E-bulletin, Issue 10, February 2014.

We may only be in February, but 2014 is already proving to be a productive year for CYCJ.

This month, we hosted an inspiring conference on restorative justice in the aftermath of serious crime, in partnership with Sacro. The slides from the excellent contributions from restorative justice practitioners and researchers can be viewed here. The event prompted useful discussion and debate about restorative justice and serious crime in Scotland, where things are at and where we would like them to be.  A restorative justice survey has been circulated around interested parties to capture information about what is currently happening across Scotland which will be used to inform future developments, and
can be completed here. 

We have continued to raise awareness of youth justice in Scotland at conferences and events. Fiona Dyer presented on social capital at the first Erasmus Criminal Justice Social Work project conference in Amsterdam.  Also, Charlotte Bozic and myself contributed to the UK’s first knowledge mobilisation forum about how we ensure our collective knowledge actually informs what happens. 

A new development at CYCJ this month has been the (quiet) launch of the Raising Youth Justice blog, designed to capture reflections and observations about youth justice.  Our first blog entries include contributions from the team on restorative justice, research engagement and knowledge mobilisation.  We hope though that over time this becomes a space for others to share their thoughts, ideas and reflections. Please contact Charlotte Bozic on charlotte.bozic@strath.ac.uk to arrange the submission of a post. 

Another first for us this month was the first meeting of the CYCJ Executive Governance Group (EGG), which is responsible for guiding our strategic direction. The group is chaired by Professor Sandy Cameron CBE, with substantial representation from across the sector.  The group has begun by focusing on the CYCJ strategy, vision and identity, and we are already benefiting from their helpful contributions and enthusiasm. 

Although summer may seem a long way off...plans are already well developed for the Youth Justice conference, taking place on June 4 and 5 in Dundee. This event is a must for anyone with an interest in youth justice.  This year’s line-up of activities look better than ever before, with a ministerial address, choral performance and social media workshop just some of the highlights to look forward to! Registration will open next month; in the meantime, please save the date.

Last but not least, a big thank you goes to everyone who completed our stakeholder survey. We received almost 100 responses and are extremely grateful to those who took the time to share their views with us.  The findings will be published this April and we’ve already started using these to inform our future work plans.

As always, I hope that you will enjoy reading our news, and welcome any feedback you may have. Please get in touch via cycj@strath.ac.uk.

Claire Lightowler, CYCJ Director

We want to be sure that you are receiving the right information from us, in a way that’s convenient, accessible and timely.

That’s why details of all our news, events and training are included in this monthly e-bulletin. Information will also be posted on our website and via our Twitter feed. The e-bulletin will remain the main source.

If you have anything you’d like to be included, or would like to make suggestions for how we can improve this, please get in touch at cycj@strath.ac.uk.

Featuring Scottish Government Minister for Children and Young People Aileen Campbell MSP as the keynote address, this free two day conference will include a wide range of speakers and workshops, valuable networking opportunities, evening entertainment and much more. It’s a fantastic opportunity for anyone working in the youth justice field. 

Help people to find out more about your service by registering for one of our information stalls. Places are limited so please let us know by March 15 at cycj@strath.ac.uk if you are interested. Read more.

Registration will open in March. Look out for more details on Twitter, our website and in the e-bulletin. Demand for places is expected to be high, so don’t miss out!  

Thank you to everyone who took part in our Stakeholder Survey. Your views are very important to us and will help to shape our direction and priorities over the next few years. 

What you have told us has already been communicated to our Executive Governance Group and we are using the findings to finalise our strategic plan. We are also in the process of completing a report about the stakeholder survey and this will be available for you to read by April 2014, so watch this space!

Fiona Dyer spoke at the first open conference of the Erasmus Criminal Justice Social Work (CJSW) project, held at Avans University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.

The CJSW project is aimed at improving the higher education of Europe’s criminal justice social workers, and is funded by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Union.

Fiona and Dr Beth Weaver, of the Centre for Law, Crime and Justice (CLCJ) at the University of Strathclyde’s department of social work and social policy, presented on the effects of criminalisation on social capital. Read more.

We’re very excited about our new blog, which will discuss, question and reflect on all matters youth justice.

Through ‘Raising Youth Justice’, members of our team will post on issues from a practice, research and knowledge exchange perspective. They’ll consider the political, societal and other matters affecting youth justice, and share their individual perspective and experiences.

