7 Minute Briefing – North Lincolnshire Harmful Sexual Behaviour Panel
1. What is the HSB Panel?
The Harmful Sexual Behaviour (HSB) Panel is a multi-agency meeting which facilitates a specialist service to children and young people who have engaged in or are considered as being highly likely to engage in HSB.
The Panel receives referrals for a specialist AIM2 assessment carried out by a multi-agency group of specially trained workers. These workers will also lead interventions to address the issues, in cooperation with other agencies, working to an intervention plan.
The HSB Panel is the referral and allocation route for the service, acts as a source of knowledge, expertise and support for the practitioner team and provides senior management oversight of HSB work.
2. Why is it needed?
When the Panel was established in 2012, there was an identified need for a local solution to assess risk and provide interventions to prevent sexual offending and HSB by young people from escalating and continuing as they get older. There was also a need to tackle both the incident rate of criminalising young people for sexual offences and the increasing costs of specialist agency provision and custodial remand.
Over the last 9 years there has continued to be a consistent approach to identifying, assessing and intervening with children who have engaged in or have been considered as highly likely to engage in HSB without appropriate support.
3. Who is it for?
Regardless of whether the child or young person is charged or convicted, those who are referred to the HSB Panel are usually over 12 years old, who have exhibited serious and concerning sexualised behaviours that are deemed to be:
• unmanageable through individual agencies
• outside of the range of behaviours that would be usual or expected for young people of a similar age or ability
• likely to result in criminal charges or convictions in the future
• likely to cause significant harm to victims if risk is not reduced through being assessed, managed, and treated
• likely to cause significant harm to the young person themselves
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4. Aims, impact and outcomes
To safeguard and reduce the harm to children and vulnerable adults who are affected by HSB
• To respond at the earliest stage to prevent escalation and improve outcomes for children and young people by reducing the likelihood of them becoming convicted sex offenders, enhancing life chances for social integration, education, training, and employment
• Divert children and young people from custody and reduce criminalisation through an integrated approach to working with them and their families utilising skilled assessment, management of risk and delivery of timely interventions
• Improve information sharing and partnership working
• To develop skills to enable the workforce to differentiate between normal experimental behaviours, and harmful or offensive behaviours and prevent high threshold referrals at a later stage
5. Impact and successes
The AIM2 assessments continue to impact directly on court outcomes. Robust risk assessments are provided to court along with a plan of support enabling children, young people and families to ‘move on’ in their lives, whilst ensuring robust risk management with shared agency responsibility
• Charting the progress of HSB interventions on individual cases shows that young people can be managed safely and can be successfully rehabilitated within the community without recourse to agency care provision or custody
• It allows for an integrated approach working with children, young people and families, delivery of timely interventions and sustainable outcomes at the earliest opportunity and at the lowest safe level
• The work of the Panel demonstrates effective partnership working between professionals and families
• The values and principals of the One Family Approach are evident in that children and young people are supported to safely remain in their families, in their schools and in their communities
6. How to refer
HSB assessment and planning should run parallel to any statutory plan therefore referrals to the Panel are made by Children’s Services or the Youth Justice Partnership.
If you are concerned about a child displaying inappropriate behaviours, you should follow Children’s MARS policy and procedures and make a referral to Children’s Services as appropriate.
7. Further Information
• North Lincolnshire Risk Outside the Home Approach
• Children’s MARS Risk Outside the Home toolkit