Justice for children and young people: vision and priorities 2024-26

3. Outcomes and Priorities

We remain committed to keeping The Promise and working towards positive change. In doing so we have met with stakeholders on a regular basis, and have conducted engagement consultations from November 2023 to April 2024 to gather views and insights on whether the then current priorities remained the right ones.

Overarching priorities

The following priorities should span across all we do to support children and young people.

Upholding Rights

It is the responsibility of all those working with children to ensure that the rights of children are upheld, and that children are supported to understand what this means for them and what they should expect. Any services provided to children and their families must uphold their rights in line with UNCRC requirements and legislation. This should include monitoring services to ensure rights are being upheld and complaints procedures for when it is felt those rights are not being upheld.

Support to children and families should be delivered by a skilled and informed workforce, to ensure the child and their family understand and know their rights in order to exercise them. This may include promotion of better public understanding and awareness of children and young people in conflict with the law and the systems in place to support them. For those who go through the criminal justice system their experience should be supportive, meaningful and participative, one which educates, improves, understands and upholds the rights of children, young people and their families.

All children and young people should be able to access services and support that they need to help recovery from the impacts of psychological trauma, including abuse and neglect. In order to achieve this consideration needs to be given to additional support needs, including neurodivergent conditions, and speech, language and communication needs, to improve their life chances.

Children and young people must be provided with activities and opportunities to allow them to be able to access education, gain employment and to have stable housing options as a necessity.

Participation and Engagement

Children and young people must also be supported to actively participate and engage in the decisions which affect them. The participation and engagement of children and young people should be improved, ensuring that they have developmentally appropriate participation opportunities to help shape the decisions, services and supports that affect them. This will include addressing barriers to engagement, providing access to information and processes in language that they understand and taking account of cultural differences or disabilities and any communication needs.

This must also ensure that practice is relational - building on existing relationships and forming new relationships with children, young people and their families enabling them to engage in processes in a more meaningful way.

Data and evidence

The vision and priorities are underpinned by the views and information provided by both partners and children and young people with experience of the system. In order to achieve this vision, and better inform policy and practice to improve outcomes for children and young people, we require data and evidence. This includes recording, gathering and analysing data on children and young people and listening to the views of those directly affected, in order to evidence the need for change and guide further improvements.

Alongside data and evidence and upholding children’s rights and ensuring appropriate participation and engagement, the following three areas will be the focus of delivery until 2026.

Priority 1 - Victims

Outcome: Victims are supported, and their rights are upheld, with specific attention paid to child victims and their families.

Parliamentary debate and wider discourse around the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024 highlighted the importance of continuing to uphold the rights of victims as well as those who have caused harm. In particular, this includes children going through the children’s hearings system and extending the information which can be shared with victims to support safety planning, alongside enhanced provision of support.

Upholding the rights of those children who are criminally and sexually exploited along with asylum seeking children will also be important.

In order to meet this outcome, the following priorities will be met:

• Information and support for those impacted by harm is enhanced, considering good practice, whilst respecting data protection and confidentiality rights. This includes access to restorative justice approaches where appropriate, regardless of the age of the person who has caused harm or the outcome of the case.
• Support must take into account the effects of trauma that a child may have experienced, and must be tailored to the needs of participants, where possible.
• In line with Child Protection and a contextual safeguarding approach to extra-familial harm in the context of youth justice, children and young people at risk of criminal or sexual exploitation are supported with increased understanding of the nature, scale and extent of the issue and awareness raising with practitioners and communities.

The Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024 places a single point of contact on a statutory footing to provide support to victims.

That new service will be developed in partnership with stakeholders, including other organisations which provide support to victims.

Priority 2 – Whole System Approach (‘WSA’) Integrity

Outcome: Children are diverted away from the justice system to appropriate alternative supports through the continued delivery of the Whole System Approach.

All under 18s are classed as children, and no child is held in a young offenders’ institution by the end of 2024, with smaller, trauma informed settings used instead where a period of detention is required. Any period of detention should be as a last resort and for the shortest possible period of time.

The Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024 includes provisions which will end the placement of under 18s in YOI, thereby meeting important commitments to keeping The Promise and advancing UNCRC. In order to implement the specific provisions of the Act, secure accommodation centres will be supported to transition children from YOI, and to meet the needs of all children who require this level of care in the future. The reimagining secure care project, due to conclude in summer 2024, will assist this work and will consider longer term, future changes required for children who require secure accommodation, or are at risk of being deprived of their liberty from 2030 and the years beyond.

The WSA supports the use of diversion from prosecution and the presumption that children who are jointly reported to the Procurator Fiscal and the Principal Reporter will, as often as possible and in accordance with the Lord Advocate’s guidelines, have their cases dealt with by the children’s hearings system. Provisions in the Act will remove existing barriers to more 16- and 17-year-olds being able to go through the children’s hearings system or early and effective intervention processes. Therefore, we need to ensure that the most appropriate services and supports are available for those children, in particular those who are accused of committing offences such as sexual offences or those children who are violent towards their parents, carers, peers or others.

Protecting children online is a key priority for the Scottish Government. This includes both child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. The National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland, published in 2021 and updated in 2023 National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland 2021 - updated 2023 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) provides updated information on child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation to support local areas in Scotland in developing effective, evidence-based responses. The guidance also provides detailed advice for all practitioners who support victims of sexual exploitation.

