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

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

Practitioners in Medway YJS were aspirational for children. They were committed and skilful in engaging children and families, quickly building meaningful and trusting relationships and tailoring interventions to the needs of children. Planning and delivery of services consistently supported children to achieve positive change. Practitioners often co-produced plans with children, focusing on achievable, strengths-based goals. Staff had manageable caseloads, and the service invested in workforce development, including a comprehensive training offer. There had been some absences in key roles in the months leading up to our inspection, which mainly related to the specialist health support in the team.

The quality of assessing practice required strengthening, particularly in understanding how to keep children and the community safe. While assessing generally identified the key factors in a child’s life to support positive change, it focused less on how to keep victims and the public safe. In some cases, information from the police was unecessarily redacted, which meant that assessing lacked the depth required to fully understand the context of safety concerns or the identity of potential victims.

Work with victims was inconsistent and underdeveloped. Quality assurance processes were in place, which provided senior leaders and the YJ management board with a broadly accurate account of the strengths and areas for development in individualised and responsive work with victims. However, despite being aware that victims’ safety was not consistently assured, the YJ management board and the senior leadership team had not taken sufficient action to address this. This required urgent action.

Medway YJS demonstrated openness to learning and improvement and had responded to internal service reviews by increasing resources and a review of policies and systems. Leaders engaged with several pilot projects to support child-centred diversion and participation, which was indicative of their aspirations for the YJS and for children in Medway. However, while we found areas of promising and developing practice, important aspects of service delivery needed to continue to improve to ensure consistent outcomes for children, victims and the community, particularly in terms of safety.

Martin Jones CBE

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

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Ratings (Back to top)

Fieldwork started May 2026

Score 6/12

Overall rating

Requires improvement

Work with children

2.1 Assessing	Requires improvement
2.2 Planning	Good
2.3 Delivery	Good

Work with victims

V1 Work with victims

Requires improvement

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Recommendations (Back to top)

As a result of our inspection findings, we have made 12 recommendations that we believe, if implemented, will have a positive impact on the quality of youth justice services in Medway. This will improve the lives of the children in contact with youth justice services and better protect the public.

The Medway Youth Justice Service should:

1. improve the quality of assessing in relation to keeping the child and the community safe
2. develop and embed consistent and effective practice with children and victims to keep victims safe
3. develop systems to increase confidence in and maximise the potential of restorative justice and reparative opportunities with victims
4. ensure that children are offered education, training and employment opportunities appropriate to their age and levels of need, and are able to access them
5. improve management oversight so it is consistently applied and robust, and drives high-quality work with children and victims
6. ensure that information is appropriately requested from the Probation Service and used to inform the work with children and victims.

The Director of Medway Children’s Services should:

7. ensure the timely and effective planning and delivery of services to children placed outside of Medway local authority area.

The Youth Justice Management Board should:

8. develop a detailed understanding of the reasons why children from a global majority are over-represented within the youth justice system in Medway and use this to reduce disproportionality
9. develop a comprehensive, analytical data set to inform and shape the direction and delivery of high-quality work with victims
10. ensure that approaches to victim work across the partnership are coordinated effectively to ensure access to a sufficient range of services.

Kent Police should:

11. ensure that timely and relevant information is shared with the YJS so that practitioners can fully assess the safety of the child and the community and identify actual or potential victims
12. improve the quality of information shared with the YJS regarding victims’ individual needs and protected characteristics to support personalised initial contact with victims and to understand their needs.

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Background (Back to top)

We conducted fieldwork in Medway YJS over a period of a week, beginning 18 May 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 19 May 2025 and 20 March 2026. We also conducted 15 interviews with case managers. We inspected the organisational arrangements for work delivered with victims and looked at cases where the YJS had undertaken contact with victims between 17 November 2025 and 16 January 2026. We also conducted interviews with staff and managers responsible for the delivery of this work.

