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

Published:

Foreword (Back to top)

This inspection is part of our programme of inspections across youth justice services in England and Wales.[1] In this inspection we have inspected and rated work with children and victims in Wakefield Youth Justice Service (YJS) across two broad areas: the quality of work done with children working with the YJS and the quality of work done with victims. Overall, Wakefield YJS was rated as ‘Good’.

Inspectors found a vibrant, learning culture amongst staff in the YJS, which had led to significant improvements in service delivery since the last inspection. Practitioners were passionate and motivated, using a trauma-informed approach to working with children. They understood their children well and focused upon ensuring they received the appropriate support at the right time.

Overall, assessing activity was undertaken effectively. Practitioners had a depth of understanding about the children they were working with and focused upon their strengths. Children’s individual needs were well understood and the identification of relevant diversity factors helped practitioners analyse how positive change could be achieved. However, assessing activity for children on out-of-court disposals that analysed how to achieve safety in the community was not consistent, and was identified as an area for development.

Planning activity was collaborative. Practitioners engaged children and parents or carers well, and YJS staff used a host of multi-agency forums well to develop an effective partnership approach. The complexity of the children the YJS worked with was high. Whilst the YJS understood this complexity, more consistency of practice to keep them and the community safe would ensure that concerns were not overlooked or underestimated.

The quality of delivery was impressive. A well-resourced YJS with highly engaged partner agencies delivered consistently high-quality interventions that supported positive change, and which kept children and the community safe. There was a resilience in arrangements that meant children could always expect to receive a high level of support from the partnership.

Victim work was done well. The commissioned service brought expertise and knowledge, and activity was well integrated within the broader YJS. A better understanding of victims’ protected characteristics and why some chose not to engage, despite giving consent, were areas for development and consideration for the YJS.

In this report, we make five recommendations to help support the YJS to develop further.

Martin Jones CBE

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

Ratings (Back to top)

Fieldwork started June 2025Score 9/12
Overall ratingGood

Work with children

2.1 AssessingGood
2.2 PlanningGood
2.3 Implementation and deliveryOutstanding

Work with victims

V1 Work with victimsGood

Recommendations (Back to top)

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

The Wakefield Youth Justice Service should:

  1. ensure assessing activity for children on out-of-court disposals consistently analyses and identifies how best to keep the community safe
  2. ensure planning activity for children on out-of-court disposals consistently identifies how best to keep children and the community safe
  3. work with the police and Remedi to ensure there is a detailed understanding of victims’ protected characteristics, which is used to drive high-quality, personalised offers of support.

The Youth Justice Management Board should:

  1. assure itself that resourcing for victim work is sufficient, particularly if victim engagement rates increase.

West Yorkshire Police and Wakefield Probation Delivery Unit should:

  1. assure themselves that children’s communication passports, if available, are used effectively during any relevant interactions between children and professionals.

Background (Back to top)

We conducted fieldwork in Wakefield YJS over a period of a week, beginning 23 June 2025. We inspected cases where the YJS had commenced work with children subject to bail or remand, court disposals or out-of-court disposals between 23 December 2024 and 21 February 2025. We also conducted 18 interviews with case managers.

We inspected the organisational arrangements for work delivered with victims and looked at cases where the YJS had undertaken contact with victims between 23 December 2024 and 21 February 2025. We also conducted interviews with staff and managers responsible for the delivery of this work.

Wakefield YJS provides interventions for children, families, and victims living in the metropolitan borough of Wakefield in West Yorkshire. The YJS is based in the heart of the city of Wakefield, but 69 per cent of the area covered by the service is rural. Wakefield is the 54th most deprived district in England, with 19 per cent of children under 16 years old living in low-income homes. There are 75,000 children under the age of 18 in the district; 85 per cent of children are White British, although the number of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic children has been rising. Just over 12 per cent of children speak English as a second language.

