AYJ Joins Youth Custody Transformation Advisory Group
We are pleased to have been invited to join the Youth Custody Transformation Advisory Group, to support the development of the Ministry of Justice’s forthcoming Youth Custody Transformation Plan.
We will be scrutinising and feeding into the development of this plan during meetings over the coming weeks. While timeframes remain tight, we are pushing to ensure the knowledge and expertise of our membership are represented.
Our input throughout this process will be directly informed by our position paper on the unpublished YCS children and young people strategy, alongside engagement with our custody as a last resort expert group as the advisory group meetings progress.
For this engagement process to be effective, we have advised MoJ and YCS, that we need to see:
Acknowledgement of existing feedback: Extensive time and expertise were previously invested by the sector into the unpublished YCS strategy. We are seeking clear assurance that this previous work serves as the foundation for the new plan and that stakeholders who fed into that work are kept informed.
Tackling disparities and consideration of specific needs: Addressing the stark disparities experienced by racialised, SEND and care experience children, as well as the specific needs of girls in custody must be explicit and central to any transformation plan.
Strengthening youth voice: Ensuring that children and young people are meaningfully involved in shaping the future of custody.
Clear underpinning data and learning: To support development of the plan the advisory group will need a clear assessment of the needs of children in custody, specifically addressing racialised children, girls, children with neurodiversity or SEND, and those serving long sentences and on remand, population projections for the custodial estate aligned with White Paper commitments and steps to reduce the population and evaluation and learning from existing establishments.
We will continue to represent our members’ expertise across the advisory meetings and will share further updates with members as discussions progress.