Medway is a unitary local authority in Kent and is the largest conurbation in the south-east outside of London. The area comprises the towns of Rochester, Chatham, Strood, Gillingham and Rainham, as well as several smaller towns and villages in more rural areas. There is a population of 279,773,² with 84 per cent identifying as White, six per cent as Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh, and six per cent as Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African. There are 69,891 children aged zero to 19 living in Medway. The population is becoming increasingly diverse, with families relocating to the area and increasing numbers of children from other local authorities placed in the many care homes across the area. This is changing the profile of local communities, and in some areas this has included an increase in exploitation and serious youth violence.

The YJS was part of Medway Children’s Services, and the Head of Service was also responsible for child in care teams and corporate parenting. There had been an increase in investment in resources in the YJS over the 18 months before the inspection. This included the appointment of a new service manager, who brought experience from the violence reduction unit (VRU). A YJS practice improvement lead and team manager had been appointed on a temporary basis, and were leading on developmental work, including the review of the arrangements for victim work.

Although there were three vacant practitioner posts, workloads for staff and managers were largely manageable, with staff working with a caseload of six children each on average. This provided practitioners with flexibility to adapt their approaches to meeting the individual needs of children. There had been a long-term vacancy for a speech and language therapist, with recruitment hindered by national shortages. At the time of the inspection fieldwork, the YJS had appointed a new victim worker, with a reviewed and regraded job description that was aligned to the YJS victim and restorative practice strategy. While the YJS did not yet have a dedicated education, training and employment worker in post, funding for a specialist post had been agreed.

The YJS was working with 51 children and had received details of 69 victims at the point when the inspection was announced (10 children were in the process of being assessed). The caseload was predominantly boys; girls made up 18 per cent, which broadly reflected the proportion of girls in YJS caseloads across England and Wales. The YJS had developed a strategy for working with girls and multi-agency group-work interventions that focused on gender-specific needs. There had been some positive collaboration with youth services and children’s social work teams.

Of the overall caseload, 14 out of the 41 children who had received an outcome were supported by an out-of-court resolution; 21 children were subject to community sentences; four children were receiving bail support; one child was in custody; and one child was remanded into youth detention accommodation. Children from global majority backgrounds were over-represented, not just within the overall caseload of the YJS but also within its statutory work. The partnership needed to undertake a deeper analysis to understand this disproportionality and to ensure that measures were put in place to monitor and address the experiences of children and to ensure that opportunities for safe diversion were equitable for all.

The YJS was overseen by the YJ management board, chaired by the Assistant Director, Education and SEND. The appointment of an educational leader as the chair of the YJ management board was deliberate and reflected the many challenges that some children in Medway faced in accessing a largely selective education system. At the point of inspection, 39 per cent of YJS children were in full-time mainstream education, with 11 per cent excluded and 22 per cent electively home educated. In total, 42 per cent of children over 16 were not in education, training or employment. This was a concern, given that these foundational needs were not being fully met to prepare children for transition into adulthood. Medway had 19 secondary schools, including six grammar schools, which reflected a largely selective education system. The pupil population was diverse, with many children travelling into Medway from other local authority areas. As a result, the impact of socio-economic disadvantage was amplified within the school system, which contributed to the difficulty in identifying school places for some YJS children who were not in education. Post-16 provision was limited, with many children accessing one large provider.

The YJ management board and the YJS were open to learning how to improve outcomes for children. The review of the YJS in 2024 had led to some improvement activity and increased investment. Participation pilots were in place to listen to the views of children about serious youth violence. There was also ongoing partnership work with the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) to develop a ‘whole area model’ to enhance approaches to diversion and develop child-first practice.

The police partnership model did not include staff seconded to the YJS. Kent Police had adopted a Child Centred Policing Team (CCPT) model, rather than commit to full-time co-location arrangements with the YJS. These arrangements were underpinned by the Medway Youth Justice Police Partnership Protocol. This set out how information was shared by the police, and the legal basis for disclosing information to YJS colleagues. Although the police provided intelligence packs to the YJS, they sometimes redacted key information. When this happened, it limited the ability of YJS staff to accurately assess the safety of other people, analyse children’s past behaviour and produce specific plans to promote the safety of victims. There was an aspiration by the police to fully automate information-sharing with the YJS when new intelligence or a crime investigation was linked to a child. There were similar plans to share information proactively with schools under ‘Operation Encompass’.³ However, this was not always evident in the work we inspected, and we saw examples where the YJS had not been notified when YJS children had been arrested for serious offences or had further contact with the police. The lack of full-time, co-located, seconded police staff in the YJS created some barriers to effective, timely information-sharing. This had a negative impact on the quality of practice and effective partnership working.

