Monitoring performance

The YJB monitors the performance of the youth justice system through the Youth Justice Planning Framework, and this is supported by the collection of performance and other data. In particular, it collects and monitors the quality of data for the youth justice National Indicators in England and the Wales Youth Justice Indicators, which inform Local Government assessment in terms of youth justice.

The YJB Information Team coordinates the definition of this data through the YOT Data Recording Guidance, and its collection within the Youth Justice Management Information System (MIS) [opens in new window]. One month after the end of each quarter, YOTs submit data to Youth Justice MIS. Some of the data is aggregated by YOTs and submitted as “summary-level” data, while other data for anonymised individual young people is submitted as “case-level” data. Further information on these types of data is given below.

The quarterly YOT Data Summary (YDS), one for England and one for Wales, is produced for YOTs within a month of data submission to facilitate comparative performance analysis, containing current and historic data for the youth justice indicators as well as other relevant data. It is available in the Summary-level Reports folder in the Youth Justice MIS reporting area, and on the YJB secure website. See below for further detail.

The YJB is committed to on-going initiatives aimed at reducing the reporting burden.

For all queries on YOT data, contact informationteam@yjb.gov.uk.

For technical queries or feedback on the functioning of Youth Justice MIS, email yjmis@yjb.gov.uk.

Summary-level data for 2009/10

Summary-level data is submitted by YOTs via web-forms in the Submissions area of the Youth Justice MIS. This process replaced the returns via the Themis application in 2009/10. For further details of the submission process, see the YOT Data Recording Guidance page.

Summary-level data submitted via the web-forms for the National Indicators in England and the Wales Youth Justice Indicators informs Local Government assessment processes. Any equivalent data derived from the separate case-level submission will not be used for this process until the YJB and YOTs are satisfied with the quality of this new source.

Similarly, data submitted via Themis prior to 2009/10 will continue to be the source from which historic performance is measured. Case-level data will not form the basis for any official performance figures relating to periods prior to 2009/10.

The types of summary-level data collected are listed below. Note that the return of NI 46 data by YOTs in England is no longer mandatory. See the YOT Data Recording Guidance for full details.

• National Indicators for England, and Wales Youth Justice Indicators
• Prevention programmes
• Priority or Prolific Offender, Deter cohort
• Knife Possession Prevention Programme
• Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme
• Restorative justice interventions
• YOT budget and staffing

Case-level data

In 2009/10 a case-level data submission process to Youth Justice MIS for all YOTs was introduced. The functioning of this submission process improved over the course of the year, which also saw the roll-out of YOT case management system releases from which case-level data could be sent according to a new version (v1.3d) of the case-level data schema, which defines the case-level data items returned.

By June 2010, 100% of 2009/10 data had been returned, in a combination of v1.3d and the original v1.2a formats. Many YOTs have resubmitted some or all historic data in v1.3d. YOTs are encouraged to resubmit historic data in v1.3d, especially for 2009/10 and especially YOTs yet to return a full set of historic data from 01/01/2005.

A complete dataset for a full year has accelerated on-going data quality work. The findings of this work are available to data controllers in YOTs in a spreadsheet log listing all data items in the schema with any quality issues identified and actions being taken to address these. The main objectives of this work are:

• to raise knowledge of and confidence in the quality of key data items in the schema which are of high quality throughout the Youth Justice MIS user community
• to further assess and document the quality of all items in the schema
• to commission software suppliers to correct issues and produce a third version of the schema for roll-out in 2011
• to produce more and better reports in which data quality issues are mitigated and/or caveated appropriately prior to the roll-out of a corrected schema.

A further aim is to facilitate YOT involvement in this work. Updates of the quality issues log are made available on a regular basis, and issues discovered by YOTs can be reported to informationteam@yjb.gov.uk for inclusion. Other supporting documents and toolkits are also available. YOTs can help by providing data extracts from their case management systems for comparison with MIS data, and the toolkits enable YOTs to more easily do these comparisons themselves. YOTs are encouraged to get in contact if they wish to help in any other way.

Full details are available to MIS local administrators in the Reporting area of Youth Justice MIS, in the folder Our Reports/YJB Case-level data development. Please email informationteam@yjb.gov.uk to receive the security key needed to access this folder, but note you will already have access if you previously had access to the folder YJB Young Person Reports.

Summary-level data described in the section above will continue to be the source from which official national indicator data is derived until the quality of the case-level data has been fully demonstrated. Any use of the case-level data is subject to the caveat that the quality is not fully assured and the data may not be accurate.

Youth Justice MIS users are reminded that, according to the terms of the Youth Justice MIS Information Sharing Protocol, they may not publish 'discretionary' data for individual YOTs without the expresss permission of those YOTs.

For a full list of the data items collected at case-level, see Annex C of the YOT Data Recording Guidance for 2009/10.

YOT Data Summary

The YOT Data Summary (YDS) for England and the YDS for Wales remain largely unchanged in 2010/11 with regards to the 2009/10 versions.

The YOT Data Summary is issued in draft version three weeks after the YOT data return deadline, and a final version is issued approximately one week later. The summary is then not updated until the next quarter. During the window between draft and final versions, the Information Team conducts further data quality checks and YOTs can report inconsistencies. YOTs may resubmit data up to one month after the initial submission deadline, but only data resubmitted within two weeks of the deadline will be included in the final YOT Data Summary. Where possible, resubmitted data will be reflected in the next quarter’s summary.

Note that since summary-level data for all YOTs will be available to all users of Youth Justice MIS prior to publication of the YDS, YOTs must take care if they wish to use this data, as it is subject to change. Once the YDS is published the figures it contains will be the standard figures to be used until the following YDS is produced.

Future dates for issuing the YOT Data Summary are as follows: