Dr Pamela Ugwudike
The fundamental role of every Youth Offending Team in England and Wales is the same; to reduce offending by children and young people, and oversee the coordinated delivery of services to young people, particularly those who are in trouble with the law.
Each team therefore has a statutory constitution that necessitates collaboration with other services. These services include social work, probation, police, education, healthcare and other services.
In Wales specifically, Youth Offending Teams have to work collaboratively with devolved services (such as education and healthcare services) which are subject to the Welsh Government’s stated commitment to a rights-based approach that complements relevant Articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Consequently, Youth Offending Teams have to uphold several rights-based principles enshrined in the Youth Justice Board (YJB) and Welsh Government (WG)’s Children and Young People First, Offenders Second (CFOS) policy.
This child-centred policy also underpins the stated values and aspirations of the wider YJB for England and Wales and it is embedded in the ‘child-centred’ strategic plan for youth Justice. The new strategic document for Wales also emphasises the children first principle and the aligned delivery of services by devolved and non-devolved services (Ministry of Justice 2019).
In Wales, the CFOS policy places responsibilities on practitioners to safeguard the rights of children and young people who are supervised by Youth Offending Teams. To achieve this, Youth offending Teams are expected to work towards several outcomes.
In their evaluation of the Pembrokeshire Youth Justice Team in Wales (which involved piloting a Youth Justice Evaluation Inventory that was designed in collaboration with YJB Cymru who also funded the evaluation), researchers from the University of Southampton and Swansea University found evidence of best practice in most of the following areas, and the researchers recommend that other teams should adopt these practices.
