What does the Kent Youth Offending Service do?
There are 3 main strands to our work -
- Preventative work with young people to reduce
the risk of offending and to keep them out of the youth justice
system unless it is unavoidable. Our Youth Inclusion and Support
Panels (YISPs) identify and support young people aged 8–17, at high
risk of offending and anti-social behaviour.
- Reducing re-offending to improve public
protection – helping young people who have committed offences to
change their behaviour
- Work with victims of crime through restorative
justice processes. We have 6 Victim Liaison Officers and contracts
with mediation services throughout Kent.
Youth crime seldom occurs in isolation from other social
problems and dealing with it is complex: often different agencies
and services are dealing with the same young people and their
families. Increasingly, therefore, we are taking a broader approach
to our work to prevent offending. One aspect of this is working
ever more closely with other agencies as this can help to reduce
the effect of some of the wide range of factors that make offending
and re-offending more likely.
Other agencies we work with include district council housing
departments, Kent Drug and
Alcohol Action Team, the district-based
Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, Kent
Children’s Trust and
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
We work closely with young people’s parents and carers as
securing their involvement and commitment is known to have a real
benefit in preventing both first-time and repeat offending.
For more information see the Children and
Young People, Parents and Victims of Crime pages.