In order to meet this, we will:

• Continue to deliver a reinforced and reinvigorated WSA to under 18s – with cohesion and integrity in all its elements, supporting the development of community confidence and the workforce to deliver effective multi-agency partnerships and creating lasting systems and culture change.
• In particular, this will involve supporting social work and the wider workforce to:
  • develop a consistent approach to early and effective interventions
  • work with those whose behaviour presents a high risk of harm to themselves or others – including embedding Care and Risk Management processes and supporting a contextual safeguarding approach which considers the context of the risk in the wider community to ensure that appropriate measures are considered for those who present a risk to children and young people.
• Support implementation of the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024, including raising the age of referral to the Principal Reporter, and ensuring that services are in place to ensure that no under 18s are detained in YOI and that smaller, trauma informed settings such as secure accommodation are available to meet the needs of all children.
• Consider intensive residential and community-based alternatives, where therapeutic trauma informed, and responsive approaches are required for the safety of the child or those around them and where community alternatives are available and provided for those who require additional support. Including supporting the development of alternatives to police custody, where appropriate and available.
• Work with Justice colleagues and agencies to extend WSA to those beyond the age of 18 providing access to support up to age 26, where possible and appropriate.
• Support workforces to develop and continually meet the needs of children, young people and their families in Scotland.
• Ensure that there is a consistent national approach to preventing the criminalisation of children who are looked after away from their own home.

Priority 3 – Prevention, Early Intervention and Support

Outcome: Children and families are supported at an early stage to improve their life chances with their wellbeing and protection and mental health needs addressed. This includes working in partnership to improve community confidence and address local and national concerns around violence and anti-social behaviour, and Scotland’s responses to those issues.

In order to meet this outcome, we will:

• Support children and families at an early stage to assess, identify and respond to wellbeing needs, to reduce stigma and improve their life chances and outcomes.
• Build positive relationships and connections to ensure the impact of psychological trauma and adversity does not create a barrier to children and young people accessing the support they need. This includes all children and young people feeling safe in their communities and responding to anti-social behaviour and violence, though improved community supports and the delivery of trauma-informed approaches, youth work, gender-based approaches and effective multi-agency partnerships.
• Ensure that all children and young people have timely access to appropriate multi-disciplinary services and supports to address mental health issues, with a clear understanding of the complex layers of health needs, including early identification, assessment and appropriate supports for those with neurodivergent conditions.
• Promote positive masculinity, creating supportive environments that allow boys and men to express themselves authentically and seek help when needed.
• Continue to train and support workforces and services to recognise where children and young people are affected by psychological trauma and adversity and are able to respond in trauma-informed ways.
• Continue to progress work across public protection areas to support those vulnerable to harm, reduce risk, and to ensure that people get the right help at the right time.

Action Plan

An action plan to accompany this vision will be published in September 2024, and will break down these priorities into tangible, sequenced actions to be delivered between September 2024 and June 2026.

Delivering this vision will be the focus of the Youth Justice Improvement Board, partners and collaborators over the next 2 years.

Challenges and Barriers

A difficult investment and resourcing landscape for services for children and young people represents a barrier to achieving high quality provision across Scotland, including gaps in adequate provision such as mental health pathways for children and young people in conflict with the law along with an inconsistent approach to delivery across Scotland.

Other challenges include ‘siloed’ working and data systems and legal issues with sharing information about children. Structural inequalities within communities such as poverty and discrimination are also concerns, along with cultural and attitudinal barriers to how children and young people in conflict with the law are perceived and how they should be assisted. A degree of flexibility is required around delivery to meet local needs, including acknowledgement around differences in rural and island services along with variations in resourcing priorities and training requirements.

In order to address these challenges, we need to consider the specific interventions required and how we assess wider need.

We need strong partnerships and multi-agency responses and further funding and investment in this area, ensuring accountability when all relevant agencies are not fully engaged in processes.

While legislative change and progress has been made through the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024, the successful implementation of this legislation will be necessary if it is to achieve the desired aims and improve outcomes for children. Wider legislative change may be required in order to support such areas as children in police custody and any changes needed to deliver the ambitions and objectives of hearings redesign. To justify that investment and shift in resources, we need reliable and consistent data and intelligence to be able to accurately understand the issues and factors facing children, young people and their families. These include life challenges, offending patterns and behaviour and the role these play in bringing children and young people into conflict with the law.

This preventative and rehabilitative agenda is well-evidenced in research and practice, but more needs to be done to promote supportive public perceptions and build confidence across communities in Scotland’s approach. We are very aware of stark individual cases which leave families and communities devastated, and which can dominate the media coverage of this entire complex range of issues. Effective responses to community concerns are key to cultivating a sense of security and trust in the systems and organisations supporting children, families and the wider community.

Links to wider landscape and policy development and landscape

The issues raised by children and young people coming into conflict with the law is a complex landscape which spans a wide array of overarching themes and policy drivers such as poverty, GIRFEC, community justice, safer communities, criminal justice, housing, and health. We recognise how quickly things can change and how practice and policy needs to be flexible to respond to the needs of children and young people at every point. Annex A provides details of areas of interest and links to youth justice highlighting the importance of a joined-up approach to working across a number of different policy platforms.