Pye, Jane and Paylor, Ian (2017) Social Work with Children in the Youth Justice System - Messages from Practice. Youth and Policy (116). pp. 131-144. ISSN 0262-9798
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Abstract
This article is about policy and practice within the youth justice system in England and Wales. The article argues that actively engaging and using emotions, both in terms of the practitioner and service user, enables a deeper social work approach to take place and enables the forming of relationships. Such relationships can then be used as the tool themselves to bring about positive changes for children and families who are receiving intervention from youth justice social workers. Social workers working within the youth justice system know through their experience what is most likely to be effective in meeting the aims of the system – that is prevention of offending. To achieve this means real questions need to be asked about the effectiveness of the technical-rational risk focused approach of the current youth justice system in favour of a system which adopts the principles of Munro (2011) and empowers social workers to actively use critically reflective and reflexive practice and supports the use of self to build powerful social work relationships with the vulnerable children they work with.