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Sacro is an active partner in the Scottish Government funded Aberdeen Youth Justice Development Programme. The aim of the Programme is to review and re-design how Youth Justice services are planned and delivered to make sure they are made available to young people who need them at the earliest opportunity, as well as being more flexible and responsive to their needs. Sacro has been committed to the re-design and delivery of new services that aim to improve outcomes for all involved.
As part of improvement work around early and effective intervention, the Aberdeen team is implementing a pre-referral screening approach. Since screening began in June 2010, over 400 young people have been discussed with 35% being referred to the Children’s Reporter, a reduction of 23%, and the remainder receiving an alternative intervention. Commenting on the initiative, Tracy Mackie, Service Manager, Sacro said, “We have been involved in pre-referral screening since the service was introduced and value this opportunity to discuss with partners an appropriate course of action. The aim is to improve outcomes for these young people and those harmed by their behaviour and pre-referral screening enables agencies to get together quickly and regularly to respond to individual needs and reach a joint decision on the best course of action.”
An Intensive Support Service provides a package of services based on the individual needs of young people where there is a high risk of re-offending, a high risk of violence, or an identified risk of sexually harmful behaviour. Sacro is delivering Youth Intensive Support Packages that provide access to intensive support and crisis intervention for the child or young person and family/carers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
A citywide Assertive Outreach Service has been introduced. This service is specifically for young people up to 18 years who are involved in persistent offending and/or anti-social behaviour and have disengaged with existing core services. The service will support integrated working for a number of young people with whom it is difficult to engage. It will provide key worker support to assist individual service users to re-engage with ‘specialist’ services to meet their needs. The ethos of ‘stickability’ will underpin the approach of the service workers in their efforts to engage with young people.
Sacro is also supporting the court system with the introduction of a dedicated Court Support Worker funded by the Development Programme. This post will contribute to ensuring that effective, supportive and transparent systems are available to support young people involved within the court system. By establishing a visible presence within the Courts, we can identify young people in need of support to manage their way through the court process as well as identifying and addressing any additional needs.
An interim evaluation into the programme is now available from the Scottish Government website >>here
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