The last full year of published YJB statistics[2] indicated that only 14 per cent of the annual YJS caseload were female, though at the point of the inspection announcement 23 per cent of the caseload were girls. The annual statistics also highlighted that 90 per cent of the annual caseload were White British, a higher representation than both the regional and national average. Whilst there was no racial disproportionality within the overall YJS caseload, the service’s own analysis indicated that Black and Asian children were over-represented within post-court interventions in 2024. Younger children were prominent within the annual footfall passing through the service, with 41 per cent aged between 10 and 14. At the point of the inspection announcement, 48 children were open to the YJS, 58 per cent of whom were receiving interventions following a court appearance.

The YJS sits within the partnerships, strategy, and innovation service in children’s services. The YJS is overseen by a service manager who reports to the head of service for early intervention and prevention (EIP). This alignment with the EIP service means easy access to family and youth hub early help provision across the district. Broader partnership activity is supported by the ‘Wakefield Families Together’ approach, facilitating targeted support from statutory and voluntary services.

YJS operational activity is overseen by three team managers and a learning and practice development coordinator. The YJS itself is a well-resourced, multidisciplinary team. Case management responsibilities lie with YJS practitioners, a probation officer, and a senior social worker. Education and intervention support workers undertake additional hands-on work delivering interventions. Specialist roles in the team structure support education, training, and employment (ETE), court, and health work. There are two seconded police officers and a speech and language therapist (SALT). Remedi are commissioned to provide victim services. Reparation activity is overseen by a YJS practitioner. The health worker and victim worker roles are currently vacant, but recruitment is at an advanced stage.

The YJS champions apprentice opportunities and staff have progressed through the organisation from apprenticeship to management roles. The YJS is also currently supporting staff with their social work training.

Wakefield YJS was seeing a rapidly decreasing number of children becoming first-time entrants (FTE) to the criminal justice system. This decline correlated with the approach taken in the district where lower gravity offences were now normally dealt with via an Outcome 22[3] ‘deferred prosecution’. The intervention was called ‘Chance to Change.’ The seconded police officers also screened children for their suitability for no further action (NFA) or community resolution options before they were discussed at a joint decision-making panel. As a result of this approach, fewer children were receiving youth conditional cautions (YCCs) and youth cautions (YCs). A third of the children we inspected who were on an out-of-court disposal had received at least one previous out-of-court disposal.

Historically, reoffending rates had been below regional and national averages. However, there had been a steady increase and recent data indicated that the binary rate had overtaken the national averages and that offences per offender were nearing national levels. Interventions in Wakefield to reduce reoffending were typically ‘trauma-informed’[4] and ‘child first’.[5] Additionally, a case formulation[6] approach had been developed to help those working with children better understand them. The Wakefield model did not utilise a psychologist to facilitate partnership analysis of children.

Custody rates were low. However, there was recognition of an increasing proportion of violent offences in Wakefield. The Home Office ‘Young Futures’ ambition will be utilised to address these concerns. Prevention partnerships were being created to help identify children and young people aged 10-17 at risk of being drawn into offending and offer support in a more systematic way.

One further key challenge faced by Wakefield was the prevalence of children not accessing full-time education provision and an over-representation of those with special educational needs and disability (SEND). Activity was being undertaken across the partnership to tackle these challenges, in recognition of the increased risk of offending behaviour associated with these factors.

During our fieldwork context visit and showcase slots, the YJS demonstrated its approach to reparation activity, addressing speech, language, and communication need, child exploitation, safety planning, and case formulation. It was notable that we saw evidence of this showcased work reflected in many of the children’s files that we inspected.

Domain two: Work with children (Back to top)

We took a detailed look at 18 cases where the YJS has worked with children subject to bail, remand, community sentences, resettlement or out-of-court disposals.

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 rating[7] for assessing is based on the following key questions:

Does assessing sufficiently analyse how to:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?94%
keep the child and the community safe?67%

Wakefield had developed a robust quality assurance framework, and we saw evidence of the impact of this within children’s case records. Practitioners were producing, reviewing, and contributing to high-quality assessing activity.

Assessing activity to analyse how to achieve positive change was strong and was particularly evident in written assessments using the YJB prevention and diversion tool for out-of-court disposals. Assessing that used this tool to identify how to achieve positive change was comprehensive and analytical. Inspectors noted that guidance to write ‘to’ the child within these assessments facilitated a genuine child-first approach and supported practitioners to understand how to achieve change from the child’s perspective.

The cohort of children whom we inspected had complex needs and inspectors identified multiple areas where positive change was needed, such as help with substance misuse, emotional wellbeing, and engaging in constructive activities. Practitioners accurately assessed and identified these needs, and this enabled them to plan and target activity that would lead to positive change during subsequent interventions.

Practitioners analysed the child’s strengths and protective factors well with every child who we inspected. Potential structural barriers were understood and explored. For example, challenges such as children experiencing difficulties with education were investigated and their impact analysed. To gain a greater understanding of potential barriers, practitioners linked with education colleagues to analyse progress made by the child. If appropriate, existing assessments, such as education, health, and care plans (EHCPs), were scrutinised and utilised well. Additionally, a speech and language therapist (SALT) was employed to provide capacity for ongoing screening and assessment to ensure children’s speech, language, and communication needs were fully assessed and understood.

Practitioners recognised and analysed diversity factors well. Their understanding of the impact of neurodiversity was well developed. Practitioners had sensitive, probing conversations with children and their families to inform their understanding of children’s identity and individual needs. In a reasonable majority of the children’s cases we inspected, their sexual identity was known, and we saw evidence this was analysed to inform understanding of how this might impact upon a child. We also saw examples of children’s age, religion, and experiences of trauma all being explored in relation to their impact upon achieving positive change.

Overall, although assessing activity to keep the child and community safe was not as strong as activity to promote positive change, it was still generally undertaken well. However, in a small number of the inspected cases, assessing to keep the community safe needed to improve. This was particularly pertinent when children were receiving out-of-court disposals. It was clear the YJS understood well the increasing complexity of children receiving out-of-court disposals, however, it needed to ensure that all assessing activity accurately analysed and reflected this complexity when assessing how to achieve safety for the community.

Where assessing activity to achieve safety needed to improve, we saw instances where the complexity of children and their behaviours were not always amply reflected upon or sufficiently analysed. For example, the focus was too narrowly on the index offence rather than fully reflecting and analysing other relevant or previous behaviours, such as the witnessing, experiencing or engagement in violence in a domestic setting, violence, harassment, and the influence of others. However, no thematic issues were identified.

Inspectors were impressed at how activity was responsive to changes in children’s circumstances. We saw examples of practitioners showing adaptability in response to emerging information, such as when risk factors were identified at multi-agency forums, like case formulation meetings and child in need meetings, or when additional information was made available by partners such as forensic child and adolescent mental health services (FCAMHS). Practitioners saw assessing as a dynamic activity, not as a static process. We also saw a willingness to reflect and review. The YJS needed to ensure this was consistent across all assessing activity, particularly if case formulation or multi-agency meetings were not held.

We found a mature approach to embedding child-first principles in practice, and a positive balance to ensure victims’ needs and safety were taken into consideration in assessing activity. The YJS had identified that many of the children with whom it worked had been victims of crime themselves,[8] and this understanding supported a holistic approach to the consideration of the needs of victims as part of assessing activity.

 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 rating[9] for planning is based on the following key questions:

Does planning focus sufficiently on how to:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?94%
keep the child and community safe?78%

Planning activity to achieve positive change for the child was done well. In every case that we inspected, practitioners took sufficient account of children’s strengths and protective factors and identified key structural factors. Practitioners identified strength-based opportunities for children within planning, such as their engagement with educational reintegration and participation in pro-social activities. Planned targets related to these objectives were realistic and meaningful to children.

