Ryan Clark

Children’s Services
PO Box 837

Leeds

LS1 9PZ

Her Majesty’s Coroner

For the County of West Yorkshire
(Eastern District)

Coroner’s Office

71 Northgate

Wakefield WF1 3BS

Your Ref: RED/1140/11
31 March 2014

Inquest Touching the death of Ryan Patrick John CLARK (deceased)

Response to Regulation 28 report to prevent future deaths

Coroner’s concerns:

That all relevant information, concerns and issues about a young person who goes into
custody are imparted to, and discussed with Young Offender Institution staff by the said
young person’s Social Worker and Young Offending Team Case Manager as soon as the
young person arrives in custody and within 24 hours thereof.

Response to concerns:

The following procedure has been agreed between Leeds Children’s Social Work Service
(“CSWS”) and Leeds Youth Offending Service (“YOS”) in response to the above concerns set
out by Miss Melanie J Williamson, Assistant Coroner, in her regulation 28 report, dated 3
February 2014:

When a child appears in court with the potential to be remanded or sentenced to custody,
the YOS Court Officer will collate all relevant information, concerns, vulnerabilities and
issues known about that young person from existing YOS engagement.

The YOS Court Officer will also check if the child has a social worker.
If the child does have a social worker the YOS officer will contact the social worker to

request all relevant information, concerns, vulnerabilities and issues about the young

www.leeds.gov.uk general enquiries 0113 222 4444 C })
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INVESTOR IN PEOPLE

person. If the social worker is unavailable, enquiries will be escalated to the relevant team
manager. If the team manager is not available, enquiries will be escalated to the relevant

Service Delivery Manager.

This information will form part of a joint report to be delivered to the relevant institution
within 24 hours of the young person arriving in custody. Where there is no allocated social
worker, the YOS Court Officer will provide an individual report within 24 hours of the young
person arriving in custody.

Where the child has a social worker but the YOS Court Officer has been unable to collate
information from the social worker, the YOS Court Officer will inform the social worker at
the receiving institution of this, will provide an individual report and will inform the relevant
CSWS Head of Service who will expedite the sharing of any additional relevant information
within 24 hours of the young person arriving in custody.

Yours faithfully

Chief Officer, Children’s Social Work Service
Head of Service, Targeted Services

a)
www.leeds.gov.uk general enquiries 0113 222 4444 4 B

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, National Offender Management Service
P| ‘ 4" Floor
es A Clive House

70 Petty France

National Offender London SW1H 9EX

Management Service FS

Miss Melanie J Williamson
Assistant Coroner
Coroner's Office
71 Northgate
Wakefield
WF1 3BS
28 March 2014

Dear Miss Williamson
INQUEST INTO THE DEATH OF RYAN CLARK AT HMYOI WETHERBY

Thank you for your letter of 3 February to Michael Spurr, Chief Executive of the National
Offender Management Service (NOMS), concerning the recent inquest into the death of
Ryan Clark on 18 April 2011. Your jetter has been passed to the Equality, Rights and
Decency Group in NOMS as we have policy responsibility for suicide prevention and self
harm management, and for sharing learning from deaths in custody. | have consulted with
the Governor of HMP and YOI Wetherby in formulating this response.

The report raises four concerns and | will address each in turn

Personal Officer Scheme

Prison Service Instruction (PSI) 08/2012 Care and Management of Young People requires
that young people are assigned a Personal Officer/Caseworker during the induction stage of
their imprisonment. This arrangement aims to achieve the following:

. each young person understands to whom they can turn to, to discuss all
issues of concern, including resettlement

° the personal officer or caseworker attends each training plan review during
the custodial period

. there is appropriate contact with, and involvement of, each young person's
family and supervising officer and that links between all parties are
strengthened.

In addition to this, PSI 75/2011 Residential Services sets out the need for all staff to engage
positively with prisoners (and young people, as at Wetherby), and describes the key part that
residential staff have to play as positive role models.

tn October 2013 HMP and YO] Wetherby implemented a revised personal officer scheme
that aims to ensure greater continuity in the allocation of staff to young people and includes
a ‘relief arrangement whereby a paired officer is available to cover during the periods of
absence that are inevitable with staff working shifts. The new scheme emphasises the

supportive element of the roie, and staff have been briefed on this. A copy of the new policy
document is attached for your information. More generally, the Governor is aware that even
the best personal officer scheme has limitations, and encourages all staff to establish and
maintain positive relationships with all young people in the establishment.

