West Sussex Strategic Community Safety Partnership Report
WEST SUSSEX REPRESENTATION REPORT
MEETING: West Sussex Strategic Community Safety Partnership DATE:19th January 2012
REPRESENTATIVE: Julia Carrette
REPORT
overnment announced recently investment across the country to support family intervention work with ‘troubled families’. This will be a ‘payments by results’ process i.e. retrospective. West Sussex Police have £330k funds to contribute to this alongside remaining £160k Children’s Fund monies. This would enable the county to ‘lever in’ some of the governments funding to support expansion of the existing work around Family Intervention Project and to include work around families and pregnancy through a programme called FAST.
The allocation as above was agreed and there was discussion following questions over how the resources would be used. They will be allocated against 11- 15 year old age groups, with a focus on issues identified in Super Output Areas working with the next 72 of these on the lower list who are identified as ‘at-risk’ of joining the ‘troubled’ families group. Will look at which parts of which existing services will get most impact before deciding finally.
It was felt that a written proposal is wanted by this group with timescales. Natalie Brahma-Pearl will draft this.
Invitation to Redeeming Our Communities (ROC) to come and speak to this Partnership. Martin Walker following up.
Report back around the setting up of the new Police & Crime Panel. The legal advice is that it would be unwise for this to become a replacement of or the same group as this WSSCSP as this would set up conflicts around the scrutiny of and decision-making on budgets.
The meeting considered West Sussex Strategic Priorities for 2011-12 and 2012-13 using a Strategic Intelligence Assessment which brings together a range of data including recorded police crime data, anti-social behaviour, adult re-offending and victims & perpetrators data, costs of crime, youth offending figures, substance misuse etc.
A lot of data was presented, trends discussed, inputs asked about and results to date considered.
Points were made about the ‘sell-by-date’ of some of the data in this Strategic Intelligence Report around population and deprivation statistics in particular around those parts of the county that do not show having high deprivation but where small pockets exist. It was felt that in overcoming inconsistencies between data sets, perhaps there could be less reliance on high level data and more local information taken into account e.g. in Mid Sussex. Possibly some of the things being suggested as priorities may not be the same everywhere and that a balance needs to be struck between local and county.
The Strategic Plan should make better links between it and the Public Health plan.
It was said that this is a good opportunity to make use of the move of Public Health to local authorities and to look at other factors around employment, housing etc and work in shared way with other partners. There are also poverty/financial inclusion issues that can be drawn in. The Countywide Equalities Network includes many partners and may be an important link in joining some of these things up.
The DAAT and voluntary sector substance misuse groups report that whilst drug use is still prevalent, alcohol remains a key concern in terms of greater harm and there appears to be a shift taking place. DAAT will produce results from their Comprehensive Needs Assessment by end March 2012.
There has been a 20% increase in domestic violence cases in the last year accounting for 7% of total crime and it was agreed WSSCSP should continue to support the work with possibility for a pilot system to manage high risk cases.
On Race & Hate Crime figures show a year on year reduction over past 4 years. Discussion around whether reporting reflects actual experience and the need to improve reporting especially among vulnerable groups and continue ‘Prevent’ agenda. Victim Support run contract in relation to support for victims; county are happy with that service.
Area Based Grant 2011-12 was £696k which was used on Young Persons Substance Misuse Services, Victim Support, allocations to Adur, Crawley, Horsham, Mid Sussex and Worthing districts. In 2012-13 the allocation will be £352k
Discussion around the need to address the disproportionate percentage of Looked After Children that feature in crime stats. Big issue in county is that over 50% of LAC’s are placed here by other local authorities from outside the county.
