RESPECT
Respect Action Plan
The Respect Action Plan builds on the Governments current drive to tackle anti-social behaviour and reclaim communities for the law-abiding majority. It also explains why to deepen the Governments approach by tackling the underlying causes of anti-social behaviour, intervening early where problems occur and broadening efforts to address other areas of poor behaviour.
There are significant resources in programmes supporting the Respect drive, including £155 M neighbourhood element of the Safer Stronger Communities Fund; £45M additional resources for the Youth Justice Board and £140M resources for the single Non Emergency Number. I addition there will be a investment up to £80 M of new resources over two years
In summary, the Respect Action Plan has six main strands:
- Activities for children and young people
- Improving behaviour and attendance in schools
- Supporting families
- A new approach to the most challenging families
- Strengthening communities
- Effective enforcement and community justice
Activities for children and young people
7 out of 10 parents and young people think that young people commit crimes because there is not enough for them to do. That’s why the Government wants to expand the role of sport, constructive activities and volunteering as positive routes to nurture a culture of respect amongst young people, particularly those from deprived backgrounds. Specifically, the Government will develop Britain’s first national youth volunteering service, establish a Sports Champion mentoring programme and continue to support existing mentoring projects. The Government will also expand the Youth Opportunity Fund (£53M)and pilot Youth Opportunity Cards in a number of areas.
Improving behaviour and attendance in schools
The values and behaviour that support respect foster a positive environment where teachers can teach and children can learn. The Government will legislate to ensure parents take responsibility for their child’s behaviour in the classroom and when they are excluded from school. The Government will also improve provision for suspended and excluded pupils. Tackling poor attendance and behaviour in schools is particularly important since truancy and exclusion have been proven to lead to anti-social behaviour. The Government will extend targeted action against truancy and place a new duty on local authorities (LEA) to identify children missing school and support them back into education.
Supporting families
Parents have a critical role in helping their children develop good values and behaviour. Conversely, poor parenting increases the risks of involvement in anti-social behaviour. The Government will develop parenting services nationally and focus help on those parents who need it most. The Government will expand national parenting provision and establish a new National Parenting Academy for front line staff. The Government will also legislate to increase the circumstances, and organisations that can apply for a parenting order, where a child’s behaviour requires it.
There will be new requirements and expectations on local authorities (Directors of Children Services and Children Trust) to improve planning, commissioning and funding parent services.
The Government will establish a Nation Parenting Academy. This will deliver and support the training of staff from a range of relevant professions for example social workers, clinical psychologist, community safety officers and youth justice workers.
£45M to prevent youth crime and ASB is available to Youth Justice Board over the next three years and will be channelled into prevention programmes, including new resources for parenting programmes.
The Government will ensure that the planning and commissioning of parenting services by youth offending teams is co-ordinated with the expansion of the provision, which will be delivered through the Children’s Trusts and Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships.
Local authorities will be given new powers to extend the range of agencies that can enter into parenting contracts and orders where anti-social behaviour occurs in the community. This may include community safety officers and housing officers.
A new approach to the most challenging families
The Government will take a new approach to tackle the behaviour of ‘problem families’ by challenging them to accept support to change their behaviour, backed up by enforcement measures. In 2006, a network of intensive family support schemes will be launched that target these challenging families. The Government will make additional investment available for parenting programmes as part of a coordinated approach across children’s and adult services in these areas. The Government will improve the way public services respond to problem families’ in the longer term.
By April 2007 all local authorities will have LAA as the main methods for the receipt of funding against their own local priorities. With a total annual expenditure of £81 B. The Government will include a mandatory outcome that will require them to ensure that intensive family support projects are in place where they are needed. Although mainstream funding will be reprioritised, the Government will make available new funding of up to $28M to get schemes off the ground and provide parenting support.
Over the coming months the Government will consider the implementation of this strategy which will include creating a multi-agency response to problem households which is led strategically by clearly accountable local body for example CDRP’s.
Strengthening communities
Government or local agencies cannot deliver respect alone. The Government want to empower people to stand up and challenge unacceptable behaviour in their communities and make public services more accountable to local people and local priorities. Change is needed most in our disadvantaged communities so the Government will ensure that government-funded physical regeneration schemes are accompanied by measures to manage behaviour.
In next two years there will be mandatory outcomes on Respect and anti-social behaviour in LAA. This will ensure that local agencies take the lead on the Respect programme and that key local services and funding streams are focused on delivering Respect outcomes for the community they serve
Neighbourhood policing will be developed across the country and there will be a nationwide single non-emergency number introduced.
The Government also want to develop a Respect standard for housing management. The Government will seek to make direct link between housing enforcement powers (ASBI injunctions, demotion and possession orders)
Every area will have Neighbourhood Charters which will set clear service standards.
Ensure senior representative of all CDRP,s hold regular ‘face thepeople’ sessions. The Government want to make sure that we build on good practice and promote dialogue between local people and local services by ensuring regular and systematic ‘face the people’ briefings – questions and answer sessions open to the public, the local media and community groups. The sessions must, if they are to be effective, involve senior representatives from the police and local authority taking responsibility for the actions of their services. There should also be opportunities for those senior staff to raise with the public any action that they can do to help tackle anti-social behaviour in their areas. This is not just about helping the CDRP be accountable, but giving them the chance to enlist the support and help of the local community. The Government will place a duty on the CDRP’s to achived this, backed by advice and training.
Over the next 12 months the Government will ensure that all Government-funded regeneration schemes are accompanied by approaches that promote food and tackle bad behaviour.
The Government will place a duty on district level ward councillors to consider issues and respond within a prescribed timescale. The majority of problems should be resolved at this stage. However, for particularly difficult problems the councillor will have a new power to refer them to the scrutiny committee of the local authority. The committee would have a duty to consider any referred issues and respond within a prescribed timescale. The Government will also place a duty on responsible authorities, co-operating bodies and registered social landlords to respond to the committee’s report again within a prescribed timescale. At every stage local agencies will have to make public the action they will take or the reason they will not take action.
Effective enforcement and community justice
The Government will continue its drive to ensure effective, swift and proportionate responses and sanctions by further extending the menu of powers available to local communities to deal rapidly and effectively with ‘low level’ anti-social behaviour. The Government will also broaden the range of people able to use existing powers. The Government will strengthen the powers available for frontline agencies as well as streamlining the case management of Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) within the courts. The Government also plan to roll out a national ‘community payback’ scheme of visible and constructive punishment for offenders.
Local authorities will be able to use the Local Government Act 1972 to bring injunctions to stop behaviour that is a public nuisance. They have been successfully used to break up major drug activity and the disorder associated with it.
The Environment Agency will be able to apply for ASBO’s to enhance their powers to tackle environ-crimes such as vandalism, noise nuisance and fly tipping.
The Government will be giving rights of audience in court for community safety staff, subject to the right training and expertise community safety practitioners will have rights of audience in the civil courts, particularly for injunction and possession cases.
Full Respect Action Plan can be found at http://www.respect.gov.uk