Consideration was given to children’s diversity factors in planning. Planning reflected a thoughtful and tailored approach to supporting positive change, with clear consideration of specific challenges, such as children’s neurodiversity or communication needs. In such instances, plans for intervention were creatively adapted and actions, such as using cooking to build rapport, were included in descriptions of how work would be facilitated. In other instances, learning disabilities were planned for by recognising the need to use simple language, sourcing child-friendly resources, and checking children’s understanding.

The YJS personalised approach to planning was impressive. Practitioners used information from panels such as the joint decision-making panel (JDMP) or youth conditional caution (YCC) conditions and produced child-friendly documents. This meant they moved away from prescriptive conditions and tailored planning to meet children’s individual needs. Additionally, practitioners worked with children and their parents or carers to develop detailed plans, which coordinated the activity, resource, and input available from other services. A greater representation of partners at JDMPs, particularly education and children’s social care colleagues, could further support planning activity, and the YJS might want to consider a review of attendance at the panel going forward.

The YJS was a member of the South and West Yorkshire Resettlement Consortium, and we found planning activity to achieve positive change for children in custody or following release was structured, responsive, and tailored appropriately to the custodial context within which the child was placed.

Planning to keep children and the community safe was undertaken effectively in a reasonable majority of instances. For many of the children we inspected, planning was targeted to address the factors that could help to achieve safety. For example, where the safety of the child was a consideration, there was a good understanding of practical activity that could be undertaken to support their responses to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as referral to the family hub for targeted whole family support. Alternatively, if there were a need to consider the safety of the community, work planned for that focused on specific risks, such as weapons carrying and addressing negative peer influence. There was a strong understanding of the intersectionality of harm faced by the child and the community, and we saw appropriate focus on supporting children’s emotional regulation as a means of helping support them to avoid situations that placed themselves and others at risk.

In most cases, activity was coordinated amongst the partnership and sequenced effectively. Some children assessed to pose or be at high risk of harm were targeted and discussed at multi-agency case formulation meetings, and these provided a routine and regular means to discuss  children in depth amongst the partnership.

These meetings ran alongside a plethora of other focused and well-attended multi-agency forums. We saw examples where children who displayed harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) were discussed at the HSB panel, and children at risk of exploitation were discussed at the ‘risk assessment meeting’ (RAM). These meetings were used effectively as part of planning to keep the child and others safe. Where concerns about harm in the community were identified, the YJS also convened a ‘safety for others’ panel, which was attended by relevant partners. Positively, this collegiate approach was responsive and worked outside of planned meetings or panels. We saw an example of dynamic and collaborative planning following a child’s arrest and charge for further offences. Professionals came together promptly to discuss the child’s risk, needs, and potential bail conditions, and offered up-to-date advice to the court when the child appeared.

To further improve planning activity to keep the child and the community safe, the YJS needed to ensure that practice was consistent. Although we found no systemic issues, we saw some instances where interagency planning was not as strong, collaborative or as clear as it needed to be, and planning that did not sufficiently consider what was needed to keep the child or others safe. We also saw instances where planning needed to be responsive to change, factors related to the index offence that were not fully planned for or previous behaviours being overlooked. Planning to keep the child and the community safe was not as strong in the out-of-court disposal cases that we inspected, and a greater focus upon ensuring consistency of practice across all disposals was required.

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

Our rating[10] for delivery is based on the following key questions:

Does the delivery (and review?) of well-focused, personalised, and coordinated services:% ‘Yes’
achieve positive change for the child?94%
keep the child and the community safe?83%

Delivery was the strongest area of practice. Children received the interventions that had been planned for. Support for children reflected a relationship-based approach to practice and was underpinned by strong multi-agency coordination. Practitioners built meaningful engagement with children and parents or carers, adapting delivery to contextual needs.

