Council denies Youth Offending Team reports were falsified

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Rochdale Council has denied that the Rochdale Youth Offending Team falsified reports ahead of an official inspection.

Government probation inspectors claimed that evidence suggested the Rochdale team made cover-ups and issued false files to inspectors in the hope of hiding its poor performance, as reported by Rochdale Online earlier today.

Rochdale Council has now strongly refuted the claims that documents were falsified.

One of the accusations levelled at Rochdale YOT was that earlier dates had been placed on some case files than the date the actual report was filed. A Council spokesperson said there were delays in paper records being transferred to the Youth Offending Team's computer system so the dates entered on the system were the dates of the contact with the young offender rather than the date it was being added to the database.

The Council also claimed there were many positives about the Rochdale service included in the report, with 16 out of 20 victims of young offenders saying they were fully satisfied with the service, while only one said they were not satisfied.

The Rochdale Youth Offending Team works with all young people who have been to court or who have been involved with the police and aims to prevent any re-offending and get the young people involved in work in the community as part of a pay-back approach.

Executive Director at Rochdale Council Terry Piggott said: “Inspection is often about finding how you can do things better and indeed there are ways in which we can and will improve. There were certainly no instances where anyone tried to pretend something was done when it was not. The inspection focused heavily on record keeping rather than the quality of much of the face to face work done by the staff, and we would welcome a re-inspection.”

Ann Tipton, Head of Learners and Young People Service at the Council, added: “I am disappointed with the HMIP report because it suggests staff have not done the work properly because of delays in computer entry. We have already put in place steps to make sure that everything is recorded on the computer as well as on the paper files in future. I am satisfied that no young person has been disadvantaged by a delay in putting something on the computer.”