5.6 Protocol for Dealing with Critical Youth Violence Incidents |
This is protocol is an appendix to the overarching Safer Lambeth Partnership Critical Incident Procedures and the CYPS departmental framework for emergency response planning. This protocol pertains to the incidents / serious violent offences that have children or young people (aged 18 years or under) as victim and or Suspect.
A critical incident in this context is in line with the overarching Lambeth Critical Incident Procedure, thus, will refer to a serious violent incident which may raise serious community concerns e.g. a shooting or a murder. This protocol concerns incidents that relate to events outside of the family or caring relationship and is not the protocol for child deaths as a result of parental neglect or abuse such as baby P or Victoria Climbie. For child deaths with the family home refer to the Rapid Response and Child Death Procedures.
For the purposes of this procedure, Lambeth Council has adopted the definition used by Metropolitan Police Service. This definition is deliberately broad to allow Police officers to judge each incident on its merits.
DEFINITION
Any incident where the effectiveness of the Local Authority’s response is likely to have a significant impact on the confidence of:
the victim,
their family
and/or
the community
Notes:
- The definition is deliberately broad and should ensure that potential Critical Incidents are not missed
- It recognises the fundamental importance of community confidence and trust in the Local Authority’s response to Critical Incidents
- It applies equally to Internal Critical Incidents e.g. a critical incident involving a Council employee
This chapter was new for March 2010
Contents
1. Stage 1
If the victim or perpetrator is aged 18 years or under the Executive Director for Children & Young People’s Service or nominated deputy, Divisional Director Community Learning is to be contacted by the Safer Lambeth Partnership’s (SLP) nominated representative within one hour of receiving the initial phone-call from the Police.
2. Stage 2
Following notification of a critical incident, the Cabinet Member for Children and Young People is to be informed as soon as practicable and then briefed later in the day by Divisional Director Community Learning via the joint CYPS/ACS briefing.
3. Stage 3
Depending on the age of the child (0 – 10 years) or young person (10 – 18 years), Executive Director CYPS will delegate the strategic lead to either Divisional Director Social Care or Divisional Director Community Learning respectively who will agree the CYPS Strategic Lead of the local authority’s response to the incident. Critical incidents involving the family home and domestic violence will be referred to Divisional Director Social Care.
If the incident involves a young person as victim or suspect of serious youth violence/serious street violence, Divisional Director Community Learning will take the strategic lead.
3.1 The Strategic Lead’s Responsibilities
- Briefing members and SLB
- Acting as the media contact with communications team
- Appointing CYPS representatives to the Police Gold Group meeting
- Coordinating CYPS critical incident response
3.2 The Strategic Lead Deputies
- First Deputy Strategic Lead – AD Specialist Youth Service
- Second Deputy Strategic Lead – AD Community Youth
- Third Deputy Strategic Lead – Head of Offender Services
Assistant Director Specialist Youth Service, will be the Operational Lead for CYPS and feed into the wider Safer Lambeth Partnership response lead by Community Safety. The Operational Lead for CYPS will be responsible for coordinating the staff and resources and implementation of the response.
3.3 The Operational Lead Responsibilities
- Confirm to all partners who will attend (or report back from, depending on the timing of respective meetings) the Police Tactical Meeting and Gold Group Meeting from CYPS and ACS
- Act as department lead to input into any briefings as appropriate
- Liaison with Community Safety Critical Incidents lead
- Organisation of the CYPS Critical Incident Meetings
- Request and collation of relevant CYPS information
3.4 The Operational Lead Deputies
- First Deputy Operational Lead – Strategic Lead Young and Safe
- Second Deputy Operational Lead – Head of Offender Services
- Third Deputy Operational Lead – Head Youth Support Services
Following the Police Gold Group Meeting, the CYPS Critical Incident Meeting will be held. The AD Specialist Youth Service will invite relevant professionals and chair the meeting. Any relevant information is to be relayed at the time of invite. Members are to bring all relevant information to the meeting with them.
