supports being used in sessions to meet children’s neurodiversity and communication needs, with communication passports being shared across agencies and joint working between practitioners, the SLC therapist, and schools. One example showed how the SLC therapist had carried out classroom observations and shared their results with school staff and the child’s mother, to help them understand the child’s needs.

The work completed by practitioners to achieve positive change was mostly aligned with other agencies’ delivery of interventions and coordinated sufficiently well. However, we found work with children’s social care services was not joined up consistently and there were examples of work with children and families ending because another agency was involved, rather than interventions being based on the needs of the child and family. Practitioners recognised what children described as the strengths in their lives and what enabled them to thrive, such as educational achievement, and then built on this knowledge when delivering services to achieve progress. We saw instances of practitioners and education, training, and employment workers supporting children to reintegrate into educational establishments, working flexibly around their college commitments, supporting them into employment and training. Examples included children engaging with ‘Skillspad’ to complete their construction skills certification scheme card, ‘Diverse FM’ to complete further education, and, for one child, support in completing their GCSE exams while in a secure establishment.

Practitioners understood the context in which children were living, which was considered well in the delivery of services. This included the quality of children’s relationships with their immediate and extended families, and it was clear that children and their parents or carers understood what practitioners expected of them and knew what to expect of practitioners. Interventions were delivered appropriately in a range of locations, and children had contributed to discussions on the places and spaces where they felt safe. We found that consideration was given to where and when interventions were delivered – for example, understanding the areas and locations where children did not feel safe, arranging office visits at safe times of the day for children, doing home visits when needed, and taking into account the safety of siblings and parents.

The work to achieve safety for the child and the community was a strength. The range of interventions delivered included: improving and increasing education offers; meetings with the SLC therapist, child wellbeing practitioners, and substance misuse worker; the completion of work on harmful sexual behaviour; examination of offending behaviour; motivational work to maximise engagement; understanding the impact of lifestyles; managing personal safety; and weapons awareness. In most cases, we saw examples of services and interventions being delivered collaboratively with children’s parents or carers to build safety and protection for children and the wider community.

The YPS was mostly responsive to change and made sure that revised arrangements were implemented suitably. We saw examples of interventions being adapted in recognition of children’s changing circumstances, including increased substance misuse, and their relationship with family members. Work to keep communities safe was responsive to the emergence of new concerns, behaviours, or offences, and this included examples of professionals reacting promptly to police intelligence relating to children’s association with peer groups and ‘gang activity’ in the local area. There was also evidence of practitioners responding to increased exploitation concerns, completing timely national referral mechanism referrals, working jointly with the police to monitor situations, and managing the risk with other agencies through the MAGPan meeting.

However, we found that delivery needed to ensure that actual and potential victims were protected. To strengthen this area further, the safety of victims needed to be prioritised. We saw a few instances of victim work that was not completed when it should have been, and limited discussions about the potential impact of children’s behaviour on the wider community.

The YPS was co-located with a number of agencies, and this assisted in the prompt sharing of information between partners, resulting in a clear response to support the delivery of services to keep children and communities safe. When children’s interventions with the YPS were coming to an end, we saw consideration of continued involvement with, for example, the SLC therapist, and referral to other partners, including targeted youth support services. Practitioners’ response to children’s non-engagement was measured and timely.

Work with victims (Back to top)

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

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

Our rating6 for work with victims is based on the following key questions:

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

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

Strengths:

  • The SMB received victim data and victim case studies to give them a better understanding of victims’ experiences and the work of the YPS.
  • The YPS had a victims focus group meeting to discuss operational matters.
  • There was a victim work development plan, which was monitored through the victim focus group meeting.
  • The YPS received some victim diversity data from Bedfordshire Police, and both agencies were considering how to improve their processes to gather information relating to victims’ protected characteristics.
  • There was clarity regarding the arrangements for gaining consent from victims and the sharing of victim details.
  • The YPS had a full-time victim liaison and restorative justice officer (VLRJO), who managed all the victim cases. There were also two referral order and restorative conferencing coordinators, who became involved with victims if restorative justice was being delivered.
  • Contact with victims was prompt and comprehensive, providing sufficient information to enable victims to decide how they wished to engage.
  • There was a page on the YPS website which provided information and support to victims, as well as signposting victims to the services in the community.
  • A victim assessment was completed with all victims, and the VLRJO understood the importance of assessing the safety of the victim.
  • There was evidence in the casework that work with victims took an individualised and sensitive approach.
  • Staff directly involved in victim work were passionate and committed to the work they delivered, and wanted to provide a high-quality service to victims which was responsive to their needs.
  • Support to victims was not time limited, and ongoing support was based on the victim’s needs.
  • Children who were victims could access the same services and activities as those who had offended, and the VLRJO referred victims to other services, both external and those provided by the YPS.
  • The YPS provided a varied range of reparation activities, giving victims a wide choice when considering options for indirect reparation.
  • Victim work was audited, and the YPS had an audit template and an audit tool prompt sheet to assist when auditing victim cases.
  • Feedback from victims was gathered following their initial referral to the service and was sought again at the end of their involvement. This feedback was discussed at the victim focus group.
  • Positive examples were given of restorative work with corporate victims, including effective engagement with local retailers.

