Helping to Prevent Youth Offending in Sunderland

Despite still being one of the most deprived cities in the North of England (according to the Government’s Index of Multiple Deprivation), Sunderland has rebuilt itself from a devastating industrial decline to be a city ready to take on the future and is working hard to ensure that its young people get the best start in life. Perhaps nowhere more so than with the city’s Youth Offending Service (YOS).

Sunderland YOS have a strong prevention initiative aimed at identifying those youngsters most at risk of getting in to offending and providing them with the right support and guidance to ensure that this does not happen. With 5 specific prevention programmes covering one-on-one work with each young person, family work, group activities and mentoring, the YOS prevention team works with approximately 600 young people across the city at any one time.

To aid them with their data gathering, management and analysis, Sunderland YOS rely on Social Software’s UMIS (Universal Monitoring and Evaluation Information System). Jack Saward, Early Intervention Coordinator at Sunderland YOS, sees one of the key features of the software as the fact that it is obviously a system built on a clear understanding of Prevention best practice, by people who have a practitioner background. As he explains, “the developers understand what those working with young people really want to get out of their information management system and their data."

UMIS has been a great help to the YOS in terms of using the data they gather to drive best practice forward. Working with prevention data from UMIS and data on first time offenders gathered by the YOS using Social Software’s YOIS programme (Youth Offending Information Management), the team wanted to compare the number of referrals to the Wear Kids Project (Sunderland’s Youth Inclusion and Support Panel, or YISP) in each area of the city, with the number of first time offenders.

The combination of data provided by these two Social Software systems indicated that those areas with the highest number of prevention referrals had the fewest youths entering the youth justice system. This link has allowed the YOS to clearly evidence their prevention programme as having a positive impact in identifying the right young people and preventing them from offending. More than this, however, it has enabled them to identify those areas of the city where their prevention work is most effective and those where they could provide more support.

Armed with this evidence, the YOS can now target these areas to raise awareness of the Wear Kids scheme among bodies such as schools, the housing association and partnership agencies. As Jack says “we hope that this will ensure more people working with young children understand the importance of preventative measures and that they refer any young people they think might be at risk to the prevention team. All of which can help lead to a reduction in first time offending.”

UMIS has also been able to help Jack and his team in applying for extra funding for the Wear Kids prevention programme. Previously, the programme only had funding to work with those between the ages of 5 and 15. However, using UMIS, the team were able to provide evidence that many of the referrals they were getting were being rejected, purely on an age basis, because the young person fell outside the prescribed age range. By illustrating this demand relating to the older age groups, the team were able to access funding to extend the scope of the project. The project now caters for those from 5 all the way up to 17 years old and thus ensures that all those who were identified as needing help are able access it.

Looking forward, the YOS next want to use UMIS and the rich data it helps them gather not just to show that their work is having an impact, where and with which young people, but to identify which specific programmes are proving to be most effective. “In evaluating the type of work we do and programmes we offer, we will be able to improve our service and help keep young people out of the youth justice system,” explains Jack.

With the ground breaking work they have undertaken with UMIS and YOIS, Sunderland YOS already have a firm foundation on which to build an even more effective service. Using UMIS and their data to drive best practice forward, they are sure to continue to stay at the forefront of prevention work, ensuring that the young people they work with receive the best support possible to prevent them starting on the path of offending.