Report serious incidents: guide for youth justice practitioners
How youth justice practitioners should report serious incidents involving children.
Applies to England and Wales
Serious and significant incidents in custody
You must report all serious and significant incidents in custody to the Youth Custody Service (YCS) Placements Team by calling its 24-hour telephone number 0345 36 36 36 3.
A serious incident is defined as the death of a child in custody, or while under escort. A significant incident would include one or more of the following:
- serious self-harm
- a serious or life-threatening injury to a visitor or staff
- serious assault where the victim has suffered life threatening injuries
- an action where evidence suggests it may lead to major disorder
- all escapes
- a release in error if this presents a significant risk to the public
- incidents of public, parliamentary or media interest
Serious incidents in the community
From the 1 April 2022 it will become mandatory that local youth justice services (YJS) provide notifications against six categories of incident. This decision was taken following a review of the voluntary notification system which ran from 25 June 2021 to 31 March 2022.
Read the Serious incidents notification – standard operating procedures for YJSs to find out more about:
- what incidents should be notified
- how to report an incident
- the operating procedures and forms
Updates to this page
Published 9 March 2017Last updated 8 May 2018 + show all updates
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From 8 May 2018, the YJB no longer requires local authorities to notify it of new community safeguarding and public protection incidents (CSPPIs). Youth offending teams (YOTs) will be able to access CSPPI pages through the Youth Justice Application Framework until they have put local arrangements in place. This change will not affect how YOTs send their quarterly data returns to the YJB.
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From 8 May 2018, the YJB no longer requires local authorities to notify it of new community safeguarding and public protection incidents (CSPPIs). Youth offending teams (YOTs) will be able to access CSPPI pages through the Youth Justice Application Framework until they have put local arrangements in place. This change will not affect how YOTs send their quarterly data returns to the YJB.
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First published.