Shaped by you: A new strategic approach for the AYJ
We are excited to share the feedback that has informed our new strategic direction. This strategy wasn't built in a vacuum; it is the result of deep listening, honest challenge, and a shared commitment to the children and young people we serve. With the support of Justice Futures and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, we have thought hard about where we are and where we need to go.
Who we engaged with
To ensure our new strategy was grounded in reality, we undertook an extensive engagement process facilitated by "Funding Plus" support from Esme Fairbairn Foundation. We reached out across the sector to gather diverse perspectives:
Decision makers: 1-2-1 conversations with key external stakeholders.
Our internal team: An away day with the AYJ board and staff.
The membership: A member survey and a dedicated workshop.
Specialist leaders: Targeted discussions with members led by and for racially minoritised people, alongside conversations with key partners working in this space.
Young Advocates: A workshop with alumni of our Young Advocates programme to centre youth voice and lived experience.
Creating transformative change
To develop this strategy, we envisaged youth justice in 10-15 years, allowing us to think long term about transformative change and how we might get there.
“Justice is seeing young people thrive.”
“The unmet needs that have driven a child into the system will be addressed so that child can be supported out of it.”
“The youth justice system should support children and young people to be the best version of themselves”
Quotes from the young advocates project alumni
We interrogated our assumptions as an alliance about how change happens and analysed various systems change models to identify and consider other potential ways to drive impact.
Alongside this we considered the long term uncertain external environment in which the AYJ is operating and planning for the future – the significantly limited resources both in the system and for our work and that of our members, the risk of political instability, and the rise of increasingly reactive, punitive and racist narratives.
In this context adaptation and flexibility is essential to survival. We need to work with uncertainty and across multiple channels for change, balancing proactive and reactive activity, continually assessing the impact of different approaches.
What we heard
We have been pleased to hear that we are viewed by our external stakeholders as a permanent, credible part of the youth justice ecosystem, with regular, trusted access to decision‑makers:
‘credible’, ‘trusted’, ‘solid’, ‘reliable’, ‘influential’, ‘go-to’, ‘neat starting point’, ‘punching above its weight’, ‘morally courageous’
AYJ’s convening power is seen as strong with the ability to galvanise and channel diverse member input to government and HMPPS, acting as a one‑stop‑shop. One stakeholder fed back that “If the AYJ didn’t exist, we would create one.”
External stakeholders found ‘What would AYJ think?’ as a useful check of their own approach. AYJ was seen as independent - not neutral but providing effective challenge and acting as a critical friend particularly around contentious policies.
While extremely encouraging we reflected with members on the analogy of the AYJ as an orchestra. In this analogy members felt that government should be the audience but there is a risk that, as we engage in pragmatic compromises to maintain positive relationships, this shifts towards government conducting our orchestra and diluting our ambitions.
Members value AYJ’s collective advocacy, drawing on members who have their ‘ears to the ground’ and our trusted access to decision-makers. Although both external stakeholders and members noted the challenge of getting direct representative engagement, across the membership, with Ministers and officials.
There was recognition amongst members of the challenges to achieving transformative change through a focus on influencing central government policy which more often leads to small, incremental gains. A range of views were shared about potential ways AYJ could shift our work to address this and focus on other parts of the system to achieve change including potential to deepen the way we work with and through the membership, building and broadening our partnerships, working beyond Westminster, considering youth voice and communities as the locus of change, and working on narrative shaping.
Members, trustees and staff all recognised a need to distinguish between strategy and tactics in our existing strategic statements. The mission could point to wider collaboration and both the mission and vision be more specific to youth justice.
We have been particularly heartened by positive feedback from members led by and for racialised people about our overt emphasis on racial justice and our emphasis on modelling change internally. However there is shared recognition across, staff, trustees and members that we could also go further in disrupting decades of unchanged race disparities. By and for members spoke passionately about the harms of a punishment based system and inequities that drive racialised children into the justice system and create a deficit of love and connection and the need to reframe the system towards care, healing and belonging. The key opportunity identified to further centre race within the AYJ is through our membership structures looking at ways to shift power within the membership and further amplify the voice and platform the work of by and for organisations but also to broaden and deepen collaboration with those outside of the membership working towards similar goals.
Alumni from our Young Advocates project were enthusiastic about its value, speaking incredibly positively about the significant value of this work for their own growth and were brimming with ideas about how to strengthen it. They felt children’s voices being listened to could have significant individual and systemic impact for children in the justice system but emphasised that this must not be tokenistic and should genuinely ensure children and young people are heard and involved in decisions which have tangible outcomes. Members see youth voice, through our connection to members who deliver direct services to children and young people and have their ears to the ground, as having a clear central place in our current approach. In contrast decision makers questioned the added value of our youth voice work feeling that other organisations within our membership already play this role.
Staff and trustees reflected on the importance of the principle ‘of nothing about us without us’ meaning that youth voice should continue to have a clear place in our work. However there is a tension in deepening and embedding this and aligning with good practice as a non frontline delivery organisation given that it requires specific resource to do well which we have struggled to secure.
Our conclusions
Based on these insights, our new strategy is flexible and adaptive.
There are clear constraints to adopting new ways of working not least the resources of the AYJ as a small organisation and our members’ resource and capacity. Our plan to be agile and multifaceted in our work will allow us to pursue traditional advocacy, focused on mutual priorities of AYJ and Government, alongside testing small complementary activities which together have more transformative impact.
Here is what you can expect:
We have redefined our Vision, Mission and Purpose to focus on long-term impact rather than ways of working.
We will maximise opportunities to continue to influence at a policy level where we assess them to be worthwhile.
We will test approaches to deepen our work that seeks to affect change through strengthening community and civil society influence and shifting power relations.
We will explore how we might make additional impact through influencing change to the public agenda and beliefs and attitudes.
We’re excited to begin this next part of our journey and extremely grateful to everyone who has fed in.