Brighton & Hove

Anti-social behaviour and hate incident casework review

2013-2014 Quarter 1

Brighton & HoveCommunity Safety CaseworkTeam

Outputs and outcomes report1stApril 2013 to 30th June 2013

Purpose of the report

  1. To provide an insight into the work of Community Safety Casework Team
  1. To demonstrate the importance of the Community Safety Caseworker role
  1. To place the work of Community Safety Casework Team in the context of the statistical overview of outcomes and outputs from 1stApril 2013 to 30thJune 2013.

What the casework Team does?

The principal aim of the Community Safety Casework Team (CSCT) is to tackle, prevent and reduce the harm caused by hate incidentsanti-social behaviour (ASB) across Brighton & Hove.To deliver this aim the team uses a wide range of tools and powers available to support and protect victims and witnesses whilst encouraging and requiring perpetrators to address and change their behaviours.

Currently the Casework Team is made up of:

  • Anabel Carrington Community Safety Caseworker
  • Anne Fosbery Police Community Support Officer
  • Anthony Carroll Community Safety caseworker
  • Jonathan Ridley Community Safety Caseworker
  • Kevin Michnowicz ASB Police Officer
  • Lucy Yallop Community Safety Caseworker
  • Mike Tyler Community Safety Solicitor
  • Peter Wileman Senior Community Safety Caseworker
  • Siobhan Bostock Community Safety Caseworker
  • Tim Read Community Safety Caseworker

The six Community Safety Caseworkers managearound 8-10complex cases each at any one time. These cases involveindividuals, families or groups committing ASB and/or hate incidentsthat causeharm to their individual victims and often to the wider community.

The CSCT uses a balance of enforcement, support and diversionary activities to work with ASB and hate incident perpetrators to tackle and address their behaviour. The team supports victims, witnesses and communities that are suffering anti-social behaviour and hate incidents by implementing Brighton and Hove’s victim and witness service standards to reduce the harm that is being caused.On a case by case basis, the CSCT balances the needs of the perpetrator to be supported and encouraged to address their behaviour against the needs of the victim and witnesses to be protected from the behaviour.

The Senior Caseworker provides line management and supervision to all members of the team plus case management supervision to the ASB Housing officer in the Temporary Accommodation Team, oversees the team’s procedure and practice development and the training and development of individual staff members, organises and facilitates training in ASB and hate incident good practice for key partners,and ensures that robustoperational joint-working arrangements are established and consolidated with a wide and varied range of partner agencies.

The Casework Team provides a duty service on Monday to Friday between 0900 and 1700. Members of the public and service providers can speak to a duty worker about any ASB or hate incident concern. The duty services deal with approximately 60 enquiries per month. The duty phone number is 01273 292735. The team can also be contacted by e-mail at

Developments this quarter

Team members have attended training in:

  • Benefit and welfare reform
  • Break 4 Change (addressing young person to adult domestic abuse)
  • Community engagement
  • Financial management for budget holders
  • Management and leadership
  • Understanding and using psychological interventions
  • Victim support

Team members have provided training, workshops and briefings about the work of the Community Safety Casework Team aimed at increasing confidence in reporting ASB and hate incidents. The training incorporates sessions on:

  • Who the Casework Team are?
  • What is ASB?
  • What is a hate incident?
  • How we support victims of ASB and hate incidents
  • How to report ASB and hate incidents

These sessions have been delivered during this quarter to:

  • Adult Social Care summit
  • Attendees at event organised by the Carers Centre
  • Attendees at World Autism Day
  • Brighton Housing Trust stay safe event
  • EF language schools
  • Peoples Day
  • Residents and staff at STOPOVER (supported housing for young women aged 16-25)
  • RUOK (substance misuse service for young people)
  • Sussex Interpreting Services
  • Transformers (support service for trans young people)

All members of the Casework Team continue to work closely with key partners on Operation Blower, a partnership approach to addressing anti-social and criminal behaviour by a group of youths in Brighton and Hove. The team successfully applied for one ASBO during this quarter against a 16 yr old female who is a key member of the Operation Blower group, and liaised with victims and witnesses to ensure that they were kept updated and feel supported to report any possible breaches. Operation Blower developments in this quarter include supporting youth services and education providers to deliver a targeted range of diversionary interventions and activities to young people involved in or at risk of involvement in criminal and anti-social behaviour. Criminal offences by the Operation Blower group have fallen significantly in the last two months.

