Local Arrangements for Safeguarding Children Arrested by the Police

Local arrangements for safeguarding children arrested by the police – Newham Appropriiate Adult service arrangements

Newham YOT commissions an external provider to provide fully trained Appropriate Adults to children/young people held in police custody. These arrangements have been in place since 2009. The commissioned service is required to provide information on the AA servicesthey provide on a regular basis as per their contractual obligations. It is important to note that information such as demographics, circumstances surrounding the reason for the AA request, outcomes and general feedback is regularly captured and documented in order to measure the effectivenss and impact of the service as well as to identfy areas for development/improvement.

Where possible responses to the below questions have been provided. However in some instances the information requested is either:

a)Not routinely captured as a part of the ongoing monitoring/evaluation processes.

b)Elements of the data requested is captured however not in the format requested. In these incidents any relevent data has been provided.

c)May be available upon request, however would require accessing individual case files and police custody records.

Accessing this information would have time and cost implications which is likely to exceed more 18 hours of time. Thus Under Sections 12 and 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, we confirm that we are unable to supply the requested information at this time.

Please note that all responses provided are based a 12 month period between May 2013-May 2014.

Policies

1.1 Please provide any service agreements, policy or practice guidance concerning the delivery of these specific services for children in conflict with the law.

Please see attached the following policy/process documents:
1. Newham YOT Full Court Process

2. Protocol between Newham Youth Offending Team (YOT) and Newham Children and Young People’s Service

1.2. Please include and highlight any amendments, variations, new documents that address:

i. 17 year olds and

ii. arrangements for the provision of appropriate adults for children who are cautioned or charged after initially being granted bail.

Please refer to the following policy/process documents:
1. Newham YOT Full Court Process

2. Protocol between Newham Youth Offending Team (YOT) and Newham Children and Young People’s Service

2.0 17 year olds

2.1. How many 17 year olds have required appropriate adult services after being detained at the police station and what proportion of the total number of requests over a 12 month period do they form?

A total of 94 17 year olds received an appropriate adult service in Newham between May 2013-May2014. This number represents 26.8% of the overall number of children/young people who received an Appropriate Adult whilst in police custody.

2.2. What is the actual or estimated annual cost of providing an appropriate adult service for all children and how much of this is accounted for by 17 year olds?

The estimated annual cost of providing an AA service to all children and yp in Newham is £34,346.73 for the period May 2013 - May 2014. The cost of providing a service to 17 year olds over this period is 26.8% of the overall cost.

2.3. What proportion of costs are related to 17 year olds?

The cost of providing anAppropriate Adult service to 17 year olds during the period of May 2013 - May 2014 is approximately £7802.78.

3.00 Cautions–

3.1. How many requests have been received and appropriate adults provided (these figures may be different) to be present when:

a conditional caution has been administered

According to our records there have been 5 cases where an Appropriate Adult has been requested and a Conditional Caution has been adminisitered.

ii. a person is subsequently charged having been initially released on bail ?

This data is not routinely captured; thus to answer this would require accessing 351 individual records. The AA service provision in Newham is provided by a third party. To access this data would require the service to access 351 case records and have siginificant time implications which would lead to Newham YOT incurring considerable costs.

5.00 Qualifications and profile

5.1. How many appropriate adults deliver services in your local authority area?

What proportion have:

i. formal qualifications in social work;

ii. other accepted professional criminal justice qualifications for YOT purposes;

iii. non-criminal justice qualifications suitable for YOT purposes;

iv. other Degree;

v. GCSE only, without qualifications?

Whilst this data is available, the AA service provision in Newham is provided by a third party. To access this data would require the service to undertake additional activities which would have siginificant time implications. To access this data would lead to Newham YOT incurring costs.

5.2. What proportion of these appropriate adults:

i. have served as police officers (including special forces such as the Military police)

ii. have worked previously in the legal profession (barrister, solicitor, accredited police station representative but not other para-legals

iii. have worked or currently work in a professional capacity as a social worker, teacher, nurse, psychologist.

iv. were recruited with no qualifications higher the GCSE?

