Young adults in the criminal justice system need better help for their mental health to prevent problems getting worse, says a briefing published today by Centre for Mental Health.

The briefing, published as part of the independent Bradley Commission, shows that almost all young adults in contact with the criminal justice system have multiple problems including mental ill health. Many lead chaotic lives that cause stress and distress. Yet many of the services that work with this group either end or begin at age 18, leaving young adults without effective support.

The briefing identifies eight core components of effective engagement with young adults. These include a focus on identifying emerging problems early on rather than waiting for a diagnosis to help to make mental health support more engaging. And they include developing consistent and continuous relationships with staff; addressing the full range of a young person’s needs in one place; and involving young adults in making decisions about the support they want and in helping others.

The briefing also makes recommendations for policy and practice. They include:

• Services working with young people of transitional age should facilitate a formal, face-to-face transfer of care meeting involving the young person, their family and each service that is working with them.
• Liaison and diversion services should run at evenings and weekends and involve children and young adults in designing services.
• Education, Health and Care Plans for young people with special educational needs should run continuously, including when a person is in custody.
• Appropriate adult services should be extended to young adults with mental health problems and those with learning disabilities.

Changes to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act have been implemented today which reduce the length of time most criminal convictions must be declared by ex-offenders to employers. The legislation has not been updated for almost 40 years, despite numerous campaigns.

Business in the Community (BITC), supported by T2A Alliance has produced an up-to-date Guide and Top Tips to assist candidates with how, when and what to tell an employer about their criminal record.

BITC believe that a candidate has the best chance of getting into employment when they prepare and stay positive.  A candidate may have a criminal conviction but if it’s not related to the job and it won’t stop them from being a great employee, then they’re in with a shot.

The new guidance,  developed through workshops and in consultation with business, young people and the people that support them, should be used by advisors in discussion with the people they support, and can help prepare people to disclose their criminal convictions in a positive and constructive way. Download the new guidance.

Unlock, a national charity for people with convictions, has also produced new resources on the reforms to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and has updated its Disclosure Calculator.  These will help people to understand when convictions can be regarded as ‘spent’ under the reforms.  All are available to download from the Unlock online information hub.

Leicestershire Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Sir Clive Loader, has identified young adults as a priority group within his Police and Crime Plan and has commissioned a Young Adults Project (YAP) to recommend system-wide changes which will contribute to reducing offending and re-offending rates during young people’s transition to adulthood. The Project Team is currently considering the growing evidence that young adults require an approach which takes into account their developing maturity and specific needs.

The first YAP project update can be read here

Reporting to a multi-agency Project Board, chaired by Paul Brown, Chief Executive of The Y in Leicester, Phase 1 of the project is tasked with gaining a deeper understanding the offending and needs of the 16-24 age group and examining the evidence as to what is effective in reducing their offending and re-offending. Phase 1 is expected to conclude in April 2014 and the project will then present its findings and make recommendations to the local Reducing Reoffending Board in April 2014.

“This is a significant opportunity to achieve better outcomes, whilst it is true that young adults are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, they are also at an age where desistance is most likely – a fundamental aim of the project is to identify how agencies can collectively support these natural processes of desistance more effectively,” said Grace Strong, YAP Project Manager.

T2A, which last year published an audit of all Police and Crime Commissioner plans, will be meeting the Leicestershire Young Adult Project in March. T2A will also publish a new briefing paper this month highlighting best practice in relation to young adults by this and other Police and Crime Commissioners across England and Wales.

T2A has produced a new interactive map detailing the location and activities of the six new T2A Pathway projects, which launched earlier this year.

The projects all work with young adults at different points in the criminal justice process, and will run for three years in partnership with a range of statutory agencies.

Click here to download the map

The projects are delivered by:

Advance Minerva (London)

Remedi (Sheffield)

Together for Mental Wellbeing (Rotherham)

Addaction (Liverpool)

Prisoners’ Advice and Care Trust (PACT) (West Midlands)

The Prince’s Trust (Staffordshire)

The Government has announced today that it is setting up an independent review to investigate self-inflicted deaths in custody of young people aged 18-24.  The announcement means that the proposal to scrap YOIs (see T2A’s December 2013 response to MoJ consultation) has been suspended pending the outcome of the review.

