A note from our Interim CEO, Saqib Deshmukh

It has been a time of change and transition at AYJ. In a sense, this mirrors the external environment that we operate in. We have used the summer to consolidate and catch up. We have been preparing for a busy last quarter of the year with new pieces of work, such as our Transitions Project, and developing a series of scoping sessions with members and stakeholders.

My background is as a practitioner, working with children and young people for more than three decades. A great deal of this work has been within youth justice working with YOSs/YOTs, with young leaders’ projects, and as an appropriate adult and advocate in police stations. I'm able to have affinity with many of our members working in this space, taking a genuine asset-based approach that centres those most impacted by CJS in a policy and influencing capacity, and most crucially in service delivery.

The spaces in which we operate continue to be primarily white and middle-class led; the over-representation of black children and young people is paralleled by the under-representation of black led Voluntary Community Sector groups and Small Medium Enterprises.

As an interim, I'm here to both hold the fort and support the AYJ’s growth as a relatively young organisation. I'm also here as a leader of colour to tackle the underlying inequalities in the situation that I have outlined above. We need a more equitable, healthy system of service provision. Black-led groups must be at the forefront of constructing agendas to ensure that policy and practice are rooted firmly in anti-racist foundations.

We are looking at developing our priorities for next year, which we hope will align with our new 3-year strategy (which will be launched soon).

In this period of change and flux, it is important to retain the principles on which the AYJ and the Standing Committee were built: being genuinely child centred, and speaking truth to power.

I look forward to working with our members in the months ahead.

Saqib Deshmukh

AYJ Interim Chief Executive. September 2022