Equality impact assessment - enforcement policy youth offending service

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1. What is the name of the policy or service that is being assessed?

Enforcement policy, Wiltshire Youth Offending Service

2. What are the aims of the policy or service? Whose needs is it designed to meet? What are the current priorities?

• Set standard practice across the YOS to the enforcement of cases
• Establish responsibility for enforcement action
• Put in place a checking policy regarding acceptability of non attendance of clients
• Formalise a consultation process in ambiguous cases
• Formalise breach procedures

3. In what ways might this policy or service affect some groups of people differently? Might some groups find it harder to access the service? Do some groups have particular needs that are not well met by the current policy or service?

This policy could discriminate against young people who have greater difficulty in accessing the service and therefore have greater difficulty in complying with the reporting requirements of court orders.

4. What evidence do you have for your judgement? Is there evidence of public concern (e.g. complaints)? Have staff raised concerns? Is there local or national research to suggest that there could be a problem?

There is no evidence of public/client or staff concerns in this respect. When the YOS was inspected in 2005 the Inspectors found no areas for improvement in this regard.

5. Who have you consulted with as part of your assessment? What were the results? Have you published the results of that consultation? If so, where?

YOS staff

6. If you have found that the policy or service might have an adverse impact on a particular group of people, can you justify this?

The policy could have an adverse effect on clients who have difficulty in accessing the service

7. If the impact cannot be justified, what do you intend to do about this? Are there changes that you could introduce which would make the policy or service work better for this group of people? Is further research or consultation required?

The enforcement policy will be amended to include a reference to section 4 The Provision of Services section of the YOS Diversity policy, which requires staff to ensure equality of access to services.

8. How will you monitor the take-up or impact of the policy or service in future?

Annual review of the policy

9. What actions do you plan to take as a result of this equality impact assessment? Please state any resource implications

See section 7 – which has no resource implications

10. There is a legal requirement to publish the outcomes of Equality Impact Assessments. Please outline how/where this will happen

Via the YOS area of the website

11. Name of person completing form

Head of Youth Offending Team

Date assessment completed

29.03.07

12. Senior manager approval

Assistant Director Resources, Improvement and Young People

Date

2 April 2007

Last updated: 13 May 2009