ACCT Checks

The Governor is confident that the failure of one officer to conduct an ACCT check on one
occasion is not representative of practice amongst staff at HMP and YO! Wetherby, and the
incident in question was the subject of a disciplinary investigation. Staff are now briefed on
the timings of ACCT checks and the need for good quality interactions and observations at
the start of each shift. In addition, full ACCT guidance has been reissued, and priority is
being given to providing ACCT refresher training for all staff. In order to provide further
reassurance, the Governor has introduced an additional layer of Management checks of all
ACCT documents.

Roll Checks

The two failures to follow the procedure for roll checks identified in this case have been the
subject of investigations, and disciplinary action has been taken against the staff involved.
All staff have been briefed on the importance of roll checks, and these are now subject to
covert checks by managers. !f, following a covert check, there is any doubt as to whether or
not a proper roll check was carried out, CCTV evidence is examined, and a disciplinary
investigation is instigated where necessary

First Aid and CPR

PSI 01/2014 First Aid describes the process for ensuring effective provision of first aid that
enables NOMS to discharge its duty of care to its employees, to prisoners and to visitors to
our premises. Governors are required to ensure that at all times such numbers of suitably
trained first aiders as is sufficient and appropriate for the circumstances are available. A First
Aid riskineeds assessment is undertaken by the local Health and Safety Advisor to
determine the appropriate numbers. Governors must ensure that first aiders are trained to
levels which are appropriate for the circumstances and hold a valid certificate of competence
in either First Aid at Work (FAW) or Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW).,

This policy is being implemented at HMP and YO! Wetherby. in accordance with it, all 16
custodial managers will be trained in FAW by the end of June 2014 and all of the 27
operational support grades who carry out night patrols in residential areas will be trained in
EFAW during 2014. This arrangement will supplement the 24 hour healthcare cover at the
establishment, which includes the availability of two trained hursing staff at all times,
including overnight

| hope this letter provides assurance that the concerns that you have raised have been, or
are being, addressed.

Yours sincerely.

HM PRISON
FUNCTION: Young People & Services SERVICE

Public Sector Prisons

DATE OF PUBLICATION: 3 October 2013

PERSONAL OFFICER POLICY

THERBY POLICY DOCUMENT |

> 2013-2014

RECORD OF ADMENDMENTS

Date Version or Amendment Name

Table of Contents

Policy Statement 4
Introduction and 5
Definition of a Personal Officer 5
Allocation of a Young Person to a Personal Officer 6
Role of the Personal Officer 7
Steps to being an effective Personal Officer 7
Personal Officer Relief Scheme 9
Unit Managers Responsibilities 9
Annex A:

Expectations of their Personal Officer / Relief Personal Officer 10

Personal Officer
Policy Statement

HMYOI Wetherby is dedicated to the provision of a safe and secure
environment for young people, staff and visitors.

The Personal Officer is pivotal in the promotion of personal growth and
development, preventing re-offending and enhancing the employment
potential of those in our care. We do this by providing a full and active regime,
encouraging young people to address their offending behaviour, develop life
skills and lead purposeful and law abiding lives.

The Personal Officer will provide an appropriate pro-social role model for ail
young people, with specific responsibility to the young people that they look
after. They will work in partnership with the Caseworker to encourage the
young person fo take full advantage of their time at Wetherby.

To ensure quality and continuity of delivery, the Personal Officer will be
supported by an identified Relief Personal Officer, who will take a secondary
responsibility to their allocated young people.

The Personal Officer will provide opportunities to discuss any issues that a
young person may have during their sentence.

Sara Snell
Governor
HMYOI! Wetherby

INTRODUCTION

PSI28/2009
Care & Management of Young People outlines the need for and role of the Personal Officer.

Every young person must have assigned to them a Personal Officer within the first 24 hours
of arrival.

The assigned personal officer will communicate with the young person, and he/she will be the
first point of contact for all residential matters.

Personal Officer arrangements will be put in place, which ensures the following are
achievable:

"That each young person understands to whom they can turn to discuss all issues of
concern, including resettlement;

" Wherever possible the personal officer will attend and support the caseworker at each
sentence plan review during the custodial period where possible.

« That there is appropriate, reguiar contact with the young person.

The personal officer should act as a ‘significant adult’ and positive role model to all young
people.

The role of the personal officer is someone who can help to positively influence young
people's behaviour through personal example and guidance, managing rewards, addressing
poor behaviour, supporting victims of bullying, addressing bullying behaviour and self
harm/safeguarding issues whilst making the appropriate referrals and actions to ensure
compliance with the appropriate policies.

