Youth justice

The primary aim of youth justice work is to prevent offending and this is achieved through a multi-agency, partnership approach to tackle the factors contributing to youth crime. These factors include disengagement from education, training or employment, problems with parenting, mental health issues, and substance or drug misuse. 

You will work in a youth offending team, made up of social workers and other professionals such as probation officers, police officers and teachers. The team works to prevent crime and offers services to young people who have been arrested and charged, by undertaking assessments, writing court reports and supervising sentences. The length of involvement with a service user can vary from three months to five years. Part of this work includes restorative justice conferences, which bring together perpetrators and their victims. This helps the victim to feel more secure and the perpetrator to understand that every action has a consequence. Reparation schemes,such as community work and environmental projects, are also in place to ensure young offenders repay the community for their offences. 

To prevent youth crime, sports or drama groups are set up to engage and enthuse young people, and to make it easier to re-engage them in education or employment. Concepts such as ‘midnight basketball’ are used to give young people something to do at times when they are most likely to offend.

Shoptalk

Young people get a great deal of negative media attention, which is mostly unwarranted as the reality is that only a very small proportion of young people are prolific offenders. Common acronyms in this area of service include:

• ISO – individual support order
• ISSP – intensive supervision and surveillance programme
• YIP – youth inclusion roject
• YISP – youth inclusion and support panel
• YOT – youth offending team.

Skills required

The ability to engage with and get on with young people is key to being effective in this area of work. It is also important to be enthusiastic and innovative as young people will respond well to these qualities. Since the youth offending team is made up of a number of agencies, good teamworking skills are essential, as no individual or individual agency is capable of tackling youth crime on their own.

Starting out

Induction for newly qualified social workers involves getting to know the local circumstances and the resources in place in the area. You will be placed in a small team with senior workers and managers to support you. Your workload will gradually increase with regular supervisions and appraisals built in to help with professional development.

In brief

• Best bits
  It’s exciting working with young people as every person is different.
  In most cases, young people will become re-engaged in education, training or employment and bringing this about is hugely rewarding.
• Worst bits 
  It can be difficult on infrequent occasions when you have to work with those few young people who have committed very serious crimes.
• Don’t bother if...
   ...you believe a job should be from nine to five, five days a week.