How we will deliver the Community Safety Plan

Cabinet Lead Member for Community Safety

The Cabinet Lead Member for Community Safety provides the overall political and policy direction on behalf of the Cabinet, whilst the Chief Executive holds the overall corporate Chief Officer responsibility for community safety.

Chief Executive’s Department - Youth Justice and Safer Communities

The core community safety activities of the County Council are co-ordinated through the Youth Justice and Safer Communities unit within the Chief Executive’s Department. Reporting to the Head of Youth Justice and Safer Communities it comprises:

Leicestershire Youth Offending Service
Community Safety Team
Leicestershire Drugs and Alcohol Action Team (Officer Support Team)

The Community Safety Team

The Community Safety Team (CST) provides a pivotal focus for the delivery of community safety activity. And provides a number of broad functions;

Work with LCC Departments to integrate community safety activity into the delivery of the services they provide
Provide training to LCC Departments and partner agencies on Domestic Violence and Racist Incidents
Facilitate communication and closer working between the CDRPs and LCC Departments.
Provide support for CDRPs in the delivery of their Crime, Disorder & Drugs Reduction Strategies.
Direct delivery of community safety projects and initiatives.
Development and co-ordination of countywide community safety initiatives and policies.

Leicestershire Youth Offending Service (YOS)

The Youth Offending Service is a multi-agency service with contributions from the Police, Probation and the Health Service. The County Council is the major funding partner and resource provider through the Chief Executive’s Department, Social Services & Education. The YOS contributes the following to community safety activity:

Identifies, through the Youth Inclusion and Support Panels, children and young people at risk of offending and works with them to reduce that risk and reduce anti-social behaviour
Works with known young offenders to reduce re-offending
Contributes to the Prolific and Other Priority Offender Strategy, particularly the Prevent and Deter strand of that strategy
Contributes to the work of the Local Criminal Justice Board

Specifically, the YOS will continue to:

Work towards the achievement of the national performance measures set by the Youth Justice Board and set out in the Youth Justice Plan
Contribute to the achievement of the LAA targets
Improve the quality of service delivery as part of the Effective Practice Quality Audits: these will focus particularly on parenting work, remand management, resettlement, mental health and substance misuse
Underpinned by the Basic Skills PSA project, continue to increase the proportion of young people in full-time education, training and employment
Provide parenting programmes to parents of young people who offend or who are at risk of offending in conjunction with other service providers
Offer services to all known victims of youth crime

Leicestershire Drug and Alcohol Action Team (DAAT)

One of the key targets for the DAAT is to increase the number of problematic drug users accessing drug treatment services though its commissioning wok with a range of provider services. It will also continue to oversee the implementation of the Drug Intervention Programme, targeted at problematic drugs users who are involved in the criminal justice system. In Leicestershire this work focuses on through-care and after-care.

The DAAT will also be continuing to work with provider services to reduce waiting times for residential drugs treatment and specialist prescribing services as well as helping providers to increase the overall capacity of drug treatment services.

Mainstreaming Community Safety

In line with Section 17 of the CDA 98 all County Council Services will have a part to play in delivering the Community Safety Plan through the mainstreaming of Community Safety activities throughout Leicestershire County Council. A summary of key County Council activities is set out in Appendix 1. In order to ensure this is effective it is proposed that a review of the Councils approach to Section 17 be undertaken.

Corporate Community Safety Group

Each department within the County Council has a contribution to make to the reduction of crime and the enhancement of community safety. A senior officer has been identified within each department to ‘champion’ community safety. As well as representing their department on the Corporate Community Safety Group, their role is to lead departmental initiatives in relation to Community Safety, ensure consistency between departmental strategies and service plans, the seven local Crime, Disorder & Drugs Reduction Strategies and the corporate strategy and to co-ordinate departmental input to CDRP proposals and initiatives.

The Corporate Community Safety Group works closely with the Community Safety Team and has a joint responsibility to identify actions to be integrated into departmental service plans. It is also proposed that the Group leads the review of Section 17 responsibilities

Performance Management

An enhanced Performance Management Framework is being developed as part of the LAA process. This will cover many aspects of this Plan, due to the alignment of the Plan with the Safer Communities Block of the Local Area Agreement.

The Corporate Community Safety Group also has a key role in performance managing the progress of the Community Safety Plan. This is complemented by regular reports to the Cabinet lead member for Community Safety.