Home Office Good Practice Seminars
Prolific & other priority offenders seminar
Workshops - 2 December
Workshop 1
Intervening with young people already/at risk of offending
(Geraldine Williams, Manager, & Duncan Connor, Family Worker, Diversionary Youth Support in Calderdale)
This workshop was run by Geraldine Williams, the Manager of the scheme, and Duncan Connor, a family worker with the scheme. The Home Office funds this pilot and it is in its sixth month. Geraldine and Duncan gave an overview of their work and the factors that make it work. This includes:
Using the Youth Offending Teams Screening and Assessment tool to assess needs
Intervene at the earliest possible point
Work holistically, involving the parents and siblings of an offender
Work is based on visits to the family home rather than at a police station (it was felt that most children would agree to anything just to get out of the police station)
Reaction from parent(s) / carer has been very positive as they have often already requested help from social services who were unable to assist.
The scheme was expected to work with up to 500 cases per year
Links have been made with the adult Arrest Referral scheme.
Intervention with young people can be short term, 5 or 6 weeks or on-going. The methods include:
diversionary activities
drug awareness and harm reduction programmes
programmes to address specific offences through partnership with the YOT
advocacy / help to access mainstream services
The workshop divided into groups to address a number of key questions and the discussion points are summarised below. A lively debate took place around the tension of wanting to intervene before an offending career starts yet the funding and intervention programmes are often only accessible following criminal behaviour.
Key points from the discussion
Define partnership working - how is it done or not done? How can it be improved?
Not done - by working in isolation / silo mentality. Part-time commitment. Coming to the table to get, not give. Wrong people at the table (no decision making power)
Should be done - a pooled budget might encourage partnership working. Have a shared agenda, common KPIs. Be co-located. Invest in long-term stability of the team (as opposed to 2 year stints). Receive collective credit for successful work.
Improve partnership working - training alongside each other (multi-agency events); continuity of personnel involved. Better performance management framework.
Effective interventions when working with young people
Assessment is the key - the needs of the young people need to be correctly identified in order for the appropriate intervention to be made. The workers then need the right skills, values and motivation. There should be a seamless process including all the agencies involved so that the young person gets a consistent service / message. Requires a long term commitment not a short-term 'political' fix.
What skills / values are needed to work effectively with young people?
A long list including - listening, non-judgemental, reliability, honesty, patience, empowering; being able to challenge; negotiation skills; etc. In fact all the core counselling skills are needed together with the ability to work with other agencies and communicate effectively.
How do you evaluate success when working with young people?
Need to establish a baseline. Set targets / objectives, define what success would look like (your outcome). Accurate assessment of need, good feedback from users, balance quality and quantity, have a shared (inter-agency) plan. Consider external evaluators, link the desired changes to strategic objectives.
What do young people continue to offend?
Needs to start with basic needs i.e. food, shelter (Maslow) before working on higher needs. Children constantly get mixed messages e.g. from TV, adult role models (binge drinking), Need to work with the power of peer pressure.
How to work more effectively with parents / carers?
Show empathy (no right answers, we all struggle to do out best). Offer separate services for parents. Offer resources e.g. some good videos around.
How early should we intervene?
As early as possible based on risk predictors. When it is identified that the child's emotional / development needs are not being met. Target siblings. Preventive intervention rather than reactive.
Key lessons learned so far are that it is important to be flexible and to work holistically with the young person and their family. Following group discussion it was also clear that the scheme needs to adopt a clear cut-off point and exit strategy for their work so that expectations are managed. Also, for credibility and to secure funding, clear aims, objectives, and outcomes need to be established so that the effectiveness of the scheme can be evaluated.
Download: Intervening with young people already/at risk of offending (PowerPoint presentation) 937 Kb
Last update: 16 May 2005