Areas for improvement:

  • There was limited information in the YPS youth justice plan relating to restorative justice and victim work and therefore limited strategic planning relating to victims.
  • The SMB did not receive regular updates, presentations, demographic analysis, or feedback reports about victim work.
  • There was a need for clearer lines of accountability and strategic direction between the SMB and the victim focus group. 
  • There was limited analysis of victim-related data, the YPS did not have a full understanding of its victim profile, and there was no analysis of the difference between the number of victims who did consent and those who did not.
  • Understanding and dissemination of the restorative justice and victim policy and practice guidance document was inconsistent and it had not been shared with the SMB.
  • The VLRJO responsibilities needed to be reviewed to ensure that the role maintained sufficient focus, time, and capacity for direct work with victims. 
  • Further work was required to ensure that the responsibility for victim work and taking account of their needs, wishes, and safety was considered by all staff across the YPS.
  • Management oversight to meet the needs of the victims’ cases was inconsistent and needed to improve to ensure consistency of practice when working with victims.
  • Victim safety considerations needed to be more explicitly coordinated to ensure a joined-up, robust risk management plan that protected victims and reinforced their sense of safety. 
  • The YPS needed to look at different ways to engage more victims in the feedback process, to ensure that all victims were offered the opportunity to express their views and help develop victim services.

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

Luton YPS had a strong commitment to hearing from children and families. As part of the Children, Families and Education Directorate Participation and Engagement Strategy, the YPS coordinated with the Luton Youth Council. As part of their role, the youth councillors had chosen subject areas they felt were of importance to children and the environment in which they lived. Youth councillors planned projects and events to benefit local communities. Inspectors heard about the work of the youth council and met the current chair and deputy chair. They explained the changes being made to ensure that YPS children could be involved with the council and engaged in the decision-making processes.

The YPS actively encouraged children to be part of focus groups and consultation processes. Children had been involved in the development of a ‘stop and search’ panel following focus groups with police partners. Children were also part of the consultation, development, and creation of the Tap Out interactive app7 , starring in the filmed scenarios. Children had been involved in interview panels for staff recruitment, and the YPS intervention plan ‘My Journey’ was co-produced with children.

Feedback from children and their parents or carers was gathered in several ways. Examples included ‘My Journey’, which contained a reflection sheet to obtain feedback from children on the delivery of the interventions they received. The YPS had a youth voice and participation manager, whose role was to ensure that the child’s voice was heard and influenced service delivery. Children could meet this individual to share their experience of the YPS. The YPS also placed feedback QR codes around the building, to allow for anonymous feedback at any stage that a child chose. This feedback was collated and analysed by the YPS management team.

The YPS contacted, on our behalf, children who were or had been working with the YPS, to gain their consent for their information to be shared and to enable them and their parents or carers to feed back on their experience of the YPS. 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). The feedback to inspectors from children and their parents or carers was overwhelmingly positive; all felt respected and valued by YPS staff and other people working with them. One child, when talking about what had worked well for them, said8:

“I met my worker regularly, and we talked about what I needed to do to get back on track. They gave me advice that helped me understand what to do next”.

When asked about what it was like working with the YPS, another child commented:

“They listened to me and how I was thinking and feeling. They helped me realise I might need some therapy”.

When asked if they felt included in the work that was being completed, one parent said:

“Yes, I did get to have my say. They included me in every part of the work that was being done. They especially helped around schooling. They checked if we were comfortable and made my child feel at ease. They were great”.

When considering children’s needs, one parent commented:

“They did sessions my child could understand. They told me they really enjoyed the picture activity where they had to look at the images and guess what they meant. They taught my child about criminal law, the courts, and what could happen if they kept getting into trouble. They did home visits, and the one‑to‑one work was really helpful, it supported them with reading and talking about how they felt. All of this really helped them stay out of trouble”.

Another parent commented that the option of working with the YPS

“…was a good option to provide a young person after making a singular mistake to help them understand where they went wrong and where to improve, rather than a direct punishment”.

One child commented that they felt that the YPS had done everything they could to help them:

“…they helped me see that I wasn’t just a naughty child. They helped me find therapy, worked with me on my housing, and tried to get me support for my smoking. They also helped me understand situations better”.