However, more effective information-sharing systems were in place for children where there were greater concerns for the safety of victims or the community, or under the ‘Op Checker’ arrangements.⁴

Medway YJS had access to a dedicated Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) worker, but there had been a period of absence in the 12 months before the inspection. Although arrangements had been put in place so that referrals were made to a single point of access, this had limited some access to consultation and support from practitioners. The YJS had recognised that there were some problems in accessing mental health support for children with mild to moderate difficulties. The partnership had commissioned the Medway Therapeutic Alliance for children between the ages of five and 19, and up to 25 for care leavers or children with SEND.

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Domain two: Work with children (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at 17 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.	Requires improvement

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

Does assessing sufficiently analyse how to:	% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?	88%
keep the child and the community safe?	59%

Practitioners made effective use of children’s services systems, which meant that they could access up-to-date children’s social care records and, where relevant, education, health and care plans (EHCP). Practitioners strongly promoted children’s active participation in assessing activity. This gave them a well-informed, strengths-based and holistic understanding of children’s familial, social and educational contexts. Where this practice was particularly strong, practitioners used information from a child’s neurodiversity assessment or EHCP to break down information into smaller, more manageable steps. This supported children’s comprehension and learning, and enabled them to engage in assessing activity.

Information-sharing from schools was sufficient in a reasonable majority of cases. However, it relied heavily on the persistence of practitioners and relationships with individual schools and education providers, rather than clear information-sharing pathways. It was promising that the YJS had recognised the importance of developing and promoting better relationships with education providers and were planning a dedicated ETE post in the YJS after the inspection.

In the 12 months before the inspection, staff absence meant that mental health referrals had been made through a single point of access within the Medway Young Persons Wellbeing Service (MYPWS). This had led to some barriers in accessing specialist services. Where assessing practice was particularly strong, practitioners identified structural barriers for children who needed services, and helped them to attend community health appointments. The development of the Medway Therapeutic Alliance, with priority referral pathways for YJS children experiencing mild to moderate mental health and emotional wellbeing difficulties, was improving access to necessary support.

There had been a long-term vacancy for a speech and language therapist (SALT). A digital ‘application’ to support practitioners in identifying and understanding children’s speech, language and communication needs had recently been developed and rolled out. While the absence of some specialist health staff led to gaps in health provision for YJS children, we found practitioners generally identified and analysed relevant information on children’s neurodiversity factors to support them in achieving positive change.

The effectiveness of the work to assess the safety of children and the community was less consistent, and this was impacted by limited analysis about how to achieve safety for other people and the community.

Where practice was stronger, practitioners used information from different agencies to identify factors that affected the safety of the child and others. These included exploitation, peer influence, emotional wellbeing and exposure to violence. When children were open to statutory services such as children’s social care, there was evidence of some effective joint working between YJS practitioners and social workers when sharing information or attending multi-agency meetings. This included when children were in care. When considering children’s safety, there was broadly richer analysis where practitioners considered a child’s previous adverse childhood experiences, experience of trauma and the impact of their neurodiversity on their current and future safety.

However, in some instances, assessing was not consistently informed by the necessary information from the police, as some details about individuals and incidents was redacted. In some of the cases we inspected, this had limited the quality of assessing practice to keep the child and the community safe. The police provided a five-year history of contact with the child when they were initially referred to the YJS. However, practitioners did not always use this information to understand the context of the child’s behaviour and whether previous safety concerns remained active or were no longer relevant. Pertinent information that should have been routinely shared with the YJS by police on all children open to the YJS was not shared consistently. We saw examples of further arrests of children, additional police intelligence, and police contact with children not being shared in all relevant cases. The expectation that YJS practitioners initiate reactive enquiries at key points, rather than a systematic process of information sharing between the police and YJS meant that critical information was not always timely and responsive to changing circumstances. Some systems had been implemented to support information-sharing, including a civilian member of police staff being based at the YJS office one day a week, and a weekly information-sharing meeting. This was having some positive effect in supporting the YJS to identify and respond to change.

