Agreeing priorities

Your Partnership will need to meet and discuss the key findings of the Audit. It will then need to consider what it is going to do about the problems.

Each of the key partners, including the police, local authority, fire service probation and health authority will be devising their own strategic plans with objectives and targets. Some of these targets will have been guided by national strategies and others will be planned in response to locally identified needs.

Drafting the Partnership's response to children and young offending problems should take account of individual agencies' own service objectives, (e.g. policing plan objectives for reductions in disorder or fire service objectives for reducing hoax calls). Strategies, which incorporate or complement the objectives of key partners, enabling them to work in partnership to achieve their own goals, are more likely to succeed. This will promote a shared understanding of the problems associated with children and persistent young offending and provide useful information for developing and integrating other plans. See box below:

Development of other local plans

Although the primary purpose of the audit is to assist in developing strategies to tackle anti-social behaviour, it can also provide useful information for developing consistent and complementary plans, including:

• Behaviour Support Plan

• Children’s Services Plan

• Community Care Plan

• Drug Action Plan

• Quality Protects

• Health Improvement Plan

• Housing Strategies

• Local Performance Plans

• Local Policing Plans

• Local Transport Plan

• Probation Service Business Plan

• Social Inclusion Partnership Plans (e.g. SRBs, New Deal for Communities, Youth Inclusion Plans, Health & Education Action Zone Plans, Regeneration Plans)

• Urban Development Plans

• Youth Justice Plans

• Internal corporate & business plans

Key partners should also be encouraged to incorporate the partnership's goals in relation to tackling children and youth offending behaviour into their own service plans, taking account of the audit findings for their service. They will then be in a better position to identify their own specific contribution to the work of the partnership. This will assist Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnerships in complying with s17 of the Crime & Disorder Act, which requires partner agencies to review the community safety implications of their work.

It is incumbent on each agency to come to a partnership or inter-agency task group meeting outlining:

• its strategic priorities in relation to tackling children and youth offending behaviour

• what it can contribute to tackling children and youth offending behaviour

The Group as a whole can then consider the resulting agenda, looking at:

• areas of agreement & disagreement

• what is known about effective practice in tackling children and    persistent youth offending behaviour

• agree priorities for action

After the meeting individual partners will need to endorse the agreed priorities. The agreed priorities should be specific to tackling children and youth offending behaviour.