The Centre for Criminology, University of South Wales, in collaboration with the Welsh Centre for Crime and Social Justice, would like to invite you to join a lunch-time online seminar entitled Lessons from the Lockdown: Youth Justice and Engaging Children in the Future.  This will take place on Thursday, 26th November, between 13:00 and 14:15. It will be hosted on Teams, and all participants will be sent a simple link in advance.

The aims of the seminar are to promote dialogue between practitioners, policy-makers and academics about how the lockdown has affected the engagement of children in the youth justice system with the elements of work they are required to do or need to do in order to improve both their pro-social behaviour and their wellbeing and life-chances.

We will look at what has been done to cope with the situation, what has worked well and not so well, and what lessons might be drawn for the future.  The latter include asking whether some of the measures introduced might have a more lasting effect on practice beyond the end of the pandemic, In particular, whether online contact, ‘walks in the park’ and other initiatives should and could be developed further as an enhancement – and even in some cases an alternative – to the forms of engagement used prior to March 2020.  We have input from recent research, from policy, from practice and most important from children themselves. 

The aim will be to keep speakers’ initial input brief and to the point, and to encourage questions and dialogue. The programme includes inputs from:

• Yvonne McGuckian (HM Inspector from HMIP, with special focus on Youth Justice) who has just completed an important piece of research into youth justice work in England and Wales during the covid pandemic (to be published soon).
  
  
• Input from Carmarthenshire and Newport Youth Justice Services from workers who have continued to work with children throughout the lockdown.
  
  
• Davinia Harries-Davies (Youth Justice Team Manager) and James Perdue (Senior Practitioner) from Carmarthenshire.
  
  
• Caroline Ryan-Phillips (Service Manager, Integrated Family Support) and Kim Herniman (Acting Team Manager, YJS) Newport.
  
  
• A brief summing up from Sue Thomas (Head of Innovation and Engagement, YJB Cymru), drawing the threads together. 

The seminar will be chaired by Professor Kate Williams, University of South Wales.

Related: Lessons from the Lockdown: Prisoner and Family Connections for the Future