Lincolnshire Youth Offending Service
Lincolnshire Youth Offending Service
All children in Lincolnshire require support and opportunities to help them to be successful, to develop into mature and responsible adults, and to be safe. During adolescence a small minority of young people, despite support or lack of it, choose to engage in behaviour which results in them entering the Criminal Justice System (CJS). For the majority of them, brief and targeted interventions such as restorative solutions, targeted support and/or punishment will be sufficient to divert them away from further criminal activity. A small minority of young people, who may have more complex needs, will require more specialist and longer term interventions in order to address and to manage their behaviour.
Where do we sit within the Council?
The Youth Offending Service is located within Safer Communities, which is part of the Resources and Community Safety directorate of Lincolnshire County Council. The YOS Management Board is chaired by the director of Resources and Community Safety, the membership has representatives from Lincolnshire Probation Trust, the NHS, the Police, HMRC, CPS and LCC.
The YOS works in partnership with criminal justice services and with services for children and young people to create safer communities and improve the well-being of young people across Lincolnshire.
The YOS engages with the Local Criminal Justice Board (LCJB), Lincolnshire County Community Safety Board, the Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs), the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA), the Lincolnshire Children and Young People’s Board and Lincolnshire Safeguarding Children’s Board (LSCB).
Our Vision
Our vision at Lincolnshire Youth Offending Service is that we will contribute to a fair and effective Criminal Justice System which will provide justice for victims and local communities, rehabilitation, punishment and positive opportunities for young people and value for money.
Our Mission
The purpose of Lincolnshire Youth Offending Service is to prevent young people offending and once in the Criminal Justice System to accurately assess and offer high quality interventions to young people to reduce crime and to protect victims, in order to increase public safety in Lincolnshire. Our goals are to offer effective community orders to rehabilitate and offer positive opportunities to young people, enforce court orders and to take into account the views of victims offering a restorative outcome where ever possible. We will treat everyone with respect and dignity whilst recognising the diversity of the communities we work in.
Our Goals
Lincolnshire Youth Offending Service goals are to:
- prevent offending
- reduce re-offending
- protect the public from the harm that young people can cause to individuals, communities and the public and
- work to ensure custody is limited only for those young people whose risk cannot be managed in the community.
We will do this by ensuring that:
- young people are carefully assessed to identify the risks they present
- young people are offered interventions taking into account individual learning styles that will reduce those identified risks
- young people are properly managed throughout their sentence
- sentences are robustly enforced
- attention is given to the needs of victims and restorative outcomes are offered wherever possible
- we work effectively with other agencies to ensure young peoples needs are met in times of decreasing resources.