3.5 Minimum Level of Representation to the CYPS Critical Incident Meeting
- AD Specialist Youth Service
- AD Community Safety
- AD Safeguarding
- AD Community Youth
- AD Inclusion
- Head of Offender Services
- Strategic Lead Young and Safe
- Young People and Violent Crime Coordinator
- Team Around the Child Area Manager
3.6 CYPS Critical Incident Meeting
| Agenda Item | Lead | |
| 1 | Attendance at Gold Group and tactical meetings | John Readman |
| 2 | Collation of information from CYPS departments | Dean Woodward |
| 3 | Information Sharing | Dean Woodward |
| 4 | Safeguarding issues for siblings/family/others | Dean Woodward |
| 5 | Notify designated Doctor (Alison Barnwell) | Dean Woodward |
| 6 | Soft interventions designed as community reassurance | Nanda Sirker/Stella Clarke |
| 7 | Family Support | Nanda Sirker/Stella Clarke |
| 8 | Staff security in relevant settings | Dean Woodward |
| 9 | Potential LSCB reporting and implications | Cathy Blair (tbc)/Gill Halden |
| 10 | Confirm Operational Lead | Chair |
4. Stage 4
Young person as victim or suspect.
Operational Lead, AD Specialist Youth Service will nominate a single point of contact (SPOC) within Specialist Youth Service to receive and collate information on the critical incident.
Operational Lead, AD Specialist Youth Service will communicate with all relevant partners, such as, Schools, Health, Connexions, Family Intervention Project, ERAA, LAC and Youth Support Service. This correspondence will collate the known names of individuals involved in the incident and will request that all known information from each partner agency is returned to the nominated SPOC within the SYS for collation within the same day.
Head of Offender Services will combine the information from the Police led partnership meetings with the information gathered by the SPOC to produce a briefing.
Head of Offender Services will produce a briefing and distribute to AD Specialist Youth Service and AD Community Safety.
AD Specialist Youth Service and AD Community Safety will add any further information and the final version briefing will be agreed with the Critical Incident Strategic Lead, DD Community Learning and be distributed before the end of the day of the incident being notified.
The Core SLP Briefing will be distributed by AD Community Safety, The briefing for senior officers will be distributed by DD Community Learning.
5. Stage 5
AD Community Safety will be responsible for the creation and distribution of further briefing updates relating to the broader crime and community safety elements relating to the SLP audience.
AD Specialist Youth Service will arrange a meeting within one week of the incident being known to ensure medium to long term provision, in terms of CYPS interventions, is appropriate.
6. Stage 6
A second CYPS/CS critical incident meeting will be held within five working days of the initial Gold Group meeting. If the critical incident involves ‘the unexpected death of a young person’, this meeting will be the ‘Rapid Response Meeting’ and will be held within five days of the incident. The second CYPS/CS critical incident meeting will be Chaired by either the AD Specialist Youth Service or the Designated Doctor. If the critical incident does not involve ‘the unexpected death of a young person’ the meeting will be set up and chaired by the AD Specialist Youth Service with the Designated doctor, invited as a permanent member and to attend if appropriate. If the critical incident does involve the unexpected death of a young person, the Designated doctor will chair the Rapid Response Meeting. Rapid Response meetings are held, when possible, at the young person’s GP surgery. At either of these meetings the long term strategy will be discussed and the agenda will cover the following:
- Over view of response to incident and lessons learned
- Safeguarding siblings/family/others
- Over view of media coverage and anticipated responses
- Staff involved identified and counseling/support offered
- Young people involved – upcoming dates (Court/funeral)
- Outstanding information sharing required and to be received
- Media/Comms briefings
- Community reassurance (public meetings)
- Review of original response (e.g. down grading)
- Review risk assessment
- Further reviewing and long term response
- AOB
The second critical incident meeting will be attended by relevant parties to the initial meetings and also be extended to the operational managers and case managers to ensure that the comprehensive gathering of all information is ascertained when the immediate crisis of the situation has subsided.
If the review of the original response is upgraded, a third CYPS Critical Incident meeting will be called by AD SYS and held within a week of the second meeting.
Click here to view the Critical Incident Flowchart.
End