August 2010 highlights from The Communication Trust’s Youth Justice Programme.
Sentence Trouble
The Sentence Trouble booklet, developed in association with The Autism Education Trust, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Children and Young People Now Awards 2010, in the Justice Award category. The other candidates for the award are Essex County Council, Merton Youth Justice Service, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Youth Offending Team and the County Durham Youth Offending Service. A ceremony will be held on Thursday 18 November at the Royal Horticultural Halls in central London.
Training – Youth Offending Teams (YOTs)
On 6 August the Trust reviewed the significant number of applications to deliver training to staff at YOTs on their behalf. They received over 70 applications from dyslexia specialists and speech and language specialists and the standard was exceptionally high. They were kindly helped in the sift of trainers by the Royal College of Speech and Language Specialists and a speech and language therapist with experience of YOT settings. Given the high quality of applications they were able to choose around 20 trainers with the skills and experience to deliver high quality training sessions. A ‘Train the Trainer’ session was held on 22 September in London to enable the trainers to deliver both the communication needs training and training in a screening tool to YOT staff. The Trust is currently speaking to YOTs and arranging dates for training sessions.
Training – Young Offenders Institutions (YOIs)
The Trust has commissioned a training expert to develop a training package for YOIs. The training will draw on the programme developed for Youth Offending Teams with changes to context to ensure relevance to YOIs. A one-day session will be developed primarily for education staff at YOIs but a shorter introduction to communication needs based on the Sentence Trouble booklet will also be developed aimed primarily at custodial staff. The Trust hopes that the two programmes will ensure that as many staff as possible at YOIs have access to communication needs training.
Training – Secure Children’s Homes (SCHs), Secure Training Centres (STCs) and Offender Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) providers
The Trust continues to assess options about how it will provide training to SCHs, STCs and OLASS providers. There are a number of options available to them including the adaptation of training that they have already developed or utilising existing training that has already been trialled in the youth justice system.
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