Guest bloggers are very welcome, so please get in touch at cycj@strath.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute.

Leanne Gregory and Stephanie Smith have both had abstracts accepted for the Howard League ‘Re-Imagining Youth Justice’ conference, taking place on April 2 in London.

The Howard League for Penal Reform is a leading voice in the world of youth justice. It is home to the U R Boss project, which supports young people in the criminal justice system to secure their legal rights and to have an impact on policy, practice and the services that affect them.

Psychologist Leanne will present a paper in a panel session on ‘Re-imagining Mental Health Services: A Model of Tiered Service Delivery using Best Practice Principles in Risk Assessment, Formulation, Scenario Planning and Risk Management in Juvenile Justice’. Stephanie, who is a Research Fellow with the team, will discuss Pathways into Polmont, a research project which aims to explore the backgrounds of young people and the circumstances that led to their imprisonment at HMYOI Polmont.

Welcome to Heather Irving, who joins the team as a National Development Consultant.

Heather will take over from Stuart Allardyce, who leaves us to focus on his work with Barnados and NOTA. She is currently seconded to CYCJ from the Risk Management Authority (RMA) where she was responsible for developing practice standards in relation to the assessment and management of risk within Scottish criminal justice services. Although she has only been in post for a few weeks, Heather has already delivered several lectures on behalf of CYCJ, proving herself to be a valuable addition to the team.

Read more about Heather.

Polmont Staff Conference

Nina Vaswani will present key highlights from her research into the bereavement experiences of young men in custody at the Polmont Staff Conference on February 28.  The aim of the conference is to increase prison officers’ understanding of the serious issues that young people in custody may have faced in their lives, and identify steps they can take to support them to have a positive future. 

Putting Safer Lives in the picture

The first stage of the evaluation of Safer Lives is now complete.  This approach to working with young people who are displaying sexually problematic behaviours has been rolled out across many parts of Scotland since 2008. 

Stage 1 explored the views of trainers and practitioners, and found that there was a lot of support for the use of Safer Lives in Scotland.  Many respondents felt that Safer Lives offered a positive and strength-based way of working with young people.  In addition, it was praised for providing a model that was meaningful and understandable to young people, their families and also to the agencies involved in the young person’s life, not all of whom are specialists or experts in working with sexually problematic behaviour. 

What was clear was that while there was plenty of anecdotal evidence to support the use of Safer Lives, there was a real need for a clearer understanding of outcomes.  As CYCJ embarks on Stage 2 of the research, we hope a clearer picture of the effectiveness of Safer Lives will begin to emerge.  Findings from Stage 1 will be presented at the Safer Lives recall day for trainers on February 27, and be made publicly available in due course.

Research Unbound

Nina Vaswani attended ‘Research Unbound’, a new platform for disseminating and raising awareness about research that has been created by IRISS and was officially launched in Glasgow this month. Researchers, users of research and social media enthusiasts came together to discuss the opportunities and challenges for the future of research publication and the role of social media. Read Nina's blog post on this event.

Looking back

VERA training

CYCJ and the RMA (Risk Management Authority) recently delivered training in VERA (Violent Extremism Risk Assessment Protocol). This structured professional judgement risk assessment tool is designed specifically to capture the unique risk of violence that is ideologically driven. At present, it represents best practice with regard to assessing this type of risk. 

The training event was delivered by the tool’s primary author, Professor Elaine Pressman.  This was an exciting opportunity for specialist training that was attended by colleagues from across Scotland.

Success for CYCJ restorative justice conference

Earlier this month, CYCJ and Sacro hosted a ground-breaking conference on restorative justice for victims of serious crime. Featuring expert speakers from across the UK, ‘Restorative Practice in the aftermath of serious crime’ was well-attended and well-received.  You can view the presentation and workshops slides here.

Training the ASSET trainers

Chris Wright (Professional Advisor - Scottish Government) delivered an ASSET Training of Trainers session in Dundee to practitioners from across local authorities and the secure estate, enabling them to support ASSET training in their local areas.

The session provided useful information about developments in England and Wales where the new Structured Professional Judgement (SPJ) ASSET+ assessment tool is soon to be rolled out in pilot areas. Participants also found out more about current crime trends in Scotland and some of the possible reasons why crime rates appear to be falling.

Coming up…

Vulnerable Girls and Young Women’s networking events will take place as follows:

April 25: Ayr, University West Campus
April 29: Dundee, Cairn Centre
May 8: Inverness (venue tbc)

If you are interested in attending, please email cycj@strath.ac.uk and we will send application details to you.

