‘Asset: An assessment tool that safeguards or stigmatizes young offenders?’

Introduction

As a probation officer seconded to an inner London youth offending team (YOT), I complete Asset regularly for the young people I supervise. I will consider Almond’s criticisms of the CJS’s approach to young people, and evaluate her analysis of Asset as an assessment tool. I will consider how Asset affects the front line work YOT practitioners do. I will reflect on the implications of Almond’s conclusions for resources and YOT practitioner training needs. I will conclude that although much of Almond’s criticism of Asset is justified, the worst effects of this are mitigated by the child-centred approach of YOT practitioners. For clarity, I have adopted the same subheadings and structure as Almond.

The concept of assessment

Almond reflects on the meanings of assessment for different professionals, e.g. in health, education and criminal justice and social work. Following publication of Every Child Matters (Home Office, 2004), Almond states that the overarching purpose of assessment in social care, as embodied by the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and Their Families (Department of Health et al., 2000) is the ‘safeguarding and welfare of the child’ (Almond, 2012), whereas in youth justice, assessment relates primarily to the risk of reoffending. Almond queries whether in light of government policy to widen the range of providers of public services, including youth justice, agencies should have a common assessment tool.

The context of Asset

Almond locates Asset within the CJS’s agenda of control and labelling, stemming from the development of the What Works movement and the corresponding Evidence Based Practice principles (Chapman and Hough, 1998). She notes the similarities between the development of OASys and Asset, and expresses concern that in the criminal justice system young people are treated similarly to adults. The interplay between the assessment and the ‘dosage’ or intervention in the Effective Practice agenda is relevant here – it is all very well using Asset to predict the likelihood of reoffending or risk of serious harm, but this is of no use unless the resources to do something about it are present – otherwise the experience of completing a high quality Asset can be akin to watching a car crash in slow motion and then being able to say ‘I told you so’. Although the language of Asset does reflect the punitive and deficit-focused culture of the criminal justice system, in practice this negativity is subverted by YOT practitioners who complete the assessment from a child-focused perspective, and often use the vulnerability assessment or other relevant sections to justify assisting the young person to access welfare-focused services such as mentoring, housing, education and training. Many an Asset has been the launchpad for a YOT referral to social care, as practitioners have used the tool to crystallize and evidence their concerns about the young person’s welfare.

Almond sounds a useful note of caution in reminding us that assessment is never value free, but I feel as practitioners we should, within Asset, be able to explicate what is fact and what is our assessment. The Asset Risk of Serious Harm assessment, unlike OASys, also has a ‘gut instinct’ question, enabling detailed risk assessments to be completed when the offence history itself does not accurately reflect the risks posed. This gut instinct is central to working with young people, and although there is always the danger it will be misused due to practitioner bias, I frequently find it necessary to complete a ROSH which is not triggered by the index offence, most notably when working with young people who are actively gang-involved.

An Asset or a problem?

Almond states that the labelling of all children as ‘offender’ or ‘deviant’ occurs in Asset, which demonstrates Asset’s use as a tool of social control, and its use to legitimize institutional discrimination. A focus of the article throughout is this theme in relation to young people who exhibit sexually harmful behaviour. In my experience at the YOT there is less labelling of young people than occurs regarding adults in probation, which reflects the younger age of the client group, and YOT practitioners’ awareness that young people’s behaviour can be more fluid due to maturity and developmental stages: this requires the young person to be treated and viewed holistically – something I agree with Almond that Asset does not do. However, in my experience this does not prevent practitioners working holistically with young people.

Almond refers also to the emerging body of evidence on desistance, which she states is more optimistic in its view of young people, and ‘provides a more ethical framework on which to base safeguarding practice’ (Almond, 2012). There are significant implications for anti-oppressive practice in the learning about desistance. Interrogating this, Almond makes what I feel to be her strongest criticism of Asset – its total lack of focus on central issues of identity which can give rise to discrimination: ‘race, gender, class, culture, disability and sexuality, which, unbelievably, are given no explicit mention in Asset’ (Almond, 2012). This lack has huge negative implications for practitioners, and the attendant risk of perpetuating discrimination through its use alone makes the case for a thorough overhaul of the Asset document.

In noting that Asset is a deficit-based tool which focused overwhelmingly on negative aspects of the young person’s life, Almond draws comparison with the social care Assessment Framework, noting that the two are in ‘stark philosophical contrast’ (Almond, 2012). However, for a practitioner, when we consider that the Asset is central to the intervention plan (IP), this contrast is lessened, as the IP objectives should all explicitly aim to improve the young person’s circumstances, while also lessening the risk of harm (also, in a large proportion of cases an objective which aims to lessen the risk of harm will usually also aim to lessen the young person’s vulnerability, e.g. work to address weapons carrying, gang activity, volatile family situations).

Almond notes further that the Asset Risk of Serious Harm (ROSH) focuses ‘entirely on negative risk indicators and likelihood of future harm to the complete exclusion on protective factors’. While this can give a falsely negative reading, practitioners do have the freedom when completing the ROSH to determine the risk of serious harm level – this is not dependent on any scoring within the Asset – and to justify their decision in the free text box: if a young person has committed serious offences but has undergone an attitudinal shift, for example, the practitioner can reflect this narratively to justify a reduced score.

