§ Mr. Irvingasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the estimated average cost to his Department and local authorities of a place for a juvenile offender on an intensive intermediate treatment scheme within the Department's recent intermediate treatment initiative.
§ Mrs. CurrieGrants under the IT initiative were awarded on the basis that the estimated cost of providing a programme of intensive IT was £2,000 per case. This figure was fixed at the beginning of the grant period (normally two years) so that the voluntary body providing the scheme had a clear indication of the money available from central Government during the whole of the grant period.
The Department has no up-to-date information from which we could derive a current average cost of providing schemes of intensive IT. We have commissioned Dr. Martin Knapp (University of Kent) to undertake a research study to evaluate the cost effectiveness of various forms of IT compared with other court disposals, but the results of his work are not yet available.