Local learning review conducted following a serious incident of youth violence. Learning points include: agencies would like clearly defined thresholds in relation to contextual safeguarding; agencies do not always feel confident on what information they should be sharing, with who, and how to escalate concerns of poor information sharing; it is difficult to evidence change where there appears to be positive engagement and possible disguised compliance; the benefits of extensive mapping, including the collection of data on gang related violence, hotspots, presentations at local hospitals, and local police intelligence data; the value of child criminal exploitation leads in agencies including children's social care. Recommendations include: the completion of a review into information sharing between local police, children's social care and youth offending services; ensure information relating to the transfer of care of vulnerable children and their families from 'out of area' is shared with relevant local health agencies; information about hospital attendances by young people related to serious youth violence, especially in hospitals outside the young person's local area, is shared with relevant agencies; ensure the inclusion of health representatives in multi-agency forums related to children who are at high risk of youth violence; develop a clear threshold and pathways document on contextual safeguarding; consider the development of a transitional safeguarding approach with the Safeguarding Adult Board.
      
 Title:  Local learning review of serious youth violence and gang related activity. LSCB: Thurrock Local Safeguarding Children Partnership Author: Russell Wate and Jay Brown Date of publication: 2022  This case review report was deposited by the publishing LSCB(s) with the national SCR repository, a partnership between the Association of Independent LSCB Chairs and the NSPCC.  This report is available online via the NSPCC Library Catalogue. Copyright of this report remains with the publishing LSCB(s) listed above.                           Page | 1    Local Learning Review of Serious Youth Violence and Gang Related Activity                    Independent Authors: Dr Russell Wate QPM and Jay Brown   Page | 2   1. Introduction Following a serious incident of youth violence Thurrock Local Safeguarding Children Partnership (TLSCP) made a decision to carry out a focused review of serious youth violence, along with a deep dive case audit.  The focused review was supported by a review panel, which was made up of extremely knowledgeable, passionate, and case specific members, for which the review author is very grateful. The lead reviewer was Dr Russell Wate QPM. He is independent of any agency within Thurrock. He was one of the reviewers for the National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel report ‘It was hard to escape - Safeguarding children at risk from criminal exploitation’ (March 2020).  The deep dive case audit has been undertaken with involvement from the local Independent Quality Assurance Service and support from the Thurrock Safeguarding Children Partnership. A lead reviewer, Jay Brown, who is an NHS Trust Named Nurse for Safeguarding Children for Southend, Essex and Thurrock (SET), was identified by the partnership to scope and host a learning event for the deep dive and to write the report.  2. Overview of Strengths and Recommendations There is no doubt that in Thurrock there is a strong commitment from all agencies and individuals to tackle serious youth violence. This review can say with confidence that the structures, processes, and procedures that are currently in place, and those proposed actions, are addressing, where possible, serious youth violence. This case was unique in that the child had received extensive support from a multitude of agencies. Although there were concerns of information sharing being insufficient, there was a strong desire from professionals to work together. There was good attendance at multi-agency meetings and frequent communication between professionals. Despite significant engagement with services, it was unclear what motivated the child to carry a knife on the day of the incident.  The learning event for the deep dive and the panel engagement for the focussed review had strong and full engagement across all areas of the partnership. The learning event highlighted many areas of good multi-agency practice. There has been clear evidence of individual practitioners going above and beyond their roles, this tenacity, for example, was evident in the work undertaken by the Youth Offending Service (YOS). No practice or system failings were identified, and it is acknowledged that this incident was unforeseen.  This deep dive has promoted shared learning, which together with the focused Page | 3   review of serious youth violence, will lead to actions to improve safeguarding practices across Thurrock. There has been learning developed by both review processes, some of it understandably makes the same points, but also, pleasingly, additional learning has been developed by use of both processes. Several points of learning arose from discussions within the five multi-agency breakout groups in the deep dive, and these are summarised as follows: • Agencies would like clearly defined thresholds in relation to contextual safeguarding as they all view risks differently. • Agencies do not always feel confident on what information they should be sharing, with who, and how to escalate concerns of poor information sharing. • Agencies acknowledged it is difficult to evidence change where there appears to be positive engagement and possible disguised compliance.  