Ofsted's report into multi-agency responses to serious youth violence: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/multi-agency-responses-to-serious-youth-violence-working-together-to-support-and-protect-children Safer London's report: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/children-and-families-experiences-of-multi-agency-support-when-impacted-by-serious-youth-violence https://saferlondon.org.uk/ Briony Balsom Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of Ofsted Talks. I'm Briony Balsam, and this time, we're focusing on serious youth violence and our recently released joint report. We released a joint targeted area inspection report, which we call a JTAI, on serious youth violence on the 20th of November, that report had a lengthy title for a weighty subject. It was called 'Multi agency responses to serious youth violence, working together to support and protect children'. Later in the podcast we'll be joined by Carly Adams Elias from Safer London, where she's director of practice, to talk about their work around serious youth violence, but first to explore with reports and findings, we're joined by some of those who contributed to it. We have Helen Davis, who's head of thematic and joint inspection at His Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation. Ade Solarin, the inspection lead for child protection at His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue services. Hello everyone. Jess Taylor Byrne, who is the Children's Services operations manager at the Care Quality Commission. Hi there. Hi everyone. And Wendy Ghaffar, who is Ofsted specialist advisor on cross remit safeguarding. Wendy, if I could come to you first so we can say a little bit about the scale of the problem. Many might assume it's a city issue, but is that really the case? Wendy Ghaffar No, it's definitely not the case. It's not just a city problem. I think we were shocked as a group of inspectorates to find that in all of the areas we visited, there were many children, including children as young as 11, carrying knives for their own protection. And in some of the areas, and for some children, it was absolutely the norm to carry a knife, often, not always, but often that was what children saw as a way of protecting themselves. And if you look at our report, at the beginning of that report, we talk about a very young teenage boy who was chased by a group of older teenagers in his local area, and he knew that those teenagers were carrying knives, and so he started carrying a knife because he saw that as the only way to protect himself. And we heard about children who were too frightened to leave their own homes, children not attending school because they were so fearful. And this is happening in small towns, out in the countryside, and we think that social media plays a role as well. If we look at the work of the youth endowment fund, they surveyed 7500 children last year, and one in four of those children had either been a victim of violence or perpetrated violence, and children also spoke about seeing real life episodes of violence on social media so they might see something that's happened in their locality on social media, and that's feeding into this sense of fear. And we don't think that adults are really sufficiently aware of this problem. And the other thing that came through is the impact that this has not just on children who are directly involved, but on their brothers and sisters, on their friends, on communities, on schools. So there's a kind of ripple effect when there's an incident and it's impacting on children's general well being, their sense of safety. I think we also need to think about the links there are with county lines and criminal exploitation. So some of this, not all of it, is happening in that context of county lines, which, as I'm sure people are aware, often organized crime gangs are forcing children to carry drugs out into the countryside, into smaller towns, and very often forcing children to carry knives. There's some groups of children who are particularly badly effective or more vulnerable, and that includes children with special educational needs and some children from some particular ethnic groups, and particularly with children who've got special educational needs. We know that nationally, there are delays in those children getting assessments, and delays in them getting the support they need, and we think this is actually putting them at increased risk of serious youth violence. Briony Balsom Thanks, Wendy and you mentioned the wider community impacts as well. I wonder whether anyone would like to come in and talk talk to that a little? Wendy Ghaffar We saw some very strong examples of where voluntary organizations were kind of harnessing, if you like, capacity within local communities to protect children, to offer other opportunities for children, to provide a venue for children and families, to provide different opportunities for children and families. But we ...