The personal officer will ensure the needs of young people are identified and addressed in a
fair and non-judgemental manner in support of our general duty to eliminate unlawful
discrimination, promote equality of opportunity and promote good relations between people of
diverse groups.

This policy outlines the responsibilities, role and guidance to the personal officer. It is
designed as a quick and easy reference to all staff.

Personal officer work is pivotal to our core work and essential in our holistic approach to multi
agency management of those in our care.

DEFINITION OF A PERSONAL OFFICER

Personal officer work is about one person helping another to achieve something. It is about
giving help and support in a non-threatening way, in a manner that the recipient will
appreciate and value and that will empower them to move forward with confidence towards
what they want to achieve. Personal officer work is also concerned with creating an informal
environment in which one person can feel encouraged to discuss their needs and
circumstances openly and in confidence with another person who is in a position to be of
positive help to them.

ALLOCATION OF A YOUNG PERSON TO A PERSONAL OFFICER

When a young person arrives at HMYOI! Wetherby, his immediate needs, along with first night
assessments will be undertaken by the First Night in Custody staff who will also allocate a
personal officer for his induction period. This will be recorded in his case file on C- NOMIS.

In most cases a young person will be located onto a residential unit following 10 - 14 days on
the First Night Centre (Benbow) after undergoing the full induction process. The allocation of
a unit will be decided following consultation with the security department. The views of the
young person will be heard.

There may be occasions, due to unforeseen operational reasons or for the good order of the
establishment where there is a need to re-locate the young person to another unit. In this
event, a new personal officer will be allocated upon his arrival. It will however remain the
responsibility of the original personal officer to ensure the transfer process is carried out with
the minimum of disruption to the young person. The caseworker will not change and they will
be the constant through the young person’s time at Wetherby.

1

Young person arrives-
allocated a personal
officer on First Night
Centre (FNC)

within 24 hours.

2
Case work team notified
of arrival and book first
sentence planning board.

6

Personal officer attends
all sentence planning
boards where possible.

Personal Officer} ¢

Allocation

3

Young person located to
residential unit following
the induction period of
10 - 14 days,

5
The Personal Officer
will introduce themselves
to the young person

The Unit S/O will
allocate a Personal
Officer and Relief to
the young person.

ROLE OF THE PERSONAL OFFICER

The quality of a regime and good staff young person relationships are crucial to promote a
safe and secure establishment.

The expected vaiues are as follows:

Fairness

Respect

Integrity

Justice

Order and control
Non-judgemental
Honest

What is the role of the persona! officer?

The role of the personal officer is to provide moral guidance and to be a positive role model to
@ young person.

The overriding factor being the opportunity to influence a young person’s future behaviours,
relationships and offending, to provide boundaries that promote safety and wellbeing within
the establishment.

STEPS TO BE AN EFFECTIVE PERSONAL OFFICER

The process outlined below describes the expectations of what a Personal Officer should
achieve as a result of following these steps.

These steps will be used to measure the Personal Officers application of this policy in
engaging young people at a level that demonstrates an in-depth knowledge of their
circumstances, behaviour patterns and what is required to help them achieve their potential
whilst at HMYOI Wetherby.

Steps to being an effective Personal Officer

STEP 1 “Ty The personal officer will introduce themselves to the young person at the earliest |
opportunity following allocation and discuss immediate needs, longer term issues and
expectations. They will also inform the young person of the relief officer should they
not be available at any given time.

STEP 2 The personal officer will ensure that the young person’s cell door card is completed
with the young persons full name and prison number along wit the personal officers
and reliefs name.

STEP 3 | Personal officers will endeavour to attend remand/training planning review
boards/lifer review and parole boards and liaise with the case worker and contribute to
the decision making process, the relief will take on this role in the absence of the
personal officer.

STEP 4 T All young people will receive appraisals every week with their personal officers (or 7

reliefs). The objective being to record positive and quality entries for achievements as

wel] as improvements of targets, measuring against inappropriate or poor behaviour.
These discussions will be recorded in the case file on C Nomis.

STEP 5

Appraisals will include an update on progress with praise recognition and awarded for |
good behaviour and any areas for concern challenged. Depending on behaviour this
may lead to a young persons upgrade/downgrade in the R&S status level.

STEP 6 Personal objectives will be agreed between the young person and the personal officer
as the first stage of addressing issues of concern, this will enable the young person to
work towards either improvement or maintenance of current behaviour.

