East Berkshire YOTs – Individual Parallel Work
IYPP PROJECT
1. Context of the Project
1.1 Service Context
The three separate Youth Offending Teams of Bracknell Forest, Slough and Windsor & Maidenhead worked together as a service delivery site for the IYPP Project under the delivery site title ‘East Berkshire YOTs’.
Prior to the commencement of the IYPP project, parenting interventions and support services were jointly commissioned by the three YOTs from the East Berkshire Parenting Service. One Parenting Coordinator and one Parenting Worker provided parenting interventions across the three YOTs. The IYPP Project was set to run within the existing staffing structure of the YOTs with the addition of a Young Person’s Parallel Worker, employed on a short-term contract, who would contribute to the development and administration of the programme and then work with the young people whilst the Parenting Workers delivered a corresponding programme exploring similar issues with the parents.
1.2 Underpinning Ethos
Help and support for the parents of young people, who become involved in, or who are at risk of becoming involved in crime, is part of a wider programme of action to support families and prevent social exclusion.
Helping families develop good parenting skills is an effective way of ensuring that problems with a child/young person’s behaviour, or development, are not allowed to grow unchecked into major difficulties for the individual, their family and the community.
Home Office/Youth Justice Board/Department for Constitutional Affairs (2004)
Support for parents, is provided by the YOT with the aim of keeping families together and preventing wider social problems developing.