2.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 2.2 The government is driving and delivering improvements across the youth justice system, from early intervention to custody. 2.3 In May 2022, the government announced a substantial investment in early intervention and community-based support. The Ministry of Justice provided a 9.8% uplift in funding to Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) in 2022-23 to provide them with the resources and capacity to work with children and address the underlying causes of their offending behaviour. This involves working across other parts of local support services to address issues related to mental health, exclusion from school, an unstable home life or any of the other challenges that can lead to children entering the youth justice system. 2.4 The government also announced a new ‘Turnaround’ programme designed to work with children on the cusp of offending, before they would normally get support from YOTs. 2.5 These steps and other interventions are aimed to reduce the number of children in the youth justice system, particularly in custody. 2.6 The first secure school at Medway, run by Oasis, will be an innovative new model of youth custody that embeds education and health at its heart. This approach is designed to improve outcomes for children in custody and to protect the public by reducing the likelihood of reoffending. This model will be carefully evaluated to ensure that the structure of the future custodial estate best reflects the evidence available. Preliminary scoping work on a potential second secure school will commence in Autumn 2022. 2.7 But ahead of this, the government is seeking to improve all parts of the youth custodial estate by: • embedding ‘SECURE STAIRS’ (a trauma-informed approach to care, co-designed with NHS England) to all establishments and staff training, • making the workforce even more skilled in working with children (as of May 2022, 239 had completed a foundation degree in youth justice), • using smaller units with higher staff-to-child ratios to provide more tailored and 1-2-1 support, and • piloting new approaches to the resettlement of children leaving custody. 2.8 The government considers that, put together, these steps and this strategy should deliver a step-change in the performance of the youth justice and youth custodial estate.