The focused review has found areas of strength, as outlined below, and areas for further development that Thurrock LSCP should consider as actions for further work to tackle serious youth violence:  Strengths • The Violence and Vulnerability Unit (Thurrock specific), Youth Crime Justice Board (YCJB) and the Violence and Vulnerability Board (Essex wide). • The comprehensive Annual Public Health Report with an action plan with recommendations to address Youth Violence and Vulnerabilities. • The joint commitment of the Local Youth Crime Justice Board (LYCJB), Community Safety Partnership (CSP), Local Authority Scrutiny Committees, Local Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP), Health and Wellbeing Board and Brighter Futures Children Partnership. • Extensive mapping, including the collection of data on gang related violence, hotspots, presentations at local hospitals, Essex police intelligence data. • Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) leads in agencies including Childrens Social Care (CSC). • Essex Police have created a number of teams across the force area to work and support their established policing teams and partner agencies, enhancing the ability to prevent offending, reduce involvement in criminality and protect those affected by Serious Youth Violence and Gang Related Crime.  • A good understanding within Thurrock of the concept of ‘Place’ and how to tackle it. They have identified hot spots for offending, information and access to crime trends, and intelligence to focus resources to anticipate and respond to incidents of this nature. • The Gangs Matrix and the Gangs Related Violence report. • The Child Exploitation (CE) tracker panel. Page | 4   • The members of the YOS team have been consistent for a number of years, with extensive experience of youth justice, gangs/CCE and serious youth violence. • The very active Youth Justice Out of Court Disposal Panel (OOCD). • The YOS and CSC support for the Contextual Safeguarding approach across children’s services. • Several Thurrock agencies provide a ‘Reachable Moment’ offer, for example, YOS and CSC. This includes hospital-based youth workers who work with young people when they present at A&E with an injury/stab wound. • Good relationship based, and trauma informed practice demonstrated in Thurrock. • Thurrock have put together an extremely good leaflet for parents titled ‘Gangs and Exploitation’ ‘Support and information for parents and carers across Thurrock.’  • A good understanding and balance between a child being an offender, but also a child in need of safeguarding • Good use of National Referral Mechanism (NRM) referrals. • There are a number of scrutiny and audit processes in place, some of them internal to individual services but most are multi-agency. Areas for consideration for further development • Consideration within the partnership for overarching governance of serious youth violence strategy and which board leads. • There is a hospital data set collection that helps in this area, but this only applies to the Mid-South and Essex Hospital Group. There is a sizeable gap for Thurrock children that attend other Essex hospitals, and in particular London hospitals in the first instance, as no data is shared. • Support required from London Boroughs and the Met Police with closing intelligence gaps as there is a considerable flow and interaction of youths between Thurrock and the London Boroughs. This has led to recent cases of serious violent and gang related offences committed by youths from London Boroughs within Thurrock. • An early understanding of Thurrock children committing offences of serious youth violence in other areas, in particular London Boroughs. • The priority implementation of the findings of the review in relation to information sharing between Essex Police and the YOS and Children Social Care. • Engagement with secondary schools in relation to permanent exclusions. Including the continuing development of the project with the Alternative Provision in Thurrock. Engagement with primary schools may be a positive move in order to identify children at risk earlier. • Continuing the improvements in the quality of ‘Return Home interviews.’ Page | 5   • Further work to be identified to look at how Thurrock can be more creative in engaging and educating young people and families who do not either recognise identified risk, or are resistant to social care involvement. This will involve identifying different models, skills, services, and ways of working. • Think Family and a trauma informed approach training does take place in some agencies. Have other professionals also had training in trauma informed approach? e.g., health visitors, school nurses and teachers?  • The multi-agency partnership to improve the arrangements for support and engagement with children at risk of extra familial harm (as outlined by the Ofsted focused visit, June 2021). • The importance of transitions for children from 14 years old needs to be considered (Ofsted focused visit, June 2021). The development of a Transitional Safeguarding 0-25 approach should be considered jointly with the Safeguarding Adult Board. • Although accepting there is in place a national agreement between probation and YOS for transition, earlier transition planning for children in care and care leavers who are exposed to risk of child exploitation, gangs and extra-familial harm is needed in Thurrock. • Implementation of the findings of the report of vulnerable families moving into the borough. • Work is required to alleviate the major concern for agencies locally in Thurrock regarding those vulnerable families who are moved into the area that they are not aware of, and therefore may not be housed in an appropriate area and not given the support required. • Housing services to consider not using temporary accommodation for those children subject to, or likely to be involved in serious youth violence. • It is suggested that Thurrock considers the need for improvement in regard to communication and information sharing to, and between, health agencies in a number of areas: a) the transfer of care from vulnerable Children and Young People and their families from Out of Area into Thurrock; the communication of Hospital attendances of Thurrock Children and Young People to Hospitals Out of Area (especially when those relate to Youth Serious or Gang related violence);  b) the inclusion of health representatives in relevant multiagency forums where Children and Young People who are known to be at high risk are discussed; and the information sharing pathways from agencies (such as Police and YOS) to health services.    Page | 6   3. Recommendations A number of the key areas of learning (identified above) could be addressed by implementing the following priority recommendations:  Recommendation 1 Improvements are needed in relation to Information Sharing by the Thurrock safeguarding children partnership and the other relevant Thurrock statutory partnerships. i) Ensure the completion of the current review and to then monitor the implementation of actions to improve information sharing between Essex Police to the Thurrock YOS and CSC. ii) Explore ways to gain the support required from London Boroughs and the Met Police to share information in relation to the flow and interaction of youths between Thurrock and the London Boroughs. iii) Improvements are required in the communication and information sharing to, and between, health agencies in a number of areas a) Ensuring information relating to the transfer of care from vulnerable children and their families from ‘Out of Area’ into Thurrock is shared with relevant health agencies. This could be widened to all agencies and the Thurrock LSCP audit group could undertake an audit of information sharing for children transferring into Thurrock from outside the local authority,  b) The communication of hospital attendances of Thurrock children to hospitals Out of Area (especially when those relate to serious youth violence) is shared with relevant agencies in Thurrock, c) Ensure the inclusion of health representatives in relevant multiagency forums where children who are known to be at high risk of youth violence are discussed. iv) Thurrock LSCP to consider hosting multi-agency information sharing workshops to develop professionals’ knowledge on serious youth violence in the context of safeguarding.  Recommendation 2 Thurrock LSCP to develop a clear threshold and pathways document in relation to contextual safeguarding. Following the completion of this document an extensive practitioner awareness raising campaign should take place across the partnership.  Recommendation 3 The development of a transitional safeguarding approach should be considered jointly with the Safeguarding Adult Board.   Page | 7   Recommendation 4 i) The Partnership needs to ensure that further work takes place to look at how Thurrock can be more creative in engaging and educating young people and families, who do not either recognise identified risk, or are resistant to social care involvement. This will involve identifying different models, skills, services, and ways of working. ii)  Agencies working with children and young people at risk of youth violence need to clearly ascertain in their assessments the views of the child, but also their parents and carers views of risk.  Recommendation 5 i) Housing services in Thurrock to exercise managed housing reciprocal and only use temporary accommodation in an emergency, for those children subject to, or likely to be involved in serious youth violence. ii)  Work is required with housing providers in Thurrock to alleviate the major concern for agencies locally regarding those vulnerable families that are moved into Thurrock that they are not aware of, and therefore may be housed in an inappropriate area and not given the support required.  Recommendation 6 i) Engagement is required with secondary schools in relation to permanent exclusions. This includes Thurrock SCP receiving reports in relation to the continuing development of the ongoing project with the PRU in Thurrock.  ii) Engagement with primary schools will also be a positive move by the partnership in order to identify children at risk earlier, this should include an awareness programme to these children highlighting the risk of carrying knives.    