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said the Government was committed to the safety of offenders and to reducing the number of people dying in custody and that lessons learned from the review would benefit all age groups.  In the past 10 years, 163 children and young people under the age of 24 have died in prison.

The review will be led by the Labour peer Lord Harris of Haringey, who is chairman of the Independent Advisory Council on Deaths in Custody.

Leading charities and NGOs, including Barrow Cadbury Trust, had joined the call for an independent review in a letter published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper yesterday. The Government had been considering whether to hold an independent review since Inquest and the Prison Reform Trust published Fatally Flawed: has the state learned lessons from the deaths of children and young people in prison, which examined the experiences of children and young people who died in prison between 2003 and 2010.

Embargo: 00:00 Wednesday 22 January 2014

T2A launches national programme for young adults involved

in the criminal justice system

An innovative three-year national programme to deliver interventions to young adults involved with the criminal justice system was launched today in six locations.

The ‘T2A Pathway’ will be delivered by partnerships between the voluntary and statutory sectors, as part of the work of the Transition to Adulthood Alliance (T2A). The projects will work with 16-25 year olds at different stages of the criminal justice system.  Young adults are vastly over-represented in the criminal justice system. While 18-24 year olds account for around 10% of the general population, they represent around a third of the probation service’s caseload, and a third of those sent to prison each year.

Alongside the delivery of the T2A Pathway, Barrow Cadbury Trust has commissioned an independent four-year formative, summative and economic evaluation, which began in late 2013. The evaluations will measure the social and economic impact and effectiveness of each project. The evaluation team, led by Professor Paul Senior and Kevin Wong at the Hallam Centre for Community Justice within Sheffield Hallam University, will also support delivery organisations with establishing baseline data, data collection systems, and data analysis.

The T2A Pathway projects include provision of mental health support, restorative justice, drug and alcohol treatment, family engagement and help with finding employment.  The new T2A Pathway projects include partnerships with the police in London and Rotherham, with courts and probation in Liverpool and Sheffield, and with five prisons in the West Midlands. The projects are all co-funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust, along with a range of statutory partners, from Police and Crime Commissioners to prisons and local authorities.

The projects will develop further the work of three T2A (Transition to Adulthood) pilots, which worked with more than 2,000 young adults between 2009 and 2013 in London, Birmingham and Worcestershire.  The pilots showed that treating young adults as a distinct group reduced offending and increased employment.  The projects will be the centrepiece of the delivery work of the T2A Alliance, a coalition of 13 leading charities, which works to evidence the importance of a distinct approach for young adults either at risk of entering the criminal justice system or already involved in it.

Announcing the new T2A Pathway, Joyce Moseley OBE, Chair of the T2A Alliance said:

“Young people on the cusp of adulthood often have a range of challenges to overcome, and those in trouble with the law have often lost contact with family, education or employment, which are vital for turning away from a life of crime. We’ve known for some time that young adults in the criminal justice system benefit hugely from a distinct approach that takes account of their variable maturity and addresses their particular needs.

T2A’s research has shown how services can work effectively with young adults throughout the criminal justice process and link them back to a crime-free life, benefitting them and their communities.  The T2A Pathway will provide young adults across the country with the opportunity to make amends and address their offending, and guide them into a stable and productive adulthood.”

ENDS

Note to Editors

The T2A Alliance

i)             The T2A Alliance is funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust and was established in 2008. In 2012 T2A published the ‘Pathways from Crime’, which created the concept of the ‘T2A Pathway’, a 10-stage framework that describes how services can work effectively with young adults throughout the criminal justice process, from point of arrest to release from prison.

ii)          Over a half of young adults in custody go on to reoffend within one year of release and up to two-thirds reoffend within two years.

iii)            The T2A Alliance’s members are:  Addaction, Black Training and Enterprise Group (BTEG), Catch22, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS), Clinks, the Criminal Justice Alliance (CJA), the Howard League for Penal Reform, Nacro, the Prince’s Trust, the Prison Reform Trust (PRT), Revolving Doors Agency, the Young Foundation, and Young Minds.