5.3. What proportion broken down by gender are:

aged no older than 25;

25 – 40;

40 – 55;

over 55?

5.4. What proportion of your appropriate adults have as their mother tongue (first language spoken at home)?:

English;

Indian languages;

Pakistani/Bangladeshi languages;

Arabic or its dialects ;

other African languages;

Polish;

other European languages;

Whilst this data is available, the AA service in Newham is provided by a third party. To access this data would require the service to undertake additional activities which would have siginificant time implications. To access this data would lead to Newham YOT incurring significant costs.

5.2. On how many occasions during the last 12 month period for which information is avaialble was the first language of the child not English and different to that of the appropriate adult?

This data is not routinely stored, thus to obtain this would require us trawling through all 351 individual case files, custody records and data held by the organsiation who delivers the AA service.

5.3. On how many occasions in such circumstances was a professional interpreter present?

This data is not routinely stored, thus to obtain this would require us trawling through all 351 individual case files.

5.4 On how many occasions in such circumstances was some other person present to translate between parties to a PACE interview?

This data is not routinely stored, thus to obtain this would require us trawling through all 351 individual case files.

5.5 On how many occasions was the first language of the appropriate adult different to that of the detained child?

This data is not routinely stored, thus to obtain this would require us trawling through all 351 individual case files.

6.00 Cost–

6.1. What is the average hourly cost of appropriate adult provision during

i.the daytime - £55 per hour

ii. out-of-hours?

What was or do you estimate to have been the total cost of the service over the 12 month period for which figures have been provided?

The approximate costs of providing an Appropriate Adult service from May 2013-2014 is £34,346.74

7.00 Recruitment

7.1 Please give details of recruitment strategy and outcomes over the last 12 months such as advertisements in national or local publications; websites; word of mouth; numbers recruited through job centre advertisements etc etc. Please provide the number of applicants and the numbers appointed (after training if completion is a condition of appointment).

7.2. If recruiting to positions including sessionally paid positions (regardless of contractual status) were persons paid for the number of hours when they undertook training?

The Working Time Regulations 1998 section 42 (non-employed

trainees) state:

For the purposes of these Regulations, a person receiving relevant training, otherwise than under a contract of employment, shall be regarded as a worker, and the person whose undertaking is providing the training shall be regarded as his employer.”

7.3 Where payments were made in accordance with the Regulations what was the total cost over the last 12 month period?

7.5. How many hours training do your appropriate adults receive?

Please include hours for 'shadowing.'

8.0 Requests

8.1 For the last 12 months for which information is available how many requests have been received for appropriate adults in respect of children? 351 – This is the total number of yp seen by the AA provided. This information is only indicative of the cases seen by them. In the event that an AA request is made but the commissioned organisation does not provide a service; this data is either not routinely captured by YOT or would require accessing individual case files (e.g. a request is made and a suitable adult is found by the child/young persons family, children services, another agency, etc).

8.2. Where requests have been made on how many occasions have appropriate adults been provided? 351 – This is the total number of yp seen by the AA service provider. This information is only indicative of the cases seen by them. In the event that an AA request is made but the commissioned organisation does not provide a service; this data is either not routinely captured by YOT or would require accessing individual case files and/or custody records.

* Please break this down between those children aged:

Under 14; 40

14 – 16 year olds: 213

17 year olds. 98

* Please also distinguish between requests for the purposes of interview, charge or caution subsequent to initial arrest. Due to the way that this data is recorded to provide responses to purposes of the Appropriate Adult request during the reporting period we would have to obtain the data from each of the 351 case files. We can provide overall figures but cannot categorise by age.

Number of AA requests for the purposes of:

* Interview:294

* Charge: 52

* Caution subsequent to arrest:5

8.3. On how many occasions upon receipt of a request was action taken to visit parents to encourage their attendance as appropriate adult rather than go directly to the police station once a request had been received? On how many occasions did such action lead to the attendance of a parent? This data is not routinely recorded, thus to obtain this would require us trawling through all 351 individual case files.

