Offering hope and care in youth diversion - Juvenis/DIVERT Youth
Diversion at DIVERT Youth
“When DIVERT Youth started, Lambeth had the highest rates of first-time entrants into the youth justice system anywhere in the UK. That’s why this programme was developed. The idea was to intervene earlier, to stop young people slipping through the net and falling deeper into the system.
There’s good evidence from the Adult DIVERT programme that police custody can be used as an effective ‘reachable moment’, where young people are more receptive to making positive behavioural changes and their additional needs can be identified.
We take a multi-agency approach, and that’s critical. Collaboration with partners, providers and the local community are integral to how diversion is planned - ensuring that we meet the needs of the young people and their families, where they are at and allow for appropriate innovation.
All of our work is relational, helping young people and their families develop positive relationships, and to ultimately lead safe and healthy lives. Through their engagement with qualified professionals it is important we establish a safe space for supporting children, but also acknowledge that no single agency can provide all the necessary support for children and young people in conflict with the law.
When we talk about best practice, we need to make sure all agencies work together within the partnership agreements. Strong governance and leadership is a must with clear lines of accountability, and the avoidance of duplication.
Diversion works best residing within the community rather than sitting with statutory agencies. It should also include an array of strong partnerships and services based on the appropriateness of their needs rather than a blanket approach.
Challenges in diversion
One of the biggest challenges we all face in the youth sector is young people accessing mental health support. Many people in the criminal justice system have complex mental health and other needs which are poorly recognised and inadequately managed. Within DIVERT Youth, we have Diversion and Liaison teams based in police custody to support with mental health problems at all stages of the criminal justice pathway. A public health approach to preventing young people offending and re-offending should focus on risk and protective factors.
Evidence suggests adults with poor mental health first present with symptoms during their teenage years, so early intervention is critical to promote children and young people’s life chances. Those with poor mental health are more likely to present with unclear symptoms at this early stage in their lives making vulnerability less easy to identify for youth practitioners. This is where we utilise the specialist support of agencies like Partisan, who support communities that tend to have difficult relationships with accessing mental health services, have negative experiences with current systems - leaving them feeling judged, uncomfortable, and unsure who they can trust.
Damaged children become broken adults and the cost to society in this instance is off the scale. Savings can be made by investing more in young people’s therapeutic support in adolescent years
We need to make sure there are no barriers to programmes like DIVERT Youth.
Ensuring successful diversion
The relationship between service providers and decision-makers is vital. Together, we need to ensure young people get the best service they can, so that the early intervention is a success. Success means different things to different providers, but what ultimately matters is that young people and their families leave services saying that the team did what they were supposed to do, when they were supposed to do it – and that we helped.
Looking at the bigger picture, we need to drive home the point that young people are the future. We need to invest in them and give them hope.
I believe the approach to funding must change. We’re always offered two-year cycles of funding, but these are not short-term problems. The youth sector consistently hears about a ten-year approach, but we’re here today, and I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next four or five years. That’s not good for us and it’s not good for young people in need. They need consistency.
So we need longer-term funding, funding that prioritises relationship-building and supports families and community connections. Plus we need to make sure that young people’s voices are at the forefront of decision-making and systemic change.
We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that these are children and young people. Hope should be the starting point with all children and young people, plus no fixed time limit to the support on offer.
We need to focus on care, not police custody.”
This blog accompanies a series of policy briefings produced by the AYJ as part of the UKRI-funded Impact of COVID-19 on Youth Justice project, delivered in partnership between the AYJ and the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.
AYJ would like to thank Winston Goode, CEO and Founder of Juvenis, for his valuable contribution. Find out more about the Juvenis and its DIVERT Youth programme:
Juvenis: juvenis.org.uk
DIVERT Youth: juvenis.org.uk/portfolio/divert-youth/
Twitter: @Juvenis / @DIVERTYouth