Youth Taskforce progress report

What's this about government reviving the crusade against antisocial behaviour? In Alan Johnson's first interview as Home Secretary with The Times, he said that the government had been "coasting" in relation to antisocial behaviour. He plans to set up an antisocial behaviour action website to enable the public to find out who deals with antisocial behaviour in their local area, and compare local actions with other areas - something that the papers have described as antisocial behaviour league tables.

I thought league tables were falling out of favour? Then call it an antisocial behaviour report card. The crux will be how they measure success - the numbers of contracts and orders made locally, or the numbers of children and adults who receive the support they might need and say they feel safe and welcome in their community. The Department for Children, Schools and Families' (DCSF) Youth Taskforce has just published a progress report - a promotional vehicle that tries to explain some of the less well-known interventions alongside some good news case studies.

So we're not talking about Asbos? Well, not just Asbos. The Youth Taskforce grew out of the Respect Taskforce that was based in the Home Office. In its first action plan, the new taskforce said it would focus on four issues: improving responses to antisocial behaviour and other serious problems, ensuring that parents are able to fulfil their responsibilities, making sure that positive activities are available to the most vulnerable young people, and driving up local authority performance in relation to antisocial behaviour. Although it remains over-zealous on the language of enforcement in the progress report, the key to much of the taskforce's work is to identify and respond to the causes of bad behaviour as well as the behaviour itself, alongside working with families as well as individuals.

In what way? The Parenting Early Intervention Programme (PEIP), which aims to provide parenting programmes to parents of eight- to 13-year-olds who are presenting challenging behaviour. The government is already claiming success from 42 projects and funded a further 110 from April 2009. Or there are the Stay Safe Teams, which involve police and children's services taking children in the streets who may be at risk to a place of safety, where a worker will contact the parents and talk to the young person to find out what's going on. Then there's the recent tendering exercise for the Generations Together programme: 12 projects, some of which aim to break down the barriers between generations that can lead to a misunderstanding of what is acceptable behaviour in public and add to that culture of fear that can seem so pervasive these days.

Will the progress continue? There's a section called "the year ahead".

Do these interventions really work? There are a number of independent evaluations taking place. For instance, the DCSF published quite a positive evaluation of PEIP before expanding the programme. And the Centre for Excellence and Outcomes is due to look at the evidence for "what works" for young people from September.

- Lisa Payne, policy unit, National Children's Bureau.

FACT FILE

- The Youth Taskforce was set up in October 2007 by the DCSF to take forward the government's commitment to improve outcomes for at-risk and challenging young people

- The Youth Taskforce Progress Report and the DCSF evaluations of different programmes are available at cypnow.co.uk/doc