Building an effective youth justice evidence-base to realise Child First outcomes

‘Child First’, which was adopted by the Youth Justice Board (YJB) as the guiding principle for policy, strategy and practice across the Youth Justice System (YJS) of England and Wales in 2021, consists of four ‘tenets’, each including a series of ‘child-friendly’ components:

1. See children as children: Prioritise the best interests of children, recognising their particular needs, capacities, rights and potential. All work is child-focused, developmentally informed, acknowledges structural barriers and meets responsibilities towards children.
2. Develop pro-social identity for positive child outcomes: Promote children’s individual strengths and capacities to develop their pro-social identity for sustainable desistance, leading to safer communities and fewer victims. All work is constructive and future-focused, built on supportive relationships that empower children to fulfil their potential and make positive contributions to society.
3. Collaboration with children: Encourage children’s active participation, engagement and wider social inclusion. All work is a meaningful collaboration with children and their carers.
4. Promote diversion: Promote a childhood removed from the justice system, using pre-emptive prevention, diversion and minimal intervention. All work minimises criminogenic stigma from contact with the system.

Background

Professor Stephen Case has been conducting research over several years to assess the impact and effectiveness of practice across youth justice. His work is focused on what he describes as the “constant challenge of generating, evaluating and applying evidence of ‘effective’ youth justice practice producing positive outcomes for children in complex and dynamic youth justice contexts, particularly when these contexts increasingly restricted by limited resource, time, finance and political attention span (nationally and locally)”.

In early 2021, Case and Ann Browning conducted a critical review of international literature sources in order to collate a comprehensive research evidence-base for Child First as a complete model of practice and in relation to its four interacting tenets. The review evidenced and evaluated Child First in terms of the underpinning theories (e.g. causes of offending, programme change mechanisms), their basis in national and international policies/strategies (including children’s rights instruments) and their related empirical research evidence-bases from the field of youth justice and associated areas (e.g. childhood and youth studies, policing, social work, health). The evidence collected and reported brought together longstanding, multi-disciplinary research evidence to support Child First as an ‘evidence-based’ approach to delivering youth justice in practice (Case and Browning 2021a). It has recently been consolidated by the edited text ‘Child First. Developing a New Youth Justice System’ (Case and Hazel 2023).

In late 2021, the authors followed-up with a research project focused on the relative under-development of Child First in practice contexts. The ‘Strategy Implementation Project’ examined the enablers, barriers, challenges, opportunities and support needs related to the ‘effective’ implementation of Child First in practice through a project founded in a series of workshops with key stakeholders from across the youth justice sector: policymakers, strategic leads, managers and practitioners working in the community, custody, inspectorate, research and strategic fields. Stakeholder evidence consistently identified three key features as central to the effective implementation of Child First in practice contexts:

• Child-centrism: child-friendly and child-focused strategies for working with children focused on engagement, realising rights and entitlements, prioritising needs, positive intervention focus on developmental sensitivity;
• Professional relationships: components and practices of inter-and multi-agency working relationships, particularly philosophical and cultural differences, interagency partnership working, educating others and organisational identity;
• Cognisance: knowledge, understanding and information regarding Child First, underpinned by the themes of knowledge, development of understanding, guidance/information/support and incongruence.

Recommendations taken forward

The report made a series of recommendations for the successful implementation of Child First, notably to prioritise child-centric practice, reframing professional relationships to lead, manage and support Child First in practice and developing sector understanding of Child First (e.g. through collaboration, addressing conceptual, practice and training gaps, producing concrete outcomes for Child First, re-evaluating reliance on risk paradigms). The YJB accepted all recommendations that they had ownership of and resolved to collaborate with stakeholder partners (e.g. Ministry of Justice/MoJ, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation/HMIP) to address recommendations owned externally.

In 2022/23, Case extended this evidence-based programme with a detailed investigation of how youth justice policy is ‘made’ within and between different stakeholder groups working in different policy, strategy and practice contexts across the YJS of England and Wales. Following qualitative documentary analysis of policy literature and semi-structured interviews with over 40 key stakeholders (e.g. in Government, MoJ, YJB, HMIP, youth offending teams), Case identified a series of formative influences on the extent and nature of policy-making at different stages (e.g. agenda setting, formulation, implementation), with particular focus on the contexts and mechanisms encouraging and inhibiting policy change and the effective implementation of policy in practice. These include professional and organisational identities and cultures, political and financial drivers (typically short-term and often sudden), staff turnover and most notably, relational contexts: relationships within and between organisations (e.g. promoting consensus, consistency and clarity) and professional perspectives and utilisation of expertise and evidence for the effective transfer of policy into practice.

Current focus

Case is currently on a Fellowship, conducting research which aims to trace, unpack and examine the trajectory of youth justice policy development within- and between-systems and organisations, in order to identify the key influences (historical and current) on policy development, identity, sustainability and implementation success. The provision of expert understanding of youth justice policy development should be of significant value to stakeholders experiencing sustained pressure to effectively respond to a long-term social problem (youth offending) within a socio-political context of restricted and diminishing resources - economic, practical and intellectual.

Working with the Youth Justice Board, HMI Probation, Association of Youth Offending Team Managers, Children's Commissioners Offices, and with civil servants at the MoJ, Welsh Government Crime and Justice Division, Case is asking:

• What is youth justice ‘policy’?
• Who are the ‘makers’ of youth justice policy?
• How is youth justice policy and policy-making understood, constructed, experienced, made meaningful and re/constructed by policy-makers working in different contexts?
• What are the enablers, facilitators, barriers and challenges for youth justice policy-making?
• How can better understandings of youth justice policy-making address the challenges to and opportunities for improved, effective and sustainable policy-making?

Child First is already embedded in YJB strategy and the objectives of practice organisations, particularly youth offending teams; we’re also beginning to see more Child First policy involvement from police and courts. I’m hopeful that my research will see the Child First principle evidenced in practice and hopefully the policy of future government, whatever that may look like.