Barrow Cadbury Trust

The Barrow Cadbury Trust is an independent, charitable foundation, committed to supporting vulnerable and marginalised people in society. The Trust provides grants to grassroots voluntary and community groups working in deprived communities in the UK, with a focus on Birmingham and the Black Country. It also works with researchers, think tanks and government, often in partnership with other grant-makers, seeking to overcome the structural barriers to a more just and equal society.

The six T2A Pathway programmes

(please note information about the Pathway programmes is also available on the T2A Pathway page: /pathway/)

i)                     Advance Minerva

The project will work in Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham, and Kensington & Chelsea. It is a partnership with the Tri-borough Community Safety Teams, police teams across the Tri-borough and Starting Over, the custody referral service within the Tri-borough police stations.

ADVANCE  will work with approximately 150 young adult women per year aged 18-24 who have been stopped by the police for anti-social behaviour or minor offences, arrested, subject to an anti-social behaviour order, and/or have been in police custody.

ADVANCE  keyworkers will undertake an assessment of needs in a women-only environment and deliver a support and intervention plan that is tailored to individual needs. There will be a particular focus on problems relating to mental health, domestic and sexual violence and abuse, alcohol and drug issues, as well as on life skills (budget management, parenting, self-esteem).

ADVANCE staff will deliver 20 training sessions for police officers in the Tri-borough, to ensure that gender and equality issues are at the forefront of police activities, addressing the particular needs of young adult women, and ensuring that referral procedures and information sharing are efficient and effective. If appropriate, voluntary engagement with ADVANCE will be used as an alternative to a formal criminal justice sanction.

The project is strengthened and complimented by additional local authority funding to work with women subject to short sentences, and ADVANCE is also supported by London Probation Trust to work with women sentenced to over 12 months and on community sentences, which will ensure continuity for women who go on to be sentenced. Match funding has been secured from the London boroughs involved.

ii)                  Together for Mental Wellbeing

The project, based at stages 1 (policing and arrest) and 2 (diversion) of the T2A Pathway, will offer mental health support to vulnerable young adults aged 18-24 years who come into contact with police and emergency services in Rotherham. Together for Mental Wellbeing will run the project in partnership with South Yorkshire Police, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust.

It will work with individuals who are at risk of offending or at a pre-conviction stage to respond to their needs at the earliest possible stage of contact. All young women at policing and arrest stage will be offered the service, due to the strong links between mental distress and offending amongst this group.

A mental health practitioner will offer screenings in police custody and will also receive referrals by police, the Vulnerable Person’s Unit, mental health services and other local agencies. Based on a holistic assessment, individuals will be offered practical support to manage their mental wellbeing and to access community resources, from employment and training, to housing, mental health and substance misuse services. Staff will also support young adults to identify, understand and alter any behaviours that are perpetuating their mental distress. They will work with individuals to develop tools that enable them to sustain these changes, for example, emotional awareness, assertiveness, negotiation and problem-solving skills. A key focus will be on strengthening their informal support networks and relationships.

Young adults will be supported for approximately three months (dependent on individual need) with the aim being that on leaving the service, they will have developed a personal set of resources that will reduce their mental distress, risk of offending and dependency on emergency services.

Match funding has been secured from the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner with additional funds provided by the Clinical Commissioning Group.

iii)                Remedi

The project will operate at stages 3 (Restorative Justice) and 6 (Community Sentences) of the T2A Pathway, and will deliver restorative mentoring interventions to young adults aged 17-25 across South Yorkshire.
The mentoring provided is ‘restorative’ in that it seeks to address the harm that has been caused by the offence. Remedi has found that that harm caused by an offender presents significant barriers in their life to successful resettlement and to their motivation or ability to stop offending. By combining a broad cross-section  of mentoring (befriending, encouragement, guidance, practical and emotional support) with restorative practices  (mediation, family conferencing, restorative conferencing), Remedi will deliver a needs-led service for  the individual and the wider community.