Another aspect of Asset which Almond criticizes is the 15-day completion target – all practitioners will have some sympathy here –15 days is not sufficiently lengthy to enable the practitioner to ‘roll with resistance’ (Miller and Rollnick, 2002). However, one advantage of Asset over OASys is that Asset does not lock – as long as the practitioner clearly signposts when any new information is added, the assessment can develop over time, without necessitating a review in full.

Automation or autonomy?

Almond laments the increase in bureaucracy and managerialism (Stephenson et al., 2007 in Almond, 2012). She states that practitioners do not have sufficient autonomy to make assessments in the child’s best interests, and that young people are simply signposted on elsewhere for problems which does not relate to their offending. Although young people are indeed often referred on, this is not necessarily a weakness in the system: for many this involves referral to specialist workers within the YOT, such as Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), educational psychology and substance misuse, all of which promote the young person’s welfare. In practice, I find that colleagues apply the common sense notion that unless the young person’s pressing needs are being adequately met, they are not going to be in a suitable emotional ‘space’ to engage in work which relates to their offending.

Almond then comes on to another issue which has serious implications: ‘how little social work training and professional judgement is used in day-to-day practice’ (Almond, 2012) She reminds us that actuarial assessments were designed to assist rather than replace professional autonomy but that, in effect, there has been a ‘skills atrophy’ (Almond, 2012). She states that this painting by numbers approach to assessment can result in young people being profoundly disempowered, and that this is in contrast to the increased focus on service user participation in other sectors such as health and mental health. I would agree that in practice the empowerment agenda in YOTs is virtually non-existent currently, and that in the face of resource pressure and time constraints it is entirely possible for a young person’s intervention plan to be hastily drawn up to meet a target, and only cursorily reviewed with the young person, without sufficient opportunity for the young person to contribute to and ‘own’ the document. However, the counter-argument is that the IP is time consuming and clunky to complete, and while practitioners may go through the motions to get it on paper, it does not properly reflect the meaningful and child-centred contact which goes on ‘in the room’.

The content of Asset

Almond asserts that Asset ‘conjures up notions of “doing to” a young person as opposed to using professional skills to “work with” them to understand their needs’ (Almond, 2012). She also notes that Asset is thoroughly at odds with the Assessment Framework triangle, in which one entire side relates to the protective influence of positive parenting (Department of Health et al., 2000), whereas in Asset there is insufficient focus on parenting or caregiving.

In discussions with colleagues this weakness in Asset has been identified also, as staff lament that they are expected to work with the young person ‘in a vacuum’ which does not reflect the difficulties and sometimes dangers that young people encounter in their home environment, and the corrosive impact this can have on their welfare and their offending.

This issue raises the spectre of both resources and YOT practitioner training – how many YOT officers are trained to work therapeutically with families, and to whom can we refer if we are not? Parenting workers in YOTs undertake statutory and non-statutory parenting work. However, this is something different from family therapy, or mediation, and we cannot expect already overburdened YOT parenting workers to fill this gap in resources.

Alternative perspectives

Almond then focuses on alternative perspectives, and suggests the debate on assessment has progressed more usefully in social work than youth justice, leaving Asset increasingly out of step with the Assessment Framework. She refers to current work on desistance, particularly Hackett and Masson’s (2005) work, which stresses ‘the importance of addressing resilience and desistance factors in a young person’s life over the longer term’ (Almond, 2012).

Almond suggests that Asset could be enhanced by incorporating strength-based approaches, such as the inclusion of the strength-focused tool the International Resilience Project Checklist (Grotberg, 1997), and the Good Lives Model (Ward and Marshall, 2004) which focuses dually on risk management and psychological well-being. I agree these could usefully be done to empower young people to effect positive change, and to feel more in control of what happens to them in their time in the youth justice system. The Good Lives Model in particular is noted to combine well with the Assessment Framework and interventions to address sexually harmful behaviour such as AIM2 and others (Horwath, 2010: 277, in Almond, 2012).

The implications of such new approaches are considerable – and in my view would serve a doubly positive purpose in that a more strength-based, optimistic approach to our work would greatly invigorate YOT practitioners, many of whom are ground down not only by excessive workloads, but also the emotional demands of the work (for which there is rarely the option of clinical supervision). If greater integration with the Assessment Framework led to more collaborative working with social care departments, this would be a significant improvement, this interface being currently a running sore in many YOTs.

Conclusion

I would agree with Almond’s assertion that ‘Asset is simply not enough’ (Almond, 2012). However, I feel the author places perhaps too much responsibility on Asset for the current punitive and mechanistic culture, when the blame does not fully lie at this door. Asset, when completed to a high standard, with insightful and reflective analysis into all the salient parts of a young person’s life, can inform a child-centred, welfare-focused Intervention Plan.

I agree that Asset is overdue for a re-boot, however, and reframing it more positively, incorporating an awareness of anti-oppressive practice, would be a big step forward. This would encourage a more progressive tone to the debate, thereby bringing youth justice more in line with social work policy.

Having the right assessment tool is of course central to providing a good service to vulnerable and risky young people, but we cannot rely on this alone to define a work culture. Unless the national agenda changes to a more ‘whole child’ approach, as the author states, the danger is that young people will be ‘done to’ rather than engaged with. Youth justice practitioners must be supported at local and national level to do what we came into the job for – to help young people change their lives for the better: when their holistic welfare needs are being met the reduction of reoffending and risk of harm is rarely far behind.