Case Managers within the Youth Offending Service have the responsibility of supervising young people who have been made subject of Orders in the Youth Court. Their work is strictly governed by a set of National Standards which are published by the Youth Justice Board and which give guidance on time limits for completion of reports, specify the minimum number of contacts that should be made during work with young people, and dictate the nature and content of interventions that should be undertaken with the clients. The main aims of the case manager are to prevent re-offending, to support and promote the welfare of the young person and improve life chances, and to protect the public.
To help inform this work the case manager will firstly undertake an in depth assessment using an assessment tool called 'Asset' with the client looking at the following 11 areas of their life:
- Living Arrangements
- Family and Personal Relationships
- Education, Training and Employment
- Neighbourhood
- Lifestyle
- Substance Use Physical Health
- Emotional and Mental Health
- Perception of Self and Others
- Thinking and Behaviour
- Attitudes to Offending
- Motivation to Change
The assessment will identify factors that put the young person at risk of further offending which need to be addressed, together with positive factors that the worker can build on. To help ensure that the young person gets the best possible help from the most appropriate professionals, the case manager may make referrals, where necessary, to the support workers within the team such as health, drugs, education, training and employment (ETE) and will also access external services where appropriate - see the sublinks to the left of this page for more information.
The case manager will keep in close contact with the young person through the course of their order, prepare reports for court where necessary, and in the event of non compliance on behalf of the client, will also initiate breach proceedings. In the event of positive progress on the part of the client the case manager may even consider taking the young person's case back to court for early discharge of the order.
The work of a case manager is overseen by one of two Operational Managers within the team who regularly feed management information relating to our work to the Youth Justice Board.