150 referrals per year will be made by Remedi’s existing and long-established partners in the youth offending service and probation trust. Typical mentoring relationships will last between 3 and 6 months.

Two dedicated full time practitioners will provide these specifically targeted intensive services for the young adult group, alongside existing mentoring teams working with a broader range of offenders. Match funding has been secured from the Police Crime Commissioner’s Office for South Yorkshire.

iv)                Addaction

The project will be delivered at stage 5 (sentencing), located at Young Addaction Liverpool, providing a specialist service for young adults with drug and alcohol problems.

The service will be offered following arrest at the youth and adult courts in central Liverpool to provide an alternative route for around 65 young adults per year aged 16-24 who risk entering the criminal justice system because of possession of illegal drugs (usually cannabis), alcohol-related offences or other types of crime or anti-social behaviour fuelled by substance misuse. Referrals will come from the police, custody suites and the court.

All interventions will involve collaboration between Addaction, the YOS, the Crown Prosecution Service and magistrates. The young adults will be given the opportunity to volunteer for a six week treatment programme as a possible alternative to a fine or further court appearance. The interventions will include one-to-one sessions with an Addaction key worker who will be located at police stations and courts – and structured group sessions that emphasise mutual aid, peer support and encourage participants to take responsibility for their own behaviour and recovery. Subject to successful completion of the treatment programme, young adults could be offered the opportunity to leave the scheme with a conditional or absolute discharge. Match-funding has been secured from the Liverpool Drug and Alcohol Team (DAAT) service.

v)                  Prison Advice and Care Trust (Pact)

This project will be delivered at stages 8 (custody) and 9 (resettlement) of the T2A Pathway, providing family support services for young adults (males and females) in custody, and on release from, three prisons in Staffordshire. The project would, for the first time, bring together Pact’s Transforming Relationships model with Family Group Conferencing providing a family-led approach in custody and through to resettlement.

Pact’s Family Engagement Worker (FEW) would provide case management for young adult prisoners and their families in YOI/HMPs Drake Hall (youth/adult female), HMP/YOI Werrington (youth male) and HMP Stafford (adult male). The FEW will work in each prison and also work with the families in the community. Referrals will come via the prison induction team with priority to those who meet Troubled Families criteria. Pact’s Family Champions, recruited from among longer-sentence trained prisoners, will be involved in an initial triage to determine levels of support and will provide short- term interventions.
Pact will also provide effective signposting into existing resettlement services in prison and support services in the community. The planned average duration of support will be 6 months across the FEW and Troubled Families teams combined but with the flexibility to meet the specific needs of each family.

Match-funding has been secured from HMP/YOI Werrington, HMP/YOI Drake Hall, HMP Stafford, Stafford Borough Council and in-kind funding from Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust.

vi)                The Prince’s Trust

This project will deliver at stages 8 (custody) and 9 (resettlement) of the T2A Pathway, providing mentoring support aimed at routes to employment, education and training for young adults in the West Midlands, aged between 16 to 25, who have at least three months left of a custodial sentence. The project will engage with two prisons: HMP Featherstone and HMP/YOI Brinsford (male prison and young adult male prison). It may extend to a further prison at a later date. The project will support young adults who volunteer to join the programme when leaving prison and re-entering the community, with the aim of preventing a relapse into offending.

Young adults in custody who engage with the service will attend a pre-release session where the Prison Outreach Executive will introduce the project. The pre-release session will cover such topics as: realising your potential, staying away from crime, mapping support, and commitment to change. In addition, trained volunteer ex-offenders from The Prince’s Trust will be invited to speak to the young adults and discuss how they have turned their lives around.

The young adults will be offered one-to-one mentoring sessions with the Prison Outreach Executive (three sessions before and three after release). Mentoring could last up to 6 months (3 months pre-release and 3 months in the community). The Prince’s Trust may provide additional support beyond that point.  As part of the mentoring provision the young adult will work with the Prison Outreach Executive to develop an individual action plan for when they are released.

The young adults that engage with the project will be encouraged to join a Prince’s Trust programme after leaving prison, if it is suitable to their needs and interests. The programmes on offer cover areas such as vocational skills training, personal skills development, and business start up support.

