Background

The support required for children supervised by youth offending teams (YOTs) is typically too complex for a single agency to provide alone. Multi-agency working can thus bring significant benefits to YOTs, and more importantly to the individual children and to their parents and carers.

As Public Health England concluded from their 2019 evidence review of offending and reoffending:

the youth justice system has very little influence on almost all the causes of childhood offending, so it’s very important that a range of organisations in local areas work together to help prevent children offending and re-offending’. A diversity of resources is required to help all children realise their potential.

 

Summary of the evidence

Partnership working

A 2018 evaluation of a regional resettlement consortia initiative outlined the following critical success factors in partnership working:

• senior leaders – with preferably consistent personnel – leading activities to gain buy-in from partners, showing commitment and clearing bureaucratic barriers
• undertaking joint needs analysis to promote better mutual understanding and improved information flows between partners
• joint training and shadowing, improving cooperation and communication between staff in different agencies.

Similarly, Public Health England has promoted the following ‘5 Cs’ as part of a place-based, multi-agency approach to violence reduction:

• collaboration – a whole-systems approach bringing together partners from a broad range of functions, creating a common understanding
• co-production with the perspectives of all partners informing the approach
• cooperation in data and intelligence sharing, overcoming any barriers
• counter-narrative – partnerships promoting positive narratives and aspirations, underpinned by the mobilisation of community assets
• community consensus approach – actively involving community members, reducing barriers to engagement, and addressing community-level factors.

Crucially, strong partnerships can result in: greater effectiveness through sharing ideas and coordinating services; greater efficiency through pooling resources and avoiding duplication of effort; and improved engagement and participation by the children and their families through creating new community opportunities and resources in their lives.

Access to services

It is particularly important to develop effective systems of co-operation between services to ensure that children can access the resources most needed, with opportunities for integrated services and pathways being well-developed. Supporting access to legitimate opportunities for children, like access to appropriate education, is particularly valuable. Provision of supports for children, particularly around mental health difficulties, substance use, and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), can also be very important factors in supporting desistance.

There should be a strong mix of targeted, specialist and mainstream services, with attention being given to the continuity of community support at the end of youth justice supervision, e.g. in relation to education, training and employment, accommodation, and accessing mainstream children/youth services. Positive connections need to be built in families, schools and local communities.

Systemic resilience

The concept of systemic resilience involves putting the child at the centre and strengthening the protective factors around them including within their family, their community and in the services that are available to support them. This includes ensuring that they have access to fulfilling education and employment opportunities, and access to high-quality mental and physical health and social care services whenever these are required to address specific needs.

At a strategic and policy level, building systemic resilience has implications that span a range of services including:

Back to Staff Next: Information and facilities

Last updated: 10 March 2023