Welcome to The Somerset Youth Offending Team

The principal aim of Somerset’s Youth Offending Team is to prevent youth offending. It will achieve this by working in partnership with the community to ensure the following strategic objectives:

1) To ensure that each young person living in Somerset has the best possible chance of achieving their potential within a safe home environment supported by positive opportunities at school, in work and in leisure and cultural activities
2) To ensure that the impact of youth crime and disorder on local communities is significantly reduced
3) To maximise the use of effective interventions to reduce offending behaviour

The team has members from Social Services, Police, Probation, Education, Youth Service and Health and includes:

Social Workers
Police Officers
Probation Officers
Psychologists
Teachers
Drugs workers
Parenting workers
Youth Justice Workers supporting bail and reparation work

The Youth Offending Teams (Yots) are key to the success of the Youth Justice System.

There is a Yot in every local authority in England and Wales. They are made up of representatives from the police, Probation Service, social services, health, education, drugs and alcohol misuse and housing officers. Each Yot is managed by a Yot manager who is responsible for co-ordinating the work of the youth justice services.

Because the Yot incorporates representatives from a wide range of services, it can respond to the needs of young offenders in a comprehensive way. The Yot identifies the needs of each young offender by assessing them with a national assessment. It identifies the specific problems that make the young person offend as well as measuring the risk they pose to others. This enables the Yot to identify suitable programmes to address the needs of the young person with the intention of preventing further offending.

The Youth Offending Team deals with all young offenders between the ages of 10 and 17 years. Central to the methods employed are the principles of Restorative Justice. This stresses the importance of being sensitive to victims, involving them and considering their views, whilst enabling offenders to make up for the harm they have caused and reintegrate with their communities. The team is involved in all stages and at all levels of the youth justice process from conferencing in schools to Final Warnings, Intensive Supervision and Surveillance, services to the Youth Court and planning for release from custody. All young people referred to us are assessed and a programme of interventions is carried out to address the factors in their lives that have contributed to their offending.

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