In too many cases, victims’ needs and wishes, and their safety, were not sufficiently incorporated into assessing for safety. This limited the quality of risk analysis and, in some instances, practitioners had underestimated assessed levels of safety to others. The YJS risk management meeting was predicated on discussing children who were assessed as posing a high or very high risk of harm to others. Incorrect or underestimated assessed levels of safety meant that some children were not appropriately referred to or discussed in this multi-agency forum and opportunities for effective partnership responses were missed.

Additionally, despite having access to probation systems, practitioners rarely requested information to help them understand whether family or relevant contacts of children were subject to probation supervision, or whether this affected the child’s safety at home or in the community. A further focus on improving the quality of information-sharing and using this to undertake quality analysis was required to improve assessing practice in relation to keeping children, victims and the community safe.

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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.	Good

Our rating⁶ for planning is based on the following key questions:

Does planning focus sufficiently on how to:	% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?	100%
keep the child and community safe?	65%

Planning to achieve positive change for children was impressive and well-informed by the context of the child, including their wider and social environment. Practitioners regularly ensured that children actively participated in planning. They used child-friendly planning tools such as the ‘my plan’ and ‘identity plans’, which also took into consideration the children’s individual diversity characteristics. Parents and carers were regularly involved in planning activity.

YJS practitioners were aspirational for children. This was reflected in detailed and strengths-based planning, often carefully balanced and grounded in achievable steps for children, and tailored to their learning needs, religious beliefs and neurodiversity. Planning broadly promoted key protective factors such as positive family relationships, positive activities and mentoring support. Where planning was particularly effective, it included the development of children’s resilience and ability to make positive and safe decisions. Children’s individual needs were well considered, and sufficient services were identified to address the critical factors related to positive change in all of the children’s cases we inspected. Despite barriers to accessing timely services for some children, their mental health and emotional wellbeing needs were routinely considered by YJS practitioners in support of achieving positive change.

Education was a clear priority in the plans to achieve positive change, and staff liaised appropriately with the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Information and Advice Service (SENDIAS) and coordinated timetables with schools. While planning practice was generally strong, greater consistency was required to ensure that exit planning fully included schools and education providers in support of sustainable and longer-term positive change.

While we saw some positive relationships with social workers where children were in the care of the local authority, planning to achieve positive change and to keep the child and community safe was less consistent, and sometimes delayed when children were placed outside of the local authority area. There was, at times, an overemphasis on the children’s placement to identify appropriate intervention to support positive change, and inconsistent planning to meet their educational needs.

Planning to support the safety of the child and the community was less consistent but still promising in some critical areas. Where children were already open to a range of services, multi-agency coordination was consistently supporting their safety. There was evidence that the YJS was using multi-agency forums, including the YJS risk management panel, exploitation meetings and care planning forums to coordinate planning that was responsive to changing concerns about safety. Where this was working particularly well, there was evidence of online monitoring using technology, increased levels of supervision and modifying education timetables. Plans were generally supportive of children’s health needs. Mental health and substance misuse work was included, in collaboration with children.

Where assessing practice had not explicitly identified or analysed factors relating to the safety of the child or the community, there was evidence of less robust or practical actions to promote safety. Inconsistent approaches to planning sometimes reflected an insufficient focus on addressing children’s vulnerability and their experiences of victimisation and exploitation.

Some activity and interventions to promote the safety of the child were combined with the activity required to keep the community and victims safe. Where specific action was required to keep other people and the community safe, there was less consistency. Where there was a lack of detail known around the identity of potential victims, or the context of previous concerning behaviour, planning was not always specific enough to keep the child and the community safe. In cases where the victim worker had obtained a victim impact statement outlining the victim’s views about their sense of safety, the YJS did not consistently use this to ensure that appropriate safety measures were put in place to keep them safe.

When practitioners underestimated safety concerns, this often led to insufficient planning activity. While there were planned interventions to minimise harm, such as knife-crime work, offence-focused discussions, or some degree of victim awareness intervention, practical measures were not consistently considered. For example, when a child was no longer at the same school as a victim, or had self-reported that they were no longer in contact with the victim, practitioners did not sufficiently consider the likelihood of contact in the wider community or through social media.