—
STEP 7 Evidence that discussions have taken place on C Nomis case notes; objectives have
been set and measured before any consideration for an R&S review can take place.

|

STEP 8 ; Personal officers must take a pro active part in helping the young person to progress

and achieve their potential, when the young person is subject to anti social behaviour
procedures they will be responsible for ensuring documentation is completed and
helping the young person to improve their behaviour.

—
STEP 9 If during the young persons stay at Wetherby they are subject to the ACCT process, it
is the personal officers/reliefs to attend the review when possible and contribute and
offer support.

Staff should be approachable and should reinforce strong moral values throughout
their daily dealings with young people.

PERSONAL OFFICER RELIEF SCHEME

To ensure continuity of delivery during non effective periods, of the personal officer, Wetherby
has a “relief” scheme.

Every personal officer is paired with a ‘relief personal officer’. The relief takes a secondary
responsibility in all aspects of the personal officer role and facilitating that role during periods
of the personal officer's absence.

The relief personal officer process is aligned and managed by the individual unit manager
who ensures that appropriate balance of experience, workload and continuity of delivery is
maintained.

UNIT MANAGER RESPONSIBILITIES

The Unit Manager will ensure that every young person is allocated to a personal officer and
relief personal officer within 24 hours of arrival into Wetherby. This must be recorded on
the young person’s case file on C-NOMIS.

The manager will conduct management checks to ensure that initial introduction interviews
are being held along with regular appraisal! interviews. Quality checks will take place on the
interviews as with the appropriate entries in the young person’s case file

Annex A.

Personal Officers Policy

Young people’s expectations

of their Personal Officer and Relief Personal Officer

Young Persons name: .........00ccsee cesses NOMS Number: ..............06

The name of your Personal Officer is: ...

The name of your Relief Officer iS: ...........ccssccssssscessssesssesessosssesssessseece

Your Personal officer will be able to help you in the following areas:

1.

Advice and support during your induction period in helping you to understand general
rules and routines.

Identifying your immediate needs, concerns and development areas.

To help you access other agencies such as Substance Misuse Services, Healthcare etc.
for the right advice.

To motivate and guide you so you can achieve your full potential within the rewards and
sanctions scheme.

Offer advice and guidance to support you in deciding and achieving your sentence
planning objectives and targets.

To offer you good advice and encourage you to think of ways you can solve problems
without creating more.

Encourage and motivate you to explore new areas of development and learn fresh skills.

To act as a positive role model for you so you can develop good social skills to Interact
with others.

SHOULD YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS OR PROBLEMS THEN
PLEASE SPEAK TO YOUR PERSONAL OFFICER.

10

PERSONAL OFFICER SCHEME

A new Personal Officer scheme has been created for Wetherby Main Site,
which will require staff to work actively as a main point of contact for trainees
on the unit. The scheme should aim to provide support and encouragement
from allocated officers to trainees. Having an effective and useful Personal
Officer Scheme in place will potentially allow for trainees and officers to build
up a better rapport. It aims to improve trainees’ confidence and trust in unit
Staff, as well as improving communication and information gathering.

KEY POINTS:

¢ Officers will be allocated specific trainees, unlike the previous scheme
which allocated officers to specific cells. You will work with your
allocated trainees for their entire time on the unit.

¢ Two officers from the same wing, on opposite weekends, will be
‘paired’ to ensure continuity between a personal officer and a back-up
officer — i.e. Officer A will be the back-up officer for all of Officer B’s
trainees and vice versa.

e It will be the responsibility of the Supervising Officer on the unit to
update the allocations list daily. Officers will be informed by the
Supervising Officer of any new allocations they have. It is then the
responsibility of that officer to ‘introduce’ themselves to the trainee.

¢ The allocations list will be in the form of an Excel Spreadsheet, which
will be stored on a public drive. Officers will have ‘read only’ access to
this, whilst SO’s and CM’s will be able to edit the list in order to update
it.

THE ROLE OF A PERSONAL OFFICER

The role of the Personal Officer is separate from the daily RSO entry made in
trainee’s files. As a personal Officer your interaction and support with trainees
will be less disciplinary than an RSO and more orientated around personal
issues and resettlement. For example you may speak to them about contact
with their family, any vulnerabilities they may have or socially how they are
associating with other trainees on the unit. However, if a trainee is on Red
Level or accumulating several negative comments common sense would
suggest that a Personal Officer would discuss this with them. The discussion
should be helpful, supportive and offer advice and guidance to trainee on how
to improve. This does not take away any discipline authority from you as an
officer! Having this approach can add evidence to down-grades and ABC
reviews, as the trainee is receiving substantial support and advice on how to
behave appropriately and not acting upon it.