Congratulations to Oxfordshire Youth Justice Service Area Partnership.

Congratulations to the Oxfordshire Youth Justice Service Area Partnership for attaining Youth Justice SEND Quality Mark

We are delighted to celebrate the successful conclusion of benchmarking activity, and award Oxfordshire Area Partnership a Youth Justice SEND Quality Mark at the first time of asking.

What is more, there is clear evidence of targeted and aligned improvement activity, planned and in action, which puts Oxfordshire on a compelling trajectory to secure Quality Lead status in the not-to-distant future. This is a testament to inter-service co-operation, focussed strategic leadership and a desire to secure the best possible life outcomes for some of the most vulnerable young people in the area.

The following developments are highlighted:

• Relationships, underpinned by Protocols and data sharing agreements, continue to be strengthened between the SEND and Youth Justice Teams.
• Pathway for remanded children: Oxfordshire YJS is working closely with partners across Children’s Services to embed an expedited pathway for children remanded into youth detention to ensure swift initiation of processes to ensure the child’s rights and entitlements are responded to at the earliest opportunity. For SEND this will mean the Virtual School and involved educational professionals being informed on the day of remand and ensuring participation in custody and resettlement planning and provision. We have also developed a refreshed Resettlement Policy and Practice Guidance which re-affirms the importance of Education and Health within the core pathways for resettlement.
• Turnaround: The Turnaround project within Oxfordshire YJS monitors rates of SEND and exclusion/suspension indictors and Turnaround data highlights that the cohort are disproportionately represented in relation to SEND and school exclusion. A significant element of our Turnaround intervention offer has involved referrals to the CAMHS Liaison & Diversion Service for screening support, support for parents to apply for Education & Health Care Need Assessments and advocacy around alternative provision. In any ongoing preventative offer beyond Turnaround, we would seek to develop our use of data around Education and SEND to best target support.
• Youth Justice Safety Panel: We have agreed representation from SEND colleagues on our Youth Justice Safety Panel, which has oversight of the children where we have the highest levels of concern around the safety of the child and the safety of others.
• Joint Decision-Making Panel: Our out-of-court assessment and decision-making practice is closely aligned with the CAMHS Youth Liaison & Diversion team to ensure needs of children are identified at the earliest opportunity.
• Educational Psychology placement: In December 2024 Oxfordshire YJS hosted an Educational Psychology trainee on placement to support the service in self-assessment activity of our SEND knowledge and skills for improvement.
• The Director for Education and Head of SEND are members of the Youth Justice Management Board enabling strategic alignment and coordination of activity.
• Oxfordshire YJS has a well-embedded and long-standing clinical offer for YJS practitioners from Forensic CAMHS to ensure work is developmentally and psychologically-informed, including clinical supervision and Case Formulation approaches.
• The Local Area Partnership’s SEND transformation programme has been developed following an Ofsted & CQC inspection of SEND services for children in 2023, which lead to a priority action plan. Local Authority SEND services have since produced a ‘transformation roadmap’ which provides an overview of key milestones met – this is publicly accessible and available for parents/carers, children and professionals.
• Local Authority SEND colleagues have responded to feedback that Oxfordshire’s Local Offer website was hard to navigate and this has been re-developed with clearly designated and accessible sections for Parents and Carers, Children and Young People and Professionals to access key information and advice.
• A glossary of terms and a guide to SEND processes and pathways is being developed to support this roadmap.

Well done Oxfordshire!