Match funding will be available from the Education Funding Agency or Skills Funding Agency for young people who decide to join The Prince’s Trust’s Team programme, a 12 week personal development course.

Contacts:

Barrow Cadbury              

Max Rutherford, Criminal Justice Programme Manager   0207 632 9066/07969 965553
Debbie Pippard, Head of Programmes and Vice Chair of T2A Alliance   0207 632 9072/07985 226403
Diana Ruthven, Communications Manager   0207 632 9077/07807 131105

www.t2a.org.uk                            @T2AAlliance

www.barrowcadbury.org.uk      @BarrowCadbury

The recently released report from Clinks summaries the views of criminal justice and Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Sector professionals working in Wales and finds support the adoption of an IOM approach for working with young adults. IOM Cymru Youth to Adult Transition forms part of a consultation to establish how an all-Wales Integrated Offender Management (IOM) strategy could support young adults in the Criminal Justice System.

The consultation was initiated by the IOM Cymru Board, who identified young adults as priority group within the criminal justice system, with distinct needs. The report was written by Clinks and supported by the T2A Alliance.

Respondents to the consultation were practitioners across sectors who work with young adults in the criminal justice system. The consultations were held in the summer of 2013 and responses were gathered through attendance at three events as well as three separate online surveys. This provided two broad stands of information; an overview of young adult services, and the role of the IOM in supporting young adults.

From the consultations emerged overwhelming support for an approach recognising young adults as a distinct service user group and IOM as a means of supporting this group. The report identifies 17 recommendations as a way forward for the IOM and other stakeholders to ensure better services at this early stage of IOM development.

The full report can be read here.

The provision of mental health services for young people at risk of or engaged with offending behaviour is inadequate, according to a report released today.

A partnership between the Transition to Adulthood Alliance and Young Minds, Same Old… is a cross-sectional qualitative research project carried out by City University London in three T2A projects in London, West Mercia and Birmingham. Interviews were carried out with young people as well as T2A, CAMHS and AMHS staff and commissioners.

The report reveals that little has changed over the last 20 years; young people within the criminal justice system still receive highly inadequate mental health care. Both young people and the professionals working with them highlighted distinct problems with mental health provisions which included waiting lists being too long, which results in many young people self medicating, are gaps in service provision between young people’s and adult mental health services and support centred around medication.

Same Old… outlines eight recommendations to ensure that young people offender with mental health needs get the support and intervention they require. Amongst these suggestions is targeted commissioning for at risk 16-19 year old, east access to services and information, and training for all professional working with children and young people at risk of offending.

Read the full report here.

T2A has published its response to the Ministry of Justice’s consultation on Transforming Management of Young Adults in Custody. 

T2A firmly disagrees with the Ministry of Justice’s proposal to remove the distinct sentence and provision of Detention in a Young Offender Institution (DYOI) and to mix young adults within the general prison population.

The government has said is committed to evidence-based policy, but in this consultation does not provide the necessary detail on the evidence, costs, risks and benefits of its proposed alternative approach. We strongly advocate that the government consults again when it is able to provide detail of what the proposed changes will mean in practice and how it proposes to ensure that the necessary safeguards for this age group are put in place – via new legislation, prison service instructions, and staff training.

In addition, T2A believes it is now time for the Ministry of Justice to develop and to consult on a comprehensive set of policies for dealing appropriately and effectively with young adults throughout the criminal justice system. It is only within the context of such policies that sensible and sustainable plans for the use and implementation of custodial sentences can be made.