NOTA Scotland Conference – register now

CYCJ will present a workshop at the NOTA Scotland Conference 2014, which takes place on April 29th and 30th in Stirling.

The conference will feature workshops and keynote speeches on themes such as The Good Lives Model: working with individuals with learning disabilities who sexually offend; mentalisation based therapies; working with girls who sexually abuse; adolescent sexting; using mindfulness in practice and case formulation (amongst many others).

This will be of interest to practitioners and other professionals working with young people who display harmful sexual abuse behaviour, as well as those who work with adult sexual offenders and those generally involved with work around preventing sexual abuse.

CYCJ’s workshop will focus on its High Risk Mental Health Project. Further information and details on registration is available at www.nota.co.uk. Early booking is advised as the event is likely to be oversubscribed.

Funded training for Youth Justice social workers

The Scottish Government is supporting its ‘Whole System Approach’ by funding training for youth justice social workers on an enhanced training in Systemic Practice and Family Interventions.

The course is professionally accredited by the Association of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice (UK) and is delivered by the FAMILY THERAPY TRAINING NETWORK which has over thirty years’ experience in this field. It will be supported and evaluated by CYCJ.

Read more. All enquiries should be sent to cycj@strath.ac.uk.

Criminal Justice and Penal Change Post-Grad Course

When this piece ran in last month’s issue, the link to the course was invalid. Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused – the correct link is below.

If you’re looking to further your professional development, the University of Strathclyde’s Post-Graduate Course in Criminal Justice and Penal Change blends a rigorous understanding of fundamental theory with international evidence about real world problems of policy and practice.

The course is available as a Master’s and students can also study it as a short course as a Post Graduate Diploma or Certificate – either part-time or full-time. Scholarships and funding assistance is available.

Do you have events or training series you’d like us to promote? Send the details and dates to cycj@strath.ac.uk.

David Orr attended From Cons to Cobblers, held in Edinburgh this month.

“The important issue of employment opportunities for individuals with criminal records and the experience of custody was highlighted through ‘From Cons to Cobblers’, hosted by the Howard League for Penal Reform in Scotland and chaired by Colin McConnell (Chief Executive – Scottish Prison Service).

“James Timpson, CEO of Timpson’s and younger brother of Cabinet Minister Edward Timpson (Under Secretary for State for Children and Families) spoke about his company’s policy of recruitment based on ability rather than background. Set against James’ presentation was a contribution from one of the young men who benefitted from the opportunity of working for Timpson’s, who spoke openly of the way in which employment helped him to move on and rebuild his life after prison.”

The Children and Young People’s Bill has now been passed by Parliament. You can read the key components here.

Renfrewshire Council has launched a campaign to recruit a team of ‘treatment’ foster carers in a pioneering approach to help troubled teens.

Central to the programme is the recruitment of the treatment foster carers who offer temporary foster placements to a young person and who have the time to work as part of a dedicated treatment team to bring about positive change for the young person and their family. Find out more.

Greater rigour in social work education, a sharper focus on practical skills and places for only the very best students are among a number of reforms recommended by Sir Martin Narey.

His report, ‘Making the education of social workers consistently effective’ finds some excellent examples of high-quality courses. However, the report also finds that in some cases, poor-quality students are being accepted onto social work courses, and higher education institutions (HEIs) are working from too many different pieces of guidance on what social workers should learn.

Justice Analytics have released a new Reducing Reoffending: Evaluation Resource Pack. This is described as “a comprehensive and user-friendly slide-show which provides step by step evaluation guidance and resources”. Find out more.

Michael Matheson MSP, Minister for Public Health, will speak at the ‘Partnership approach towards a smoke-free generation: a national summit’ taking place on March 26, at the George Hotel in Edinburgh.

Following the Scottish Government’s challenging five year programme for tobacco control, this summit will identify opportunities for strengthening partnership activity and supporting Community Planning Partnerships to reduce health inequalities as outlined in the 2013 Single Outcome Agreements. Visit ASH Scotland to find out more and register.

Did you know that March 18 is World Social Work Day? This will be marked by the Social Services Expo & Conference 2014, at which CYCJ will have an active presence.

In addition to an information stall, we will also be giving a talk on ‘Youth Justice and Mental Health. If you’re attending, please come and say hello!