Youth Conference Service, Youth Justice Agency
The Youth Conference Service (YCS) facilitates conferences between the offender, the victim and a police officer, participating in resolving how the offender can make amends to the victim for the harm caused. This results in the young person completing tasks to make amends.
The award winning training programme involved YCS recruiting 20 Youth Conference Coordinators (YCC’s), who deliverered the conferences throughout the province. With this being the first programme of its kind in Northern Ireland, the YCS and the University of Ulster created a new post graduate course, a Certificate in Restorative Practices, for the coordinators to complete.
The YCC’s and 14 police youth diversion officers attended the nine-day course involving lectures, group discussions, role-plays, presentations and written assignments. By March this year, all 20 YCC’s had completed the course, and were putting their knowledge to good use in their work.
The conferences were observed by an independent evaluation panel. The panel reported that 77% of them resulted in the coordinator progressing the conference towards agreement; in almost 70% of cases the YCC showed skills in achieving the participation of victims with offenders; 87% of conferences offenders apologised and 85% ended in reparation.
For further details on the Youth Conference Service, please contact DEL Press Office on 028 9025 7872.