Northern Ireland Youth Justice Agency
Annual Report by Jodi Berg and Elizabeth Derrington, Independent Complaints Reviewers

The aim of the ICR service is to provide a free, effective and impartial complaints review and resolution service for complainants that settles complaints in a proportionate manner and makes a positive difference for individual complainants and for the future.

People who contact our office can expect from us courtesy; honesty; respect; objectivity; and flexibility. We will communicate with them in straightforward language and in ways that best meet their needs. This year because this office is based in London, we have established video links with the Agency to assist people to speak with us in person quickly, even if we cannot immediately meet them.

The decision to introduce a wholly independent final stage of complaint review, provided by a professional complaint handling service, was a significant step forwards on the part of the Agency towards meeting the high expectations that people rightly have of an organisation engaged in the youth justice system. This demonstrates its willingness to be accountable for the service it provides through the mechanism of independent complaint review.

In this reporting year, the Agency has facilitated ICR visits to the Juvenile Justice Centre and to regional community service offices. We have been able to enhance our understanding of the Agency's work and how it goes about it. We have met a cross section of Agency staff, stakeholders and, importantly, had unsupervised meetings with young offenders, voluntary users of the service and their family members. We are most grateful to all of these people for their help, and their patience and openness in answering our questions.

We have been very impressed indeed with the quality of service we have witnessed and with the reports given to us by young people and their families. With the exception of one young person in the Centre who had made a number of complaints to staff, everybody was very positive indeed about their experience of the Agency. In one regional office, people spoke about how the Agency's involvement had changed their lives for the better. One young offender gave the service "ten out of ten". During one visit, an observation of a youth conference was arranged, which was clearly a positive experience for both the victim and, ultimately, for the offender.

During our visits we have developed our understanding of the Agency's new complaints procedure, and provided feedback to the Agency on its effectiveness. We have had regular meetings with the Chief Executive and met a number of senior managers. We acknowledge the facilitative manner in which they have developed the Agency's relationship with the ICR office.

We are pleased to report that no complaints were referred to us in the reporting period. This is because all those received by the Agency were resolved within the internal process at step1 ("talk to a member of staff") or step 2 ("complain to a senior manager"). Most of these complaints arose within the Juvenile Justice Centre where the potential for dissatisfaction is perhaps naturally rather higher than in other parts of the Agency's service.

We are satisfied that, overall, the complaints process is well established and effectively promoted with both young people and staff. Complaints are taken seriously by staff and managers, and complaint information is regularly considered at Board level. We note that the Criminal Justice Inspection Service review of complaint handling suggested that young people were reluctant to complain because they could not do so confidentially, and feared negative treatment by staff. We did not find direct evidence of these concerns from our limited experience, however we hope that our visits and the ICR process will help to give young people more confidence to take concerns forward.

Following our review of procedures we made a number of recommendations aimed at improving consistency. Whilst we welcome the fact that the complaints process is explained to each young person as part of their induction and made accessible to them, it is important to ensure that staff across the Agency have a shared understanding of when to record a complaint; that parents or carers are informed as a matter of course when a complaint is made; and that there is clarity about the handling of different steps in the procedure.

We note that the Agency Board sets a good example in showing that it takes complaints seriously by receiving quarterly reports. During visits, we were also able to identify that staff have made changes as a result of complaints, but we recommend a more systematic approach to demonstrating more openly that issues raised in complaints are fed back into the development of policy, procedure, and staff training material. We will continue our programme of visits and feedback sessions in the coming year.