The relationship-based approach in Wakefield was key to the YJS work. Practitioners developed positive relationships with children and parents or carers to encourage participation and engagement. We saw interventions and practitioners backed by targeted support from education and intervention support workers, and examples of effective co-working, utilising the skills and experience of professionals to deliver separate sessions in accordance with the child’s need. We also observed some interventions delivered by the education and intervention support workers with children during fieldwork and were impressed with the clear rapport on view and the relevance to objectives in the child’s plan.

Interventions to achieve positive change placed an emphasis on considering children’s diversity factors. For example, the work by the SALT to develop communication passports was crucial in assisting children with speech, language, and communication difficulties to engage effectively. All the partners with whom we spoke during fieldwork were aware of these passports. However, this could be strengthened by ensuring police and probation (when children transition to this service) routinely refer to them when they have contact with relevant children to ensure these passports are used consistently to support delivery.

Multi-agency alignment was visible with exit planning and referral to universal services. There was assurance that support did not simply stop when the YJS stopped working with a child. We saw a number of examples of effective exit or handover planning, such as consideration of referral to adult services when a child turned 18 years old, supporting a child post-YJS intervention with an ongoing ADHD referral, and linking a family with one of the local family hubs to ensure ongoing support.

Delivery to achieve safety for the child and the community was a strength. Fieldwork meetings showcased a strong offer of wraparound support and collaboration, including for children who had been diverted from court. We found instances where children’s social care, early help, substance misuse services, and the police were engaged and working effectively to keep the child and others safe.

Whilst service delivery was mainly collaborative, the YJS needed to ensure this approach was always reflected within support offered to children for whom safety for themselves and within the community was most difficult to achieve. The implementation of partnership support for a very small minority of these children who faced or posed the highest harm was not always as efficient as we would have anticipated. However, we saw evidence of professional challenge to ensure the needs of children continued to be supported by the partnership.

The harm children faced was complex and we saw, in relevant inspected cases, that the delivery of services to address issues of vulnerability, victimisation, and exploitation was done well in a reasonable majority of cases. We saw instances where safeguarding the child considered both contextual and home environments. Key services, including children’s social care, the exploitation team, and the youth justice service, were identified and mobilised, and additional parenting work was offered.

We also found that effective services were delivered to keep other people safe in a large majority of instances. For example, we saw targeted interventions on knife crime and thinking things through for children at risk of involvement in serious youth violence, and ‘Squaring Up’ programme sessions focusing on relationships and misogynistic attitudes where these had been identified as a concern. There was support from the partnership in delivering this work, evidenced by effective information sharing with the police when new intelligence about behaviours became known. The YJS understood how harm could develop if left unchecked and worked well with partners to address this during interventions.

If a child’s circumstances changed, there was a proactive response to delivery and how it was implemented. There was also a clear understanding of the intersectionality between the harm faced by and from the child, and that these risks had to be addressed jointly by the partnership to achieve safety. In one example, following an allegation of further offending and a subsequent disclosure of also being a victim, appropriate action was taken through multi-agency discussion and referrals for additional safeguarding support from children’s services and to the HSB panel.

