Guidance

Guidance for Conditions of Youth Justice Grant 2023 - 2024

Published 5 April 2023

Applies to England and Wales

1. Purpose

This guidance is designed to support youth justice services to understand the Youth Justice Board (YJB) review and updates to the terms and conditions of the youth justice grant. We hope it will help answer the questions you may have regarding the changes that have been made and/or how you ensure you are meeting them.

If you have any queries that are not covered in this document, or you need any further support, please contact your YJB Head of Region in the first instance.

2. Compliance

The revised terms and conditions (T&Cs) include grouped areas for compliance within the area of funded activities that cover governance and leadership, service delivery, data and reporting compliances. These clarify the expectations of services and partners in receipt of the youth justice core grant.

As part of the new Youth Justice System Oversight Framework^{[footnote 1]}, quarterly oversight review meetings will be undertaken with all services. The YJB’s oversight team will confirm compliance to these T&Cs by each service, as part of routine quarterly assurance reviews. Failures in elements of compliance will be addressed with services in real time and included in judgements against performance assurance, satisfactory progress, and escalation activity.

If a service’s compliance to the grant terms and conditions is deemed to be off track, the YJB oversight team will work with the service to identify areas where support is needed and, where appropriate, provide intervention support to facilitate compliance.

2.1 Failure to comply

We are clear that the approach we take to monitoring grant compliance should be supportive and always have the best interests of child as the guiding principle.

Instances of noncompliance will be considered on an individual basis. As above, failures in elements of compliance will be addressed with services in real time.

Prolonged and persistent noncompliance with terms and conditions of grant that are a result of a refusal to undertake actions within a service’s control could lead to an exceptional sanction of grant funds. The decisions taken in these circumstances will follow the governance pathway outlined in the framework. Withholding grant payment has always been an option available to the YJB and has been part of past grant arrangements.

3. Governance and leadership

3.1 Management board attendance

The YJB expects that, as a minimum, a management board consist of the statutory partner organisations required by legislation:

• the local authority (this should include children’s social care and education)
• the police
• the probation service
• health

Membership is not limited to the statutory partners and the board may benefit from including a wider membership. Further guidance on the statutory requirements and effective governance arrangements, please refer to the YJB’s guidance on youth justice service governance and leadership

3.2 YJB representation at management board meeting

The YJB will make every effort to attend as many management boards as possible, each quarter. Where there are clashes, the YJB oversight team will make an assessment as to which board it will be most helpful to attend. This assessment will be based on several factors including discussions with local services, recent performance, support requirements and local context.

Oversight teams will also be able to use the management board meeting invite and corresponding papers to decide whether their attendance at a particular meeting should be prioritised.

As meetings are once a quarter, we would expect to receive papers a minimum of 5 working days in advance of the meeting.

The YJB will not become a core member of the management board. The YJB’s role on the management board will reflect its statutory oversight responsibilities. The YJB should be invited as a guest on a rolling basis.

4. Service Delivery

4.1 Funding for Junior Attendance Centres (JACs)

The YJB no longer provides specific funding for JACs. In 2018, the JACs specific funding was ‘baselined’ and became part of the youth justice core grant. Youth justice services who continue to contribute to the running of a JAC will use a portion of their youth justice core grant allocation for this purpose.

Although the YJB no longer provides specific grant funding for JACs, a number of services still have historical JACs funding factored into their grant payment. This is a result of the ‘baselining’ of JACs specific funding. Where this is the case for a service, the YJB still expects that this portion of their funding will be used for the provision of JACs.

Until wider changes are made to the grant funding formula, the YJB will maintain a grant condition on JACs.

5. Data and reporting

5.1 AssetPlus diversion and prevention module

Use of the new AssetPlus diversion module tool is not currently part of the terms & conditions of grant as it is not ready for roll out.

The new AssetPlus module tool may form part of the AssetPlus condition once the new tool is fully rolled out, tested, and reviewed. This is likely to be during the financial year 2023-24.

5.2 Disproportionality: action plans and toolkit use

The new terms & conditions of grant and the new key performance indicators, designed by the Ministry of Justice, require all services to regularly check their data on ethnic disproportionality and to action any disparities that are discovered.

In addition, all services have a duty under the Equality Duty to understand and address inequalities in their locality.

The YJB recognises there are some areas where there will not be a statistically significant overrepresentation of children from ethnic minorities on the caseload. In these circumstances, we would ask that services develop an action plan to address other areas of disparity that exist in their area, for example, care-experienced children, children from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, girls, etc.

It should be noted that the YJB still expects these services to regularly check their data using the toolkits to keep abreast of any emerging disparity (racial, or otherwise).

As part of this process, services should make an assessment as to how regularly their plans should be updated, based on their local data.

As a minimum expectation, action plans should be reviewed annually as part of the preparation of the local youth justice plan.

5.3 Publication of youth justice plans

Services are required to publish an annual youth justice plan.

We consider a plan ‘published’ if it can be readily accessed online.

Services may find it most convenient to publish their youth justice plans on their local authority/children’s services website.

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1. The framework brings together the YJB’s approach to performance oversight, assurance and compliance with the terms and conditions of the YJ core grant, as well as changes to how the regions in England and Wales will be managed. The planned publication date is 27 April 2023. ↩