In its response, T2A notes the recent developments in criminal justice policy and practice that recognise the distinct needs of young adults:

• The Sentencing Council for England and Wales now includes, since 2011, ‘lack of maturity’ as a mitigating factor in the sentencing of adults. This was the most cited factor by the judiciary in sentencing decisions for young adults in 2012;
• The Crown Prosecution Service’s 2013 Code of Conduct includes, for the first time, ‘maturity’ as a factor for consideration in culpability decisions on whether to charge a young adult within its public interest test;
• More than 11,000 copies of T2A’s 2013 ‘practice guide on taking account of maturity’ for probation practitioners have been requested by probation trusts, and are being used across England and Wales to inform pre-sentence reports and young adult appropriate sentence plans;
• More than a dozen probation trusts, including the four biggest (Greater Manchester, Wales, London and Staffordshire and West Midlands), have recently commissioned Trust-wide services that are specific to young adults, recognising that doing so ensures their services are more effective and cost-efficient;
• The Youth Justice Board is rolling out its ‘Youth to Adult Transitions Framework’ across England and Wales, to ensure more effective transitions between youth offending teams and adult probation services; and
• Many Police and Crime Commissioners have specifically commissioned young adult services in their areas to address the particular needs of this age group.

T2A’s consultation response notes that these developments have been driven by practitioners, and have taken place despite the lack of a central Ministry of Justice strategy for young adults, and without new primary legislation focussed on this age group. Rather, they have occurred because the evidence for doing so is now so strong, and because budget pressures demand smarter ways of working effectively.

T2A welcomes the consultation’s recognition in its consultation of the importance of the transition between youth and adult justice services, and the acknowledgement that young adults have variable levels of developmental maturity.

However, in relation to the Ministry of Justice’s key proposal to mix young adults within the general prison population, we are concerned that this seems to be premised largely on inconsistent and anecdotal evidence that mixing sometimes helps to reduce violence, and an assumption that closeness to home improves resettlement, which is not supported by robust evidence. In addition, there is no detail or evidence put forward as to how the Ministry of Justice’s proposed alternative approach of mixing young adults within the general prison estate would better serve this age group, nor how the age-specific needs of this group would be met.

The needs of young adults and the available evidence seem to be secondary to the Ministry of Justice’s urgency to deliver these proposed changes in order to align the young adult population with the procurement process for contracts for resettlement services early next year, as part of the Ministry of Justice’s transforming rehabilitation programme.

Such a sudden and wholesale move away from distinct provision for this age group, with no proposed statutory or other safeguards, is a high-stakes gamble that requires considerably more scrutiny and risk-assessment for the sake of the young adults involved, prison staff, delivery organisations and society at large.

Read the full response here

For more information about T2A’s position in relation to young adults in custody, read our new report ‘Young Adults in Custody: The Way Forward’ by Rob Allen, or email [email protected]

T2A is delighted that BTEG (Black Training and Enterprise Group) has joined the T2A Alliance. BTEG becomes the 13th member of the T2A Alliance, and will bring enormous expertise to T2A, particularly through its work on race equality.

The Black Training and Enterprise Group was established in 1991 by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and a group of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) voluntary organisations. In 1996, BTEG registered as a charity. It plays a unique role by supporting BAME civil society organisations, providing a national voice and promoting equality, inclusion, collaboration and entrepreneurship in BAME communities. BTEG celebrates its 21st anniversary this year.

As a network organisation, BTEG supports over 1200 BAME civil society organisations across the country. BTEG wants to see more BAME civil society organisations actively involved in local decision making, holding public bodies to account for their service delivery, delivering services and new product and service development.

With funding from the Ministry of Justice BTEG has established a national network comprised of BAME organisations working in the criminal justice system. Key aims include reducing the large numbers of BAME offenders in prison and the high rates of reoffending. This year BTEG will be launching Routes2Success a new ground breaking national project which aims to inspire young black males to realise their potential and divert them from having any contact with the criminal justice system by using successful black male role model volunteers from the private and public sectors.

BTEG contributes to the economic regeneration of BAME communities by building the capacity of local groups so that they can play an active role in improving opportunities for BAME individuals. It has a strong track record in influencing polices, campaigning and lobbying in relation to BAME education, employment and entrepreneurship.

Through its networking and training events BTEG is in dialogue with frontline organisations and a range of agencies including mainstream civil society organisations, government departments, local authorities, companies, the national apprenticeship service and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. BTEG is a member of the Department for Work and Pensions Ethnic Minority Employment Stakeholder Group and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Equalities Advisory Group.

Visit http://www.bteg.co.uk/ to find out more, and follow BTEG on Twitter @BTEG1