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Acceptable Behaviour Contracts: Berkshire

Answer

Data on acceptable behaviour contracts (ABCs) are not collected by the Home Office as they are voluntary agreements and therefore not suitable for central data collection. However, surveys of crime and disorder reduction partnerships (CDRPs) indicate that over 25,000 ABCs have been made since October 2003. The Home Office recently issued updated and comprehensive guidance for practitioners on the use of ABCs.Parenting orders are a matter for the Ministry of Justice. However I understand that they were piloted between 30 September 1998 and 31 March 2000 but data showing the breakdown by area are not available for that period. Parenting orders were commenced in England and Wales in June 2000. The Youth Justice Board (YJB) has since April 2000 collected the number of parenting orders by youth offending team ("YOT") area, as reported to it by youth offending teams including education-related orders where the YOT has been involved.Until April 2007, one YOT covered Reading and Wokingham. Four other YOTs cover the rest of Berkshire. Since September 2004, the Department for Children, Schools and Families has collected data on the number of parenting orders in England related to non-attendance of children at school and exclusion from school at local authority level.Four parenting orders were made in Berkshire following truancy prosecution between 1 September 2004 and 13 April 2007: two in Reading between 2 September and 31 December 2006; one in West Berkshire between 22 April and 1 September 2006 and one between 2 September and 31 December 2006.Between 1 September 2004 and 13 April 2007 Berkshire local authorities did not report any applications to the courts for parenting orders in the case of exclusions.The number of parenting orders relating to crime or antisocial behaviour from April 2000 until March 2007 reported to the YJB by the YOTs in Berkshire are shown in the attached table.

Table A: Parenting orders related to youth offending or anti-social behaviour reported by Berkshire YOTs
	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07
Bracknell Forest	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Reading and Wokingham	7	0	3	5	6	5	5
Slough	0	2	4	1	0	0	1
West Berkshire	0	6	1	0	4	2	4
Windsor and Maidenhead	0	3	0	1	0	0	0
Total	7	11	8	7	10	7	10

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

159510; 465 c337-8W

Session

2006-07

Subjects

Berkshire Parenting orders Acceptable behaviour contracts

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk