Dorset Combined Youth Justice Service
Dorset Combined Youth Justice Service works with young people in the local youth justice system. Our purpose is to help those young people to make positive changes, to keep them safe, to keep other people safe, and to repair the harm caused to victims.
This means we can support the national Youth Justice Board Vision that:
‘Every child should live a safe and crime-free life and make a positive contribution to society’.
Dorset Combined Youth Justice Service is a statutory partnership between BCP Council, Dorset Council, Dorset Police, National Probation Service Dorset and NHS Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group.
They are a multi-disciplinary team which includes youth justice officers, restorative justice specialists, parenting workers, education and employment workers, police officers, probation officers, nurses, speech and language therapists and a psychologist.
The team works directly with young people who have committed criminal offences to help them make positive changes and to reduce the risks to them and to other people. We also work directly with parents and carers to help them support their children to make changes.
We make contact with all victims of crimes committed by the young people we work with. We offer those victims the chance to take part in restorative justice processes so we can help to repair the harm they have experienced.
The combination of work to improve our local youth justice and children’s services systems, and direct work with young people, parents and victims, enables us to meet the Youth Justice Board’s ‘System Aims’:
- reduce the number of children in the youth justice system
- reduce reoffending by children in the youth justice system
- improve the safety and well-being of children in the youth justice system
- improve outcomes for children in the youth justice system.
The organisations in the youth justice service partnership also work together to improve the quality of our local youth justice system, and to ensure that young people who work with the team can access the specialist support they need for their care, health and education.