The Impact of COVID-19: AYJ in conversation with Michael O’Connor
AYJ speaks to youth justice consultant, Michael O’Connor, on how COVID-19 has impacted his work in youth justice and how he has adapted to this unprecedented year.
I am currently working as a youth justice consultant supporting a number of local areas with inspection preparation and strategic partnership development. However, historically, I have worked across youth justice and child protection, most recently in an Associate Director for Early Help role at Achieving for Children and a Director of Practice role for a start-up youth justice charity.
It is really important to say that when the first lockdown hit, we started to hear children saying, “ok, well everything's locked down but my life is still here, and all the problems I had last week are still the challenges I've got this week.” So, I think over the various lockdowns and different levels of restrictions, children's services and youth justice services have learnt very quickly that the rules for the masses in terms of 'stay at home' and 'work from home', need to be somewhat different for us and I think we've seen that shift in terms of government messaging. The best example is probably within youth clubs. At the start, when there was a full national lockdown, services struggled to respond and understand whether they should keep seeing children or whether this was more of a risk than a protective factor. Youth services did some excellent and creative interventions online and with individual children, but very quickly the National Youth Agency and others provided much clearer guidance saying, “yes, you're not a statutory social work service, but you're a service that children need and we're giving you permission to carry on.”
The key learning for us was that children's risks, lives, challenges, and needs for services didn't go away, and we learnt very quickly from the first lockdown that all children’s services were essential and we needed to be present where and when children needed us most. A lot of the initial decision making was due to the uncertainty of COVID-19 and how much of a risk to staff and families it was going to be, but we've learned how we can manage safely and ensure we continue to deliver high quality, relationship-based services using social distancing and other measures. In my view the COVID-19 journey has reminded us how important all children’s services are and the very real value of universal, preventative, and early help services in the wider response to meeting the needs of children and families in our communities.
During the three main lockdowns, many services, including my own, reduced all non-essential contacts. However, as stated, we learnt quickly that the value of human, physical contact, and connection with families who needed our help was essential and therefore we adapted accordingly. Staff now have regular check-ins via Teams/Google Hangouts/Zoom, but many front-line staff are working in isolation from their colleagues and support networks. So, they're out there engaging with children but they're not necessarily then coming back to the office to be able to reflect, offload, and seek support.
There's also been a lot of innovation. It has been interesting to see how services have adapted to meet the demands of the circumstances and needs of the children and families they serve. We have seen increasing levels of outside work with children and families, along with services locating in environments that made it safe for staff and families to meet with professionals.
For example, my old youth justice service was in the main council office which was a civil building. But when it closed because of COVID, we said - “but we've still got children who need our support, interventions, and for us to be available.” So, we moved the whole operation of the youth offending service into a youth club. You often hear in youth justice people saying, “well, surely we should be working where children are, in schools youth clubs, in the community, not in an office somewhere”, so actually, COVID forced that to happen. The youth justice service is now in a youth club and we've seen some really interesting outcomes as a result of that. With children coming to a youth club, there's something really important to be said about identity development as there are labels associated with coming to a youth justice service, but with coming to a youth club it’s the same as any other child in the community. We saw some really brilliant examples of children finishing their youth justice statutory order and still coming to the youth club afterwards. I once walked into a youth club session, saw a child that one of my team had been working with, and I had a conversation with him and he said, “oh you know, I'm not part of the Youth Offending Team anymore but I really like coming here”, and that is a very different position to one of coming to a specialist youth justice service because there's something ‘wrong’ with you that needs to be ‘fixed’. So, arguably it’s helped us to be more child and community focused which has been great.
As for working outside, staff no longer sit in a clinical room with children, with a pad and pen writing notes about them. COVID has forced us not to do that and to go outside which is much more human to meet and have a walk around. It addresses issues of power and forces us to connect on a human level, which can be central to identity development and change. We've seen some lovely practice with detached youth work teams such as the pop-up recording studio where they literally took two speakers, a set of decks, and a microphone, and set up in a park with two kids and recorded music with them. We've seen loads of shifts to much more creative and human practices just by scrapping the office. COVID has forced us to think much more on interventions focused on identity development which has got to be a good thing. I really hope this is sustained into our practice going forward.
For those who are living in poverty, the impact for them was definitely far, far greater. I'm really interested in conversations about free school meals as an example, with people on the side-lines saying, “well, they didn't have free school meals during holidays before all this so what's the difference?” People missing the point that many of the support systems for children and families have been stripped away from the people who were just about surviving.
Following on from this, the theme that we are not yet clear on is what's gone ‘underground’ as a result of COVID. We saw massive drops in violence, offending, and levels of arrests. But what we interestingly didn't see is drug-related offences dropping at the same rate. The bit we're also not clear on yet is what has happened through channels of social media between rival groups of children and what pressure cooker is about to explode. We must ensure we remain alongside children and families, whatever COVID throws at us, and ensure they have meaningful alternatives to engaging in risk-taking, offending, or moving closure to abuse and exploitation at the hands of pro-criminal adults/abusers.
The other concern for me is the question of when we will begin to hear children's stories of what's been going on during lockdown. Who has been isolated in an abusive environment as they haven’t been able to go to school? Who hasn’t been able to access help as services have been closed? Children have lost trusted relationships and that is a real worry for me in terms of keeping them safe and access to early help and protection.
It has been interesting to see the journey through COVID of the wider children’s partnership. I think services have been amazing and have all really stepped up. If anything, I am in awe of how the police responded and did not take the view that services could not continue. I have seen incredible bravery from front-line officers navigating the very tricky balance of enforcing COVID regulations, whilst at the same time trying to keep the vulnerable safe. Academic staff have also worked incredibly hard to meet the needs of vulnerable and at-risk children and it is remarkable that many schools moved to online learning as smoothly as they did.
It has been interesting to reflect on how we have changed our service delivery across the timeframe of COVID-19 and clearly, we have learnt and developed along the way to ensure the needs of vulnerable children and families are met in the best and safest way possible. There have been many lessons from managing this awful pandemic, but what has been at the heart of it for children’s services has been reminding ourselves of the value that relationships, human contact, and connection have in supporting children and families to achieve improved outcomes for themselves and their futures.
Follow Michael to find out more about his work: Michael O’Connor
This blog is one of a series, produced as part of The Youth Justice System’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic research project, delivered in partnership between the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies (MCYS) at the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and the Alliance for Youth Justice (AYJ). The project aims to understand the unprecedented implications that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on each stage of the youth justice system.
Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of the UK Research and Innovation’s rapid response to COVID-19, findings and recommendations from the 18-month project will be shared widely with practitioners and decision-makers to shape future policy and practice.
For more blogs and project updates: COVID-19 and Youth Justice project page