This child added that the YPS staff:

“…made me feel like they genuinely cared, and I felt like I could talk to them about how I was thinking and feeling. It was good having their support”.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (Back to top)

Luton YPS had a strategic and operational commitment to understanding and meeting the diverse needs of children, victims, and staff. The local authority outlined its practices in the Luton Fairness Strategy, which stated its ambition to create fairness in society, and fairness in opportunities, access to services, the expectation of living a long and healthy life, and being treated with dignity and respect. The YPS service plan identified Luton’s diversity and local context, which led to a data analysis exercise which examined the YPS caseload and children’s ethnic origin, and enabled a clearer understanding of where the highest levels of disproportionality across YPS populations were.

Disproportionality and children’s characteristics were included in the performance and quality analysis reports, presented at the SMB. The population of children in Luton was becoming more diverse, with nearly 80 per cent of school pupils from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic backgrounds. The most disproportionate ethnic groups were dual heritage children (eight per cent) and Black children (11 per cent). The South Asian children were emerging as the most visible group across the YPS interventions. For reoffending, the highest levels across the YPS involved children with a South Asian heritage, at 31 per cent, and those with dual heritage, at 30 per cent. For YPS statutory orders, white children were the largest group, averaging 42 per cent for reoffending, while dual heritage children accounted for 35 per cent of all children entering custody.

The YPS had a respect charter which was formulated and co-produced with staff. This charter was visibly prominent around the office, through banners and posters. The service had held a disproportionality performance meeting at the end of 2025, where they gathered people’s views and agreed priorities and actions. This included actions to target overrepresented children into early interventions, a review of how children’s diversity needs were captured in pre-sentence reports, and a better understanding of children with dual heritage diversity needs. At the time of the inspection announcement, 14 per cent of children known to the YPS were girls. It was important that the YPS continued to monitor this data and recognise the need to prioritise the prevention of violence and abuse, and the importance of providing early intervention services to girls and their families. 

The YPS had completed an analysis of key barriers for YPS school-age and post-school-age children. It had also led the Supported Transitions programme, with an access to education worker being based within the YPS. This worker and the YPS team supported a cohort of children throughout Year 6 and into Year 7. These children were those most at risk of needing early help or social care support. Assessments were completed for the children, including an educational psychologist assessment for SEND needs.

The specialist meeting led by healthcare professionals enabled practitioners to be responsive to children’s emotional mental health and wellbeing, and neurodiversity needs. We heard of how, with the guidance of the SLC therapist, sessions had been adapted and were interactive to meet children’s learning styles. There was also an example of the SLC therapist creating a communication passport with a child which identified how best to communicate with them, and was shared with the child’s solicitor, to support the child through the court process and enable the court to understand the child’s needs.

As part of this inspection, we considered how the service responded to the diverse needs and protected characteristics of children and victims. Recording of the protected characteristics of victims was clear in most inspected cases and contact with victims was informed mainly by an understanding of their individual needs. In the inspection of work with children, we found that assessing considered the child’s diversity needs sufficiently in all cases. Practitioners created safe spaces to facilitate conversations with children to understand their lived experiences, and we found practice examples of interventions that had been adapted and delivered to respond to their individual and diverse needs. There were examples of how practitioners built a rapport with children and adapted interventions to the child’s context, strengths, and risks, including their experience of discrimination and understanding their neurodiversity needs.

Data annexe (Back to top)

Luton Youth Data Annexe (XLSX, 121 KB)

Press release (Back to top)

“Committed and motivated” Luton Youth Justice Partnership rated ‘Good’ following inspection

Further information (Back to top)

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

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

Footnotes (Back to top)

  1. There are two types of inspections as part of the current youth inspection programme across England and Wales. Inspection of youth justice work with children and victims (IYJWCV) and inspection of youth justice services (IYJS). Further information about these inspections can be found on our website Youth Justice Services – HM Inspectorate of Probation. ↩︎
  2. The rating for the standard is driven by the lowest score of the key questions, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. A more detailed explanation is available on our website Standards and ratings – HM Inspectorate of Probation. ↩︎
  3. The rating for the standard is driven by the lowest score of the key questions, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. A more detailed explanation is available on our website Standards and ratings – HM Inspectorate of Probation. ↩︎
  4. A communication passport is a personalised written document that explains how an individual with communication needs communicates and expresses their needs. ↩︎
  5. The rating for the standard is driven by the lowest score of the key questions, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. A more detailed explanation is available on our website Standards and ratings – HM Inspectorate of Probation. ↩︎
  6. The rating for the victims’ standard is derived from the scores from case inspection for V 1.1 and the qualitative evidence for V 1.2. Case inspection scores and a more detailed explanation of the rating process is available on our website Standards and ratings – HM Inspectorate of Probation. ↩︎
  7. Tap Out is an interactive app that explores themes of exploitation.  ↩︎
  8. Quotes are directly from children, parents, and carers.  ↩︎