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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.	Good

Our rating⁷ for delivery is based on the following key questions:

Does the delivery of well-focused, personalised and co-ordinated services:	% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?	82%
keep the child and the community safe?	65%

In all the cases we inspected, practitioners were developing and maintaining effective working relationships with children. They were listening to children to understand their interests and engaged them in associated activities within the community. Practitioners were persistent in engaging with children, using home visits and office and community-based sessions. We also saw evidence of the impact of psychologist-supported case formulation activity, which enabled them to deliver service more effectively.

Practitioners were effectively using the relationships they had developed with children and their parents or carers to support delivery of interventions that promoted positive change. This included the delivery of emotional regulation work, understanding peer influences, substance misuse or practical education support. Practitioners provided timetables for children and their parents or carers, so that they could see the type and nature of sessions that were delivered.

We saw evidence of some effective use of communication passports, with necessary adjustments made for children who experienced additional speech, language and communication needs. Where this was working particularly well, children and their parents or carers consented to passports being shared more widely to enable partnership agencies such as schools to fully understand individual children’s needs. However, YJS practitioners were not always confident in completing communication passports when there was no specialist input. The implementation of a speech and language digital tool could help to improve staff confidence, although this did not fully mitigate the need for a speech and language therapist within the team.

Delivery in relation to education, training and employment was variable and this was leading to inconsistent outcomes for children. Where this was working well, practitioners were actively supporting children who were transitioning between schools. We saw evidence of SENDIASS being used to advocate for children and ensure that the needs identified in their EHCPs were being met. The YJS provided some local initiatives, such as the successful roll-out of AQA⁸ certification, support with access to CSCS⁹ card qualifications and support with writing CVs from the YJS careers worker. However, there were missed opportunities to reintegrate children aged over 16 back into education – 42 per cent of these children were not in education, training or employment on the date that the inspection was announced. While there were some examples of YJS practitioners accessing support from the local authority Education Information and Support Service, this was having an impact for too few children.

Where there were greater concerns for children’s safety, the YJS was often central to the professional network. Relationships between YJS practitioners and the child in care teams were generally positive, and we saw evidence of effective joint working that enabled them to implement safe and appropriate bail support activity.

Delivery of services to promote the safety of children was strongest where children were already open to statutory services, and there was some coordinated information-sharing and approaches between the YJS, children’s social care and the police. The YJS risk management panel and Missing and Exploitation Discussion (MEDS) meeting assisted in coordinating this work. These systems allowed the YJS to respond to changing circumstances. This included appropriate follow-up activity after missing episodes, such as return home interviews, and the sequencing of interventions, which better accommodated the needs of children and their families.

Practitioners were able to identify and escalate their concerns, and there were some examples of effective advocacy and challenge that led to improved outcomes to promote the safety of children. These included the relocation of children and families to support their safety, access to mental health provision for children who had displayed self-harm or suicidal ideation, and referrals to social work and exploitation support for children. However, escalation was not always timely or effective, especially for children with previous and episodic patterns of safety concerns. Activity was not always sufficiently supporting the safety of those children.

There was evidence of some proactive approaches in the work to keep the community and victims safe. These included supportive information-sharing with the police via ‘Op Checker’ arrangements. This was available where children had been assessed as posing higher safety concerns to the community or to victims, to allow practitioners to respond to emerging concerns. Practitioners’ responses included the use of home visits, or changing interventions to support children with victim awareness or knife crime. In instances where the YJS did not have the details of actual or potential victims, or were unaware where a child had committed further offences, they were unable to put additional specific controls in place to limit contact with potential victims or support appropriate levels of disclosure to victims.