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

Our rating [11] 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 quality of work with victims that we inspected was strong. Even when victims did not engage, the victim worker’s communication attempts were personalised.
  • There was a recognition of the importance of victim work at a strategic level. The management board afforded appropriate consideration and there were links into other strategic and regional forums. There was further review at the partnership public protection subgroup of the management board.
  • There was a comprehensive offer of support for victims. We saw collaboration across services and partners to meet victim needs.
  • Policies and processes had recently been reviewed and contained all relevant information and considerations. Practitioners’ understanding of the offer to victims was strong and we were assured that every person we spoke to understood what constituted effective practice This was reflected in both victim and children’s case records.
  • Remedi, the commissioned service that oversaw victim services, had extensive experience in this area of work. We saw evidence that this brought additional benefit to Wakefield’s victim offer by ensuring a targeted response and support that reflected Remedi’s understanding of effective practice.
  • A previous self-evaluation of victim work had resulted in the creation of a comprehensive victim action plan. Sufficient progress was being made against objectives within this plan.
  • The commissioned victim worker role was embedded into the YJS structure, with arrangements to ensure the person in this role received effective support from both the YJS and Remedi. Victim workers had access to clinical supervision and support for managing vicarious trauma. Although there was a victim worker vacancy currently, Remedi had expedited recruitment activity and backfilled the vacancy satisfactorily. There was a resilience to arrangements.
  • Victim consent rates, where victims consented to exploring an offer of support from the YJS, were impressive. There was some understanding of the reasons why some victims did not provide consent, and action had been taken to mitigate this.
  • There was a developing understanding of the profile of victims and a range of support that reflected this, such as provision for child victims, male victims or victims of HSB.
  • Victim safety planning was prominent. We heard of several activities, such as exclusion zones, Buddi Tag GPS, and non-contact licence conditions, which were routinely used or considered.
  • We saw examples of activity to develop victim work provision that had emanated from victim feedback or from self-evaluation. The approach was reflective rather than reactive and showed a willingness to improve.

Areas for improvement

  • Although victim consent rates were good, this was not reflected in their ongoing engagement with victim workers. The drop-off was significant. Although there was action to address this, the reasons for the drop-off were not fully understood, and the YJS did not work with most victims of crime.
  • Although police colleagues were engaged with victim processes, previous staff turnover had affected frontline police officer understanding of these. The importance of the police sharing all relevant victim information with the YJS, particularly on their protected characteristics, needed greater priority. Where this information had not been provided it had resulted in an incomplete understanding of the victim profile in Wakefield, which was only now starting to be resolved.
  • Resourcing was sufficient given current workloads. However, if levels of engagement increased as per the action plan, it was not clear whether the management board had yet sufficiently considered how uplifts in funding would be formulated and agreed.
  • The policies and processes to guide staff about statutory victim contact activity by probation did not seem to have been consistently embedded in practice in the work we inspected, albeit for a small cohort of relevant inspected children.
  • Victims had not contributed to the development of the recently reviewed victim and restorative justice policy.

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

There was a strong focus on participation and engagement, and activity was coordinated by Wakefield’s voice and participation team. We saw an ambition to develop children’s involvement in improving policies and procedures, and a link with senior management. There were several targeted forums for children in the authority, and they had the opportunity to sit on the children and young people board and helped facilitate two ‘Build our Future’ summits annually.

Children open to the YJS had taken part in this activity and there had been an emerging focus on the specific needs of the youth justice cohort. For example, children assisted with recruitment and were involved in ‘mystery shopping’ activity to provide an insight into the quality of support from some services. The recent completion of a child-first self-assessment had included feedback from children on their experiences.

All this activity had helped to develop an understanding that YJS children could sometimes face greater barriers to accessing universal services, and this in turn was utilised to develop bespoke offers of support.

The YJS contacted, on our behalf, children who were working with the YJS at the time of the inspection to gain their consent and enable them and their parents or carers to feed back on their experience of the YJS. We provided a variety of options for children and their parents or carers to participate in the inspection process (text survey, one-to-one meeting, focus groups, and video or telephone calls).

We spoke to three children on their own, three parents, and a child who attended with their parent. We also received text feedback from seven children. Responses from everyone were overwhelmingly positive, and children, parents, and carers spoke effusively about the support that practitioners provided; one child noted:[12]

“If you asked for anything they would provide; they are lovely to talk to and meet and very welcoming, they make you the best possible you … as long as you are willing to work with them.”

Every child or parent with whom we spoke said that they felt valued and respected, and that they were always involved with the planning to support them; one child said:

“Employment was the biggest thing I wanted help with, and they got me in touch with a course at the fire station called ‘Fireworks’ to do this six-week course – It was brilliant. Did stuff about team building, future planning, and stuff. It has helped my CV.”

