Volunteering With Your Local Young Offenders Team

Volunteering to work with your local youth offending team is a way of enabling you to make a really valid contribution to your local community. Youth crime is, perhaps, one of the biggest issues facing many of the UK’s cities and suburbs in particular, although young people can get into trouble anywhere.

By helping out as a volunteer with your local youth offending team you will also be helping the fight against youth crime as well as, perhaps, even exerting a positive influence on previous youth offenders who have gone on to lead reformed and productive lives outside the world of crime so you can gain a great sense of achievement by volunteering to help.

Voluntary Roles Within The Youth Offending Team

There are many different areas within the youth justice system in which you could offer your services as a volunteer. Here are just some examples:

• Resettlement and after care provision – helping juvenile ex-offenders when they re-enter the community after a period in a young offenders institute. Advising them on finding employment and housing, for example
• Mentoring – you would meet up with young offenders once or twice a week, perhaps and basically listen to what they have to say. Although without qualifications, you shouldn’t be looking to offer rigid advice or solutions, you can help by simply being a sounding board to their problems as well as generally offering them support and by leading by example
• Support in education and sports – you may wish to get involved with coaching ex-offenders’ sports teams or helping them with basic reading, writing and maths skills
• Youth Offending Panel – by sitting on this panel usually with another volunteer and a member of the youth offending team staff, you will have the opportunity to talk to the youth in question and to their parents (where possible) to try to reach some kind of written agreement as to the proposed future behaviour and conduct of the youth him or herself
• Appropriate adult – this is where, by law, an adult is needed to supervise any police questioning of a youth in relation to a particular crime and their alleged involvement in it, if another adult (usually a parent) is not available or, in some cases, is the alleged victim.

Training As A Volunteer With The Youth Offending Team

If you wish to get involved as a volunteer with your local youth offending team, you must be at least 18 and you will be given thorough training. As well as several days intensive training covering the likes of communication and intervention techniques, understanding youth in relation to criminal activity and anti-social behaviour, you will also have the opportunity to go on and study other courses and to attend specialist workshops.

It could even lead to you undertaking the Effective Practice Mini Award which could provide you with an entry point into the National Qualifications framework. Therefore, if you are thinking of pursuing a career within youth related law or social work, becoming a volunteer with your local youth offending team is a very good way of gaining some valuable knowledge and experience as well as it providing a gateway to higher education.

Personal Qualities Needed To Work With Youth Offenders

Some of the personal qualities which will be required if you decide that you want to volunteer with your local youth offending team will include excellent interpersonal skills (especially good listening skills) and the ability to relate to people from all backgrounds. You’re also going to need tact, diplomacy, patience and a respect for confidentiality as well as being sensitive to a youth’s problems no matter how trivial or serious they might appear to you to be. You’ll also be an effective team worker and flexible and reliable.

Working as a volunteer with your local youth offending team can be extremely challenging but, ultimately, rewarding and you can find out more how to get involved locally alongside plenty of other useful information by visiting the Youth Justice Board’s website.

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