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Work with victims (Back to top)

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

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

Our rating¹⁰ 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 management board and senior YJS leaders recognised the importance of victim work and had established it as a strategic priority.
• The police decision to move to an opt-out victim consent system had led to an increase in the number of victims referred to the YJS. The quality of referrals had improved for children considered for out-of-court resolutions.
• Leaders had commissioned cognitive behavioural therapeutic services, on identifying that a high number of children were being referred to the YJS as victims of crime. The management board also recognised that further enhancing their recording and analysis of data would give them a better understanding of the profile and cohort of victims, so that they could ensure the correct services were in place.
• The local authority had strengthened the leadership of the YJS through additional management, practice improvement roles and the recent appointment of a dedicated victim worker. This demonstrated a commitment to improving and delivering services, and to maintaining a focus on practice development and quality.
• Victims were supported to share the impact of their experiences, their needs and safety factors with the YJS victim worker.
• Victim information packs had been developed, which supported victims to make informed choices about their needs, including the recommendations for any direct work to be undertaken with children. This led to the communication of relevant outcomes relating to children to the victims and in some cases resulted in letters of apology.
• A robust training and induction offer was in place for staff, including in restorative justice, child-first principles and equity and diversity. Training activity was monitored and reviewed by YJS managers.
• Caseloads were manageable, which gave staff the capacity to deliver individualised and responsive services.
• The YJS had introduced quality assurance processes for work with victims, which had accurately identified some gaps in the delivery of services to support victims’ safety, the management oversight of victim work, and challenges in coordinating the work delivered to victims and children.
• Despite some inconsistent practice in the cases inspected as part of victim work, there was more consistent practice in the work with children to keep them and the community safe. This demonstrated that YJS staff had transferable skills and knowledge to implement recommendations that could address victim safety, had practices and processes been more aligned.

Areas for improvement

• The YJ management board was not providing consistent or effective strategic oversight of victim work. It needed to coordinate the strategic partnership more effectively to ensure that YJS victims consistently received personalised and responsive services that supported their needs and safety.
• Poor recording led to incomplete and inconsistent data collection, particularly around diversity, protected characteristics and whether services sufficiently promoted the safety and wellbeing of victims. This limited the ability to understand the demand for services, evaluate outcomes, allocate appropriate resources, and support informed decision-making operationally and strategically.
• The YJS had identified inconsistencies in its work to promote victim safety and wellbeing in the months leading up to the inspection but had not sufficiently addressed them.
• The YJS victim worker was not routinely attending the YJS risk management meetings. This was a missed opportunity to promote victims’ voice and prioritise their safety within a multi-agency forum.
• Victim services were not consistently embedded in the broader YJS work. The work between victim workers and practitioners was not sufficiently coordinated and this limited the effectiveness of joint interventions. This needed to be addressed to build on the strong initial engagement with victims and to develop foundations that would ensure effective and coordinated approaches to service delivery.
• Restorative approaches and reparation were not consistently delivered in practice. There had been limited use of restorative conferencing and shuttle mediation in the 12 months before the inspection. Greater collaboration between those working with victims and with children was needed to increase confidence in interventions and to promote restorative and reparative approaches more widely.
• Victim feedback systems had been introduced but were not sufficiently embedded to allow victims’ views to be analysed and used to inform service delivery.

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

Medway YJS was committed to listening to the voices of children and families, and we saw some clear examples where this had led to changes in policy or resource provision. The Medway Youth Justice Participation and Consultation Strategy was introduced in 2025 and set out ambitions to embed participation work across many areas of service delivery. This was a developing area of practice, supported by the head of YJS involvement with wider participation responsibilities across the local authority, and lead member for participation at the YJ management board. Children had also been involved in the recruitment of new staff in Medway YJS.

Medway was experiencing a changing population, including the relocation of families from other local authorities and children accessing services in the area. Engagement with several children relocating to Medway had highlighted the need for more support for individuals to understand geographical locations and local support services. As a result, the YJS had enhanced its transfer arrangements to ensure that relevant information was available, and produced a film to support those new to the area. It had also developed a ‘Welcome to Medway’ information pack, which contained a directory of resources and useful materials for children and families.

Medway YJS had worked with a third-sector organisation to understand children’s views on serious youth violence and its causes as part of a Department of Education initiative. This understanding was informing the development of resources and responses to serious youth violence in Medway.

