When the Youth Justice Board (YJB) set youth offending teams (YOTs) the target of carrying out a needs assessment of the parents of 10 per cent of the young people they work with, it meant a big change in mindset for hard-pressed workers in Lancashire.
The solution
The first step was convincing YOT workers of the need to start viewing families as their clients, not just the troubled young people within them.
Lorraine Grice, Lancashire YOT's prevention manager, says: "It doesn't matter how good you are as a YOT worker, if you're working on little Johnny Smith for an hour a week, and put him back into a family that's dysfunctional or needs support, you're not going to get anywhere."
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