Crucially, we heard evidence that practitioners supported children in developing a pro-social identity and reflecting on their behaviour – activity that we had also seen within our delivery standard. One child noted that his case manager had:

“Really helped me with police and issues I had. They have always been in court supporting me. Once when I was wanted, my case manager picked me up, spoke to me about consequences and what was happening, and took me to the police station to hand myself in.”

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (Back to top)

Wakefield YJS’s approach to equity, inclusion, and diversity (EDI) was well defined. The management board was sufficiently sighted on relevant data, strengths, and areas of challenge within the authority. This was underpinned by a strategic action plan which focused on appropriate areas, such as governance and leadership, data and insight, service delivery, and workforce development.

Due to the high-quality recording of children’s protected characteristics, both the YJS and the management board had a sufficient overall understanding of the demographics and profile of the children they worked with. The challenge for the partnership in reviewing the action plan was transferring this understanding into meaningful change in service delivery and support for specific groups of children where disproportionality was a concern. For example, there was recognition that Black and Asian children had been over-represented in post-court interventions in 2024, but not yet a clear understanding of why. There were ongoing reviews and agenda items at future management board meetings to explore these issues further.

The YJS and police usage of Outcome 22 to prevent escalation through the youth justice service was clear. However, given the racial disproportionality within post-court interventions, there was no clear ambition yet to target Black and minority ethnic children within this approach, as originally identified within the Lammy Review.[13]

The YJS’s EDI policy was standard and not too dissimilar to that produced in other services, but what was obvious was the sense that this was a ‘living’ document. The service manager proactively ensured that the policy was used to assist children in accessing services and pathways of support as a way of assisting their diversity needs. We saw this reflected in the approach of the partnership, where activity to support children with special educational needs and disabilities was visible, and where individual factors such as sexual identity were identified, explored, and evidenced within YJS case records. Whilst there were still areas for development, there was a genuine sense that the operational approach was aligning with strategic intentions.

The majority of YJS staff were female. There was also a high representation of White British staff within the service. This had not impacted upon the service’s overall approach to diversity though, as meaningful learning and development opportunities had been promoted. Practitioners had engaged in training in areas such as cultural competency, working with girls, and neurodiversity. This had built staff confidence in asking children questions about protected characteristics, and we saw this reflected in case records.

The understanding of victims’ protected characteristics was not as well developed, with them clearly recorded in only one of the cases that we inspected. In one instance, this lack of understanding was significant as the victim had been subject to a racially motivated offence. Both the service and police, who initially sourced victim information, were aware of these shortcomings and they were being addressed via the victim action plan.

Data annexe (Back to top)

Wakefield Youth Data Annexe
(XLSX, 132 KB)

Press release (Back to top)

“Encouraging” work with children and victims found at ‘Good’ Wakefield Youth Justice Service

Further information (Back to top)

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

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

[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] Youth Justice Board (January 2025), Youth Justice annual statistics 2023 to 2024.

[3] Outcome 22 is one of the Home Office administration codes that the police use. In this case the ‘deferred prosecution’ condition means that prosecution is paused while the child undertakes agreed activities for a specified period.  If conditions are successfully met, the charges are typically dropped or remain dormant, and the child does not become an FTE. If the agreed conditions are breached, the prosecution can resume, and the child can be charged.

[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-definition-of-trauma-informed-practice/working-definition-of-trauma-informed-practice

[5] https://hmiprobation.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/our-research/evidence-base-youth-justice/general-models-and-principles/child-first/

[6] Case formulation is a process developed in clinical psychology and counselling to develop a comprehensive understanding of an individual’s presenting problems. In a youth justice context, it serves as a tool for making sense of a child’s story, turning the partnership’s varying assessment and analysis pieces into a single narrative that informs intervention choices.

[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] The YJS provided data showing that 76 per cent of children known to it had been victims themselves.

[9] 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.

[10] 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.

[11] 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.

[12] Quotes are directly from children, parents or carers.

[13] The Lammy Review (2025), An independent review into the treatment of, and outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the Criminal Justice System.