Hackney Youth Justice Service

Description

Who we are:

We are a statutory service that only takes referrals from the Police or the Courts.

Our aim is to prevent re-offending by children and young people aged 10 years to 17 years.

Our team is made up of:

• social workers
• youth workers
• police and probation officers
• health and education workers e.g. Speech and Language Therapists 

What we do:

We work with children and young people from Hackney who have admitted to a crime or been found guilty by a court of committing a crime. 

Children and young people referred to us must co-operate and complete their programme, sentence or order.

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

We make plans together with the child and their family. This includes an assessment of what support or other actions are necessary to prevent future crimes. This means a child must come to regular appointments and we will also expect to visit your home.

There are often additional activities that will have to be done, such as making good the harm to a victim that a crime might have caused.

Some children are required to remain at home at certain times of the evening and night time. This might be monitored by an electronic wrist or ankle bracelet.

We will expect full time attendance at school or college or apprenticeships and we will help with finding suitable activities. 

We work hard to ensure all the activities the young people take part in are meaningful and actually help a child to reduce their offending behaviour.

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

Other activities might include programmes about preventing knife crime, first aid or managing emotions.

A very small number of children do spend some time in youth detention (sometimes called ‘prison’ or ‘custody’). If this happens we keep in contact and will work with a family to maintain contact with their child during this time.

If a child or young person does not keep to the requirements or conditions of the order or court sentence, we do return that person back to court to explain why they did not co-operate. 

Youth Justice Team in Hackney awarded a Quality Mark 

Hackney Youth Justice Service for children in trouble with the law has been working with other teams to be more aware of and sensitive to the communication and language difficulties experienced by many of it's service users.

Over half of the young people known to Youth Justice Service in Hackney did not understand vocabulary commonly used such as ‘breach’ or ‘comply’.

Hackney’s Youth Justice and Speech and Language Teams have been successfully working with young people, police officers and the community to:

•            raise awareness of these issues and   

•            support vulnerable young people

In recognition of the work in securing better outcomes for children and young people with SEN, Hackney's Young Offending Team have been awarded a Quality Mark by Achievement for All in partnership with the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers.  (January 2019).