Knowsley Youth Justice Service
Children can become involved in offending for many different reasons. This could include emotional and mental health needs, learning and behavioural difficulties, suffering trauma, substance misuse and educational disadvantage.
The Knowsley Youth Justice Service aims to address the causes swiftly to help children move away from offending and contribute positively to their communities.
The service works together with the Police, the Probation Service, Education, and Health services to reduce the number of children committing crimes, entering custody and/or re-offending.
To support this work, the Council has allocated £650,000 for targeted and specialist work that is attached to the Knowsley Youth Justice Service. This has created a Prevention team named STEP (Support, Together, Empower, Prevent) who work with children to prevent them from committing crimes and to improve their life chances.
We do this by:
- Preventing children from committing crimes and getting into trouble
- Help stop children from getting into trouble again
- Working with Courts to show them that working with us is better than custody
- Helping children and families early, to help them achieve their potential
- Viewing all children as children first, not based on what they have done
- Listening to children and ask for their views on how we can do things better
- Understanding children’s individual experiences and how they have shaped them
- Supporting children through important changes in their lives Help children who are affected by gangs
- Helping children to do well in education, training or employment
- Creating communities where people feel safe, and violence by children and to children is not acceptable
- Keeping children safe and help to protect them from harm
- Supporting people who are harmed by crime
- Supporting children to help them manage their problems
- Supporting children to achieve goals and plan for their future
- Making sure Youth Justice staff are good at their job
- Supporting children to use their strengths and to be positive members of their community
- Supporting children to live happy and healthy lives