No decision has yet been taken on whether local authorities will be forced to provide a minimum level of youth services, the government has revealed.
Responding to calls for clarification on whether the promised education bill would place a new duty of youth provision on all councils, health minister Lord Warner told the House of Lords no decision had been made. He also refused to be drawn on the publication date of the long-awaited youth green paper.
In a debate on the legislative agenda set out for the new parliamentary session, the Liberal Democrat’s spokesperson on education and children, Baroness Walmsley, expressed regret at the absence of a youth justice bill “to make custody a last resort for juveniles”.
Calling for community sentences with a strong educational element to become the norm, she said: “If the welfare of the child is put at the heart of youth justice, the government will achieve its aim of reducing reoffending and everyone will be happy.”
The Earl of Listowel, a crossbench peer, added that despite all the rhetoric about joint working and the need for professionals to come out of their silos, the youth justice system was still not working effectively with other agencies to achieve better outcomes for children.
“Perhaps one good example of that is the government policy to encourage the publication of the details of children with antisocial behaviour orders,” he said.
“The Home Office has conducted no research into the impact of such publicity on those children, their siblings or families. If I were a youth worker or a social worker and the basis of my ethos was to safeguard children, I would have great difficulty in working in an organisation which in this aspect shows so little regard for the welfare of troubling, but also often troubled, children.”
Walmsley also stressed the need for the government’s latest initiatives to be backed with the necessary resources, highlighting in particular the development of the children’s workforce and the future implementation of the findings of the group set up last month to look into school discipline.
“If the Every Child Matters agenda is to be achieved, all these matters must be addressed and I and many professionals within the sector have not seen the commitment to putting in the resources to deal with these challenges,” she warned.