8.4. Please provide as a percentage the proportion of appropriate adult requests that arose because:

Not all of this data is routinely stored in the categories specified. Thus responses under ‘other’ may be relevent to the categories for which a n/a response has been provided.

i the child was accommodated/looked after by the LA; 4 (the data captured by the AA provider will indicate whether a child/yp is Looked After, however will not necessarily state whether the child/yp’s parents were legally excluded from contact or estranged from parents.

ii. whilst not being looked after the parent was otherwise legally excluded from having contact with a child (an explanation mooted by one LA in 2013); None

iii. the child was estranged from his or her parents;None

iv. the parent was a victim, alleged accomplice or witness; 30

v. the parent was at work/ had other children to care for/was out of the area; 47

vi. the parent could not access transport (e.g. no buses late at night in rural areas); 5

vii. the parent was deemed incapable of acting in the role; 8

viii. some other reason125

8.5 In relation to children who were placed in:

a. residential care and

b. foster care,

in how many cases was an appropriate adult requested? In how many cases was this provided by the residential establishment; foster family; the child's social worker; your usual service arrangements? The current arrangements means that only requests that are fulfilled by the AA provider is routinely recorded by the YOT – for which there were 4 cases. In those cases where the AA was provided by the residential establishment, foster family, child/yp’s social worker obtaining the requested data would mean trawling through all 351 individual case files.

8.6. What proportion of all requests for appropriate adults have arisen because of alleged offences committed in or against persons concerned with residential or foster placements? This data is not routinely stored, thus to obtain this would require usaccess all 351 individual case files and custody records.

8.7 Please provide any policy or protocol you have developed in response to YJB concerns about the criminalisation of looked after children together with any data that has been collated to monitor its effectiveness.

Please refer to policy documents supplied.

9.00 External placements

9.1 Please provide any policy document, protocol and data that you have collated concerning alleged offences committed by children looked after within your local authority AND applying within local authorities and accommodation providers where your local authority places children externally.

Please refer to policy documents supplied.

9.2. What is your practice in relation to children placed in residential or foster care within your local authority area but who are the statutory responsibility of an external local authority? If such children are charged and detained is the responsibility to accommodate under section21(2)(b) Children Act seen as being yourselves or the local authority with legal responsibility?

Please refer to policy documents supplied.

10.0 Outcomes

10.1 In what proportion of cases concerning requests acted upon in the last 12 months for which you have data did the appropriate adult leave the police station

i. when the child was released; This detail is not routinely captured.

ii. when a disposal decision had been made; This occured in 44% of cases
iii. after interview but before a disposal decision being made? This occured in 56% of cases.

10.2 On how many occasions within the 12 month period for which you have provided information have juveniles (under 17s) been charged and detained under section 38? On how many of those occasions did an appropriate adult from or contracted by your service:

i. attend for interview and leave before the juvenile was charged;

ii. Attend for interview and was present when the juvenile was charged;

iii. Make arrangements and representations in relation to the accommodation of the juvenile pursuant to section 38(6) PACE?

This data is not routinely stored, thus to obtain this would require us trawling through all 351 individual case files, custody records and data held by the organsiation who delivers the AA service.

11.0 Response times

Currently thedata requested for this section is not routinely stored, thus to obtain this would require us trawling through all 351 individual case files, custody records and data held by the organsiation who delivers the AA service.

11.1 For the last three months where an appropriate adult was provided what was the average length of time between:

i. detention of a child being authorised by a custody officer and a request for an appropriate adult being received;

ii. receipt of a request and arrival at the police station;

iii. arrival at the police station and rights being given;

iv. arrival at the police station and commencement of first interview;

v. authorisation of detention (or receipt of request if you do not record initial detention time) and the release of the child.

11.2. In how many cases where you received a request for an appropriate adult (even if the request was delayed until daytime hours) was a child:

a. held overnight (overnight meaning between midnight and 6.00 a.m.) in police cells or

b. bailed to the morning or a later date because:

the appropriate adult service was not available overnight;