The Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice has recently published an info-sheet to analyse the ‘Child First’ strategic approach, which guides the actions of the Youth Justice Board of England and Wales (YJB) the body responsible for overseeing the youth justice system.
Some of the main principles of the ‘Child First’ strategy are:
- Promoting the involvement and participation of children, so that they collaborate with professionals in the production of new developments of policy and practice in the youth justice system.
- Diverting children from the criminal justice system whenever possible.
- Respecting the rights of children, and valuing their experiences.
The info-sheet goes then deeper into the reasoning and evidence behind the first principle. It explains the conditions necessary, and those still missing, to facilitate that this collaboration happens in practice, and provides different examples where children and youth justice professionals could cooperate at different levels.