We collected feedback from 50 members of the public who contacted us through the duty system between Dec 2012 and Feb 2013. This feedback was used to improve the duty service that has now been in place for 14 months. We shall continue to collect duty feedback for two months every six months to ensure we are running a service that is fit for purpose.

We have begun to collect feedback from perpetrators using our service to ensure that we are best supporting them to address their behaviour. I intend to give an update on our findings in the next quarterly report.

During this quarter members of the Casework Team have met with:

  1. Community Cohesion and Prevent (Preventing violent extremism)
  2. New senior staff in the YOS
  3. Equinox (service addressing street-drinking)

to ensure robust joint working procedures and information sharing is in place with these key partners

The Casework Team have been working closely with London Road Local Action Team and BHCC Economic Development Team to improve public perception of community safety in the London Rd area.

We have also been working with the Communities of the Level working group to ensure a robust community safety action plan is in place for when The level reopens in July/August this year.

The team met Stephen Rimmer, Government Director General of the Crime and Policing Group and discussed our work with him and our findings from the Community Trigger Home Office pilot.

A member of the team attended a Keep Out open day at Lewes Prison. Keep Out is a programme run by prisoners and prison staff aimed at diverting young offenders.

Next quarter

Team members will continue provided training, workshops and briefings about the work of the Community Safety Casework Team aimed at increasing confidence in reporting ASB and hate incidents. This will include the team being present at Trans Pride, and delivering training to service users and staff at the Clocktower Sanctuary (day centre for homeless 16-25 yr olds) and at NACRO.

A team member will be working with BHCC staff and security guards at Brighton Pavilion to develop joint working procedures to address ASB and hate incidents.

A member of the Casework Team will be working with Sussex Police and EF Language schools to produce a film aimed at increasing the safety of international visitors to the city.

The team will continue its work with supported housing providers to address ASB and hate incidents in and around their premises, and will continue to engage with communities of interest to increase trust and confidence in

reporting hate incidents and ASB including the use of reporting centres and ‘safe spaces’.

We shall be meeting with our RSL partners in the city in order to ensure that we are best supporting them to address ASB and hate incidents in Brighton and Hove. We want to particularly ensure that our housing partners are confident in using the new tools and powers that will be implemented by the ASB Act 2014.

Operation Blower has identified that young people are using Facebook to bully and harass other young people. Some of the behaviour is considered sexual harassment, and there has also been the use of racist and homophobic language. The Casework Team will be part of a multi-agency response by BHCC and Sussex Police looking to address this issue locally.

We shall be providing a presentation on the work of the Casework Team and how to report ASB and hate incidents to all Local Action Teams across the city in the next six months.

We are currently implementing service improvement action plans to ensure that we provide appropriate support to victims and witnesses who attend court in our cases.

Numbers

On 1stApril2013 the Casework Team had 53 open cases, 7 of which involved young people committing ASB or hate incidents.

During this quarter the Casework Team dealt with 186 enquiries and reports of ASB and hate incidents through the Duty System. Of these enquiries

  • 117 were ASB
  • 40 were hate incidents
  • 29 were not relevant to our service

Of the 186 enquiries dealt with on duty:

  • 44 became new cases for the team
  • 88 were referred to another service
  • Advice and guidance was given in the other 54 enquiries.

