Youth justice

The role of our youth offending team includes:

• running intervention programmes
• supporting children and their families when attending court
• supervising young people serving a community sentence
• leading the work completed whilst a child is in custody
• working with parents and carers to support their children lead a positive life

There are two main sections within the team:

• court outcomes services
• out of court prevention and diversion services

Work undertaken by the court outcome service includes the responsibility for supervising all court orders for children living in Hackney.

As our service is made up of representatives from different agencies it means that a holistic, comprehensive service can be offered to children who offend, with specialist workers getting involved when required.

YOT workers identify the needs of each child who has committed an offence, through an assessment which highlights the specific issues that contribute to the child’s behaviour, as well as measuring the risk they pose to others.

This enables us to provide a suitable programme of support to address the needs of each child, with the aim of preventing further offending.

Interventions can include one-to-one work, group work, parenting support and family-oriented support.

The prevention and diversion team, within Young Hackney, works with children who have accepted responsibility for committing a low level crime. The team assesses each child individually and provides intervention specific to their unique needs.

If you are referred to us, you must co-operate and complete your programme, sentence or order.

We’ll listen

We listen to you and your parent(s) or carer(s) and discuss what has brought you to the attention of the police and courts.

We’ll make plans

We make plans together with you and your family.  This includes an assessment of what support or other actions are necessary to prevent any future offending behaviour.

This means that you must come to regular appointments and we will also expect to visit your home.

There are often additional activities that will have to be carried out, such as making good the harm to a victim that a crime might have caused; this is called restorative justice.

Plans can also include engaging in and trying out new positive activities available in the community.

The plan will only work if you also value it.  Therefore, it is important to us that you are listened to and your ideas are also captured in the plan.

You may be required to remain at home

You may be required to remain at home at certain times of the evening and night time (this is called a curfew).

This might be monitored by an electronic wrist or ankle bracelet.

What we expect you to do

We’ll expect you to maintain full-time attendance at school, college or apprenticeships and we will help with finding suitable activities for you.

Activities

We work hard to ensure all the activities you take part in are meaningful and actually help you to reduce the possibility of you committing a crime again.

Sometimes this includes meetings with speech and language therapists, substance misuse workers, or wellbeing and physical health professionals.

Other activities might include programmes about preventing knife crime, first aid or managing emotions and finding you somewhere to take part in the positive activities that you enjoy.

Custody

A very small number of children and young people will spend some time in youth detention centres/youth offending institutions (sometimes called ‘prison’ or ‘custody’).

If this happens we will continue to work with you and your family. We will make regular visits and support you to keep working on positive factors to prevent further reoffending.

If you do not keep to the requirements or conditions of the order or court sentence

We will meet with you and your parent(s)/carer(s) in order to discuss why you have not engaged in the programme.  We will listen to what is preventing you from engaging and try to adapt to your needs.

However, if you continue to not keep to the requirements, we will return you to court for you and your parent(s)/carer(s) to explain why you have not cooperated.

Young people and their parents/carers are involved at every stage of the YOT intervention, whether through a statutory order or via prevention services.

Feedback

Feedback is welcomed at any stage throughout the engagement and all those involved are specifically asked for feedback at the end of the intervention.

Youth voice

We encourage children’s involvement in the development of the service as a whole.

Children will have the opportunity to provide feedback and discuss their experiences to inform how the service will evolve and improve.

The criminal justice system treats children differently from adults.

Significant emphasis is attached to the age of the suspect if they are a child or young person under 18 at the time of committing a crime.

Find out about:

• age of criminal responsibility
• identity of children accused of a crime
• youth court process
• how children who offend are dealt with in court
• how we work with parents
• what support can we offer?

Read our parents’ guide to youth justice.

When a child has accepted responsibility for committing a low-level crime, they may be offered an informal triage disposal, or a formal youth caution / youth conditional caution disposal as an alternative to prosecution.

Diversion

In some cases, it may be most appropriate to divert children away from the criminal justice system entirely and work with the child, family and victim through more informal ways to address their needs and prevent further offending.

Find out about prevention and diversion.

Being on bail means children who have been arrested or charged with a criminal offence can leave the police station or court but must return or go to court on a specific day at a specific time.

Find out about bail and court.

A referral order (RO) is a community-based order made by the court, to help you to take responsibility for your behaviour and stop offending.

A court will decide how long a referral order will last, but it will be between 3-12 months.

The court will tell you to attend a meeting called the youth offending panel.

The youth rehabilitation order (YRO) is a community sentence with 18 requirements.

Judges and magistrates may choose a single requirement or combination of requirements depending on the seriousness of the offence and what they believe you need to support you from committing further offences.

The requirements enable you to engage with interventions most likely to address your offending behaviour.

Find out more about community orders and sentences.

All children who are charged with an offence and refused bail must be remanded into local authority accommodation, or (where certain criteria are met) youth detention accommodation.

In both situations, the child will attain looked after status.

Find out more about custody.

Hackney CFS anti-racism statement.