From Rhetoric to Reality: Participation in Practice within Youth Justice Systems

Smithson, Hannah ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4096-0172, Lang, Tom and Gray, Paul ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1546-9333 (2022) From Rhetoric to Reality: Participation in Practice within Youth Justice Systems. In: Establishing Child Centred Practice in a Changing World. Emerald Publishing Limited. ISBN 9781801174077 (hbk)

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Abstract

Since 2015, we (the authors of this chapter) have been working together through a formal partnership between Manchester Metropolitan University and the ten youth offending teams (YOTs) in the Greater Manchester region of north west England1. This partnership, termed the Greater Manchester Youth Justice University Partnership (GMYJUP), is the first of its kind in a youth justice context. GMYJUP has predominately focused on strengthening justice-involved children’s participation in decision-making processes and embedding meaningful participation in youth justice service delivery and practice (Smithson et al., 2020; Smithson & Gray, 2021; Smithson & Jones, 2021). In this chapter, we outline the Child-First narrative that is becoming increasingly apparent in the youth justice system in England and Wales, before describing our own body of participatory work which has resulted in the co-creation (with justice-involved children) of a transformative framework of practice that we term Participatory Youth Practice (hereafter referred to as PYP). The chapter goes on to provide a candid account of the facilitators and barriers that youth justice practitioners have encountered when endeavoring to embed PYP into existing youth justice processes. We conclude with a consideration of the value of child-centred practice for children and practitioners.