The YJ management board were developing approaches to enable children and victims to participate at the board. Some anonymised feedback from children and victims had been presented. Aspirations to collate feedback from children, parents, carers and victims at regular stages of their involvement with the YJS were being developed. However, further work was required to ensure feedback was aggregated to enable informed and strategic decision making.

An online survey had been introduced by Medway YJS for children, parents, carers and victims, which had produced some initial feedback. One victim was satisfied with the information they received about the outcome of the offence. However, given the lengthy delays in wider criminal justice processes, they had reported that they found the process of providing a victim impact statement ‘re-traumatising’ due to the length of time that had elapsed since the offence had occurred.

The YJS contacted children working with the YJS at the time of our inspection, to gain their consent for their information to be shared and enable them and their parents or carers to provide feedback on their experience of the YJS. The work completed by the YJS to enable this demonstrated its commitment to participation, with thoughtful and sensitive approaches to allow children and their parents or carers to participate in our inspection.

We provided a range of opportunities for children and their parents or carers to engage with feedback (text survey, one-to-one meeting, focus groups and video or telephone calls). We spoke to seven children and 10 parents or carers. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive and corroborated some key findings in the work we inspected. Children and their parents or carers described strong relationships with YJS practitioners, flexible appointments and tailored support to meet children’s needs.

When asked about the support of the YJS, one child said:

“The staff are friendly, support me, welcomed me and listened to me. We have worked together so I can make better choices. Looking at exit planning today so I know where I can get support when YJS ends.”

Feedback from a parent or carer reinforced the positive approaches of the YJS:

“I honestly don’t know how I would have been able to help L without the YJS practitioner’s support. When L’s worker saw that agencies were not doing what they said they would she challenged them and advocated for L at all times.”

Children found sessions with YJS practitioners most supportive when they were interesting and meaningful. This included the effective use of positive activities to deliver interventions, including more practical support such as life skills, help with CVs and training and drug and alcohol awareness sessions.

Children and their parents or carers felt that their safety was considered by the YJS practitioner both within the wider community and when attending sessions.

“YJS worker met with me and my mum at the very start and spoke to me about all sorts of areas of my life to understand me best. We agreed together what I wanted to work on to best support me including work around alcohol, future employment and my safety. I felt listened to and valued.”

We also heard how difficult it can be for children who were not in education, training or employment to access opportunities to re-engage with provision in Medway:

“I want to get my GCSE’s and be back in education or college and need help to do this. Should be doing this now. Want to get a job and qualifications.”

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Equity, diversity and inclusion (Back to top)

The YJS demonstrated a commitment to meeting diverse needs and had implemented an ambitious strategy to develop equality, diversity and inclusion across the YJS and partnerships throughout Medway. The diversity strategy aimed to ensure that all children received fair, inclusive and child-centred support by addressing disproportionality, particularly for racialised children, children in care and those with protected characteristics. The action plan sought to develop culturally competent, trauma-informed and multi-agency practice that recognised children’s lived experiences, promoted participation and tackled inequality within the YJS.

However, there was a lack of clarity at the YJ management board about why children from global majority backgrounds were over-represented within overall YJS caseloads, and particularly those receiving the most serious statutory court orders or custody. More analysis was required to understand whether appropriate and earlier diversionary opportunities could be offered to girls open to the service, as over half were subject to statutory court orders when we announced the inspection.

We found varying experiences of children entering the criminal justice system. An initial decision was made by police whether children were eligible for an out-of-court resolution, or whether they would be charged with an offence in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service. This was especially relevant where children were receiving legal advice to provide no comment interviews. Despite the CCPT being available to provide child-centred support to frontline police officers when children were arrested and charged to court, their advice was not consistently sought, and this subsequently resulted in inconsistent practice for children. The police had recognised that inconsistent approaches were having a detrimental impact and had placed a civilian staff member at court to identify suitable children for reconsideration of an out-of-court resolution. However, this system was reactive, led to delays in some children and victims receiving swift justice, and prevented quick access to necessary support services. Additionally, there had been little analysis of the impact on children with protected characteristics, and how children and families were experiencing this system. Some children and their parents or carers reported that they had been frustrated with early delays in the process following their arrest when we contacted them for feedback as part of the inspection.