Of the 44 new cases, 14 were cases involving hate crimes and/or hate incidents. Of these 14 hate incident cases:

  • 7 involved racially motivated behaviour
  • 2 involved a disability hate incident
  • 2 involved an incident related to the victim’s faith
  • 3 involved an incident related to the victim’s sexual orientation.

In this quarter the Casework Team had 165 separate engagements with the victims in their cases and 148 separate engagements with perpetrators in their cases.

The team successfully applied for one ASBO during this quarter against a 16 yr old female who is a key member of the Operation Blower group. Amongst other things, this ASBO prohibits her from going to two specific places of worship where she has been involved in hate incidents.

Members of the Casework Team attended 18 Local Action Teams during this quarter

Working in partnership

Key partners for the CSCT team are:

  • Adult Social Care
  • Brighton and Hove Police
  • Business Crime Reduction Partnership
  • Children’s Services
  • Community Cohesion
  • Community Mental Health Team
  • Council Housing Dept
  • CRI Rough Sleepers and Street Services Team
  • Education providers
  • Environmental health and Licensing
  • Equinox
  • Housing Options
  • Integrated Team for Families
  • Parenting Team
  • Probation service
  • Registered Social Landlords
  • Substance Misuse Services
  • Targeted Youth Support Services
  • Youth Offending Service

plusa range of agencies within the voluntary sector.

Members of the CSCT attend and provide specialist ASB and hate incident input into:

  • Brighton Business Crime Reduction Partnership (BCRP) intelligence sharing meetings
  • Brighton and Hove City Council (BHCC) and Sussex Police drugs intelligence and information sharing meeting
  • Disability Hate Incident Steering Group
  • Integrated Offender Management operational meeting
  • Integrated Team for Families triage meeting
  • LGBT Community SafetyForum
  • Local Action Teams
  • MARAC (Domestic abuse multi agency risk assessment conference)
  • MARAT (ASB and hate crime multi-agency review and tasking) meeting
  • Operation Blower (addressing youth ASB and crime)
  • Racial Harassment Forum
  • Registered social landlord (RSL) forum
  • Safe in the City Delivery Unit (SCDU) information sharing and tasking meeting
  • Street services ASB casework forum
  • Supported Accommodation Panel
  • Youth Offending ServiceMulti-agency Risk Management Panel
  • Youth Offending Service youth crime prevention weekly meeting

Tools for doing their job

With the principal aim of tackling, preventing and reducing the harm caused by hate incidentsandanti-social behaviour across Brighton & Hove, the CSCT employ the following tools and powers:

  • Acceptable Behaviour Contracts
  • Anti-Social Behaviour Orders
  • ASB warning letters
  • Closure of nuisance premises orders
  • Community resolution
  • Community Trigger (Home office pilot project)
  • Controlled access to Sussex Police information systems
  • Diary sheets and target photograph packs
  • Home visits, often done in partnership with other agencies.
  • Individually tailored and designed ‘Dummy’ Anti-Social Behaviour Orders.
  • Input into Closure of Class A drugs premises Orders (police function).
  • Input into Probation Service pre-sentence and assessment reports
  • Multi-agency action planning
  • Multi-agency case conferences
  • Needs Assessments
  • One-to-one work with ASB and hate incident perpetrators, incorporating motivational interviewing, relapse prevention, anger management and solution-focused brief therapy
  • Parenting contracts
  • Parenting Orders
  • Parenting support
  • Referrals to a wide range of services
  • Restorative Justice
  • Restraining orders
  • S.115 Crime & Disorder Act, in accessing relevant and appropriate information for the purposes of preventing crime and disorder.
  • Targeted police and PCSO patrols and joint patrols.
  • Victim and witness vulnerability assessments
  • Victim and witness support plans

For further information on the work of the Brighton & Hove CSCT or the contents of this report, please contact:

Peter Wileman

Senior Community SafetyCaseworker

Partnership Community Safety Team

3 Palace Place

Brighton, BN1 1EF

Tel: 01273 294630

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