Youth Offending Services
Youth Offending Services work to prevent offending by children and young people.
In Cambridgeshire there are two separate Youth Offending Services (YOS) - Cambridgeshire and Peterborough - offering youth justice services to children and young people aged between 10 and 17. The YOS teams also oversee preventative services for some children under 10.
The two partnerships, led by Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council, work alongside local Health, Probation and Police as well as voluntary organisations, such as the Arts Council. They also work in close collaboration with the Connexions service.
Youth Offending Services are responsible for:
- Supervising and implementing orders imposed by the Youth Court.
- Preparing pre-sentence reports, which magistrates use when considering what sentences to give to young people who've committed a crime.
- Providing appropriate adult services for young people being interviewed at a police station if their parents can't attend.
- Providing a range of services to support parents of young people involved in the Criminal Justice System or at risk of offending.
- Working with partner agencies to deliver preventative work to identify and voluntarily support at risk children, young people and their families.
- Delivering restorative justice to help victims have a voice in the outcomes of youth justice.
- Supervising young people on license in the community following a custodial sentence.
Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough's Youth Offending Services run an Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP), designed for young people who've committed more serious crimes or are repeat offenders.
These programmes are run to a national model, which supervises young people intensively in the community as an alternative to a custodial sentence.
Each young person has a timetable, which includes 25 hours of structured activity during the week and reparation work at weekends.
Other conditions include unannounced tracking visits in the evenings and the use of electronic voice verification to check up on the young person. A night-time curfew is enforced through electronic tagging.
These programmes last for six months and failure to comply may result in the young person being sent to prison.
ISSP is given as part of a court order, such as a supervison order, community rehabilitation order or detention and training order. Young people can also be put on ISSP as a bail condition.
In Cambridgeshire the ISSP uses a Multi Systemic Therapy (MST) model - the first Youth Offending Service to do so in the country. This model's been very successful in America and concentrates on interventions around the family.
Peterborough uses a more traditional approach but in November 2007, the team was successful in acquiring a four-year pilot scheme for developing the MST programme.
This exciting development allows the two youth offending teams to work more closely together.
Dance Offensive!
Dance Offensive! photographs courtesy of Lucy Brown.
Dance Offensive! is a youth dance company, run by Paul Sadot at Cambridgeshire Youth Offending Service.
Young people are accepted into the dance company if they're referred by their YOS officer and are commited to learning to dance and performing to a high standard.
Dance forms used include breakdancing and Capoeira, a form of Brazilian street dance and martial art.
At Dance Offensive!, participants work alongside leading dance professionals, as well as young people from other parts of the community.
For more information about Dance Offensive click here.