The YJS demonstrated a developing awareness of equity, diversity and inclusion, and we saw some strong examples of individualised practice. The YJS had invested in significant amount of training to develop staff skills and knowledge of child-centred, relational and individualised practice. There was evidence that training was embedded, and staff were doing strong personalised work with children to achieve positive change. Mandatory diversity training for all staff, managers and board members had been implemented.

Where practice was particularly effective, practitioners engaged children and families in open dialogue about their identity and how their ethnicity and culture informed their belief systems. Practitioners were skilled in having conversations with and listening to children who had faced discrimination or adultification. This set the foundation for trusting relationships and the basis on which interventions were delivered. We saw evidence of children’s cases being reviewed during multi-agency case discussions and co-produced ‘identity plans’ being developed, which contributed to effective and personalised delivery of services. We also saw evidence that practitioners were exploring the intersection of race, culture and neurodiversity. Practitioners often aligned living skills work, such as sourcing culturally appropriate food and self-care practices with the religious and cultural beliefs of children and families. When staff were less confident in engaging in these discussions, they had a narrower understanding of the child and what they needed in order to achieve positive change.

We inspected very few cases that had been formulated with the support of a psychologist. However, where this had happened, we saw some positive examples of the impact of this activity. Formulations were culturally informed and helped practitioners to understand the child and adopt flexible methods of engagement. Staff considered where sessions would be delivered and how to adapt their interventions. They involved key individuals in the child’s life, such as a parent, carer or school welfare worker. Although the speech and language therapy post was still vacant, we saw skilled and knowledgeable practitioners understanding children’s needs and adapting plans and delivering services in an appropriate way. This was a particular strength, and the hope is that it will be further enhanced by the new speech, language and communication digital application. Opportunities for staff to access specialist consultations would also increase their confidence in their approaches with children and further strengthen the consistency in the support children receive for their speech, language and communication needs.

Medway YJS had recognised the distinct needs, experiences and challenges faced by girls within the youth justice system, and had introduced a ‘Working with Girls’ policy in 2025. This set out a gender-responsive, trauma-informed and inclusive approach to working with girls and aimed to ensure interventions were tailored to meeting girls’ needs. We heard about the developing and collaborative group work for girls, with multi-agency input from health services and the engagement of local community resources. Further work was planned to ensure join-up across a range of services and to extend this offer to other children. While we didn’t see impact of this work in the cases we inspected, it was a promising and individualised initiative that could provide wider, earlier support for girls.

The work of the YJS with magistrates was particularly impressive. Relationships with the judiciary and youth bench appeared strong, with the chair of the youth bench attending the YJ management board. The YJS provided training to around 80 magistrates on child-first principles. Excellent feedback was provided by those receiving the training to support individualised and child-centred sentencing practice. This was supportive of the YJS approach to strengthen child-centred diversion practices as part of the development of a ‘whole area model,’ in conjunction with Kent Police and YEF.

Many of the children had experienced multiple adverse childhood experiences. On some occasions, these children and their families had often been in previous contact with a range of services. Practitioners recognised that some children and their families could be mistrustful of services and owned their responsibility to engage children. Open and transparent approaches in many of the children’s cases inspected led to strong, inclusive and trustful relationships with children and their families.

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 Leon Bonas, 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. Census 2021, Office for National Statistics, 2023. ↩︎
3. Under section 49a of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, police forces are legally required to share Operation Encompass notifications with schools and other educational establishments. ↩︎
4. There are two main groups of children in Medway for whom a coordinated multi-agency approach will be delivered consistently: children where the risk to their safety and wellbeing or the risk of harm to others has been assessed as being high or very high; and children who have been identified by the police as being part of Op Checker. ↩︎
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 standard is driven by the lowest score of the key questions, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. A more detailed explanation is available on our website Standards and ratings – HM Inspectorate of Probation. ↩︎
7. The rating for the standard is driven by the lowest score of the key questions, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. A more detailed explanation is available on our website Standards and ratings – HM Inspectorate of Probation. ↩︎
8. AQA certification is a qualification awarded by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance. ↩︎
9. Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) card. ↩︎
10. 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. ↩︎