What is the Turnaround Project?
Turnaround is a youth early intervention programme led by the Ministry of Justice. It is a c.£71 million programme providing multi-year funding to Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) across England and Wales until March 2026, enabling them to intervene earlier and improve outcomes for children on the cusp of entering the youth justice system. This additional funding will enable YOTs to support children who they currently do not work with – up to 20,500 more children across England and Wales.
The programme entered delivery in December 2022. It is scheduled to run until March 2026.
Early intervention and prevention are at the heart of the government’s Safer Streets mission, which includes commitments to halve knife crime in a decade and to intervene earlier to stop young people being drawn into crime, as well as cracking down on anti-social behaviour. Turnaround aligns with these commitments. Turnaround has built on the success of the Supporting Families programme, which showed the benefits of working with children and their families to meet needs through holistic support delivered by joined-up local services.
Turnaround is based on similar principles to those underlying the Supporting Families programme in England and equivalent programmes in Wales, and therefore takes a whole family approach to intervention.
Eligibility
Children, aged 10-17, who fit one or more of the following criteria are eligible for Turnaround:
- Those who are subject to No Further Action (NFA) following arrest
- Those who are subject to a Community Resolution
- Those receiving a first-time youth caution, not including conditional caution
- Those released under investigation (RUI) or those subject to pre-charge bail (PCB)
- Those discharged by a court
- Those acquitted at court; and/or
- Those fined by a court with no further outcome
- Those in receipt of Community Protection Orders (CPO), Civil Orders and/or Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs) for anti-social behaviour
Turnaround does not require any admission of guilt.
In addition, the following criteria apply:
- Referrals must be made within three months of a child meeting the eligibility criteria
- Once a child has received support through the Turnaround programme, they are not eligible for support funded through the programme again
- Children referred to Turnaround are not eligible if they have an open Early Help plan with a package of co-ordinated multi-agency whole family support
- Children cannot be open on child protection plans, or be children looked after or care leavers
- Children cannot have been part of the YJS statutory caseload
If a child becomes ineligible during intervention, they can transfer onto another relevant YJS intervention.
Referral Pathway
It is envisaged that the police will be the main referrer with referrals being sent through to Triage. Where the outcome is following a court appearance, it is the responsibility of the Case Manager in court to complete the Prevention Referral and send to triage. We will be working with Community Safety to ensure they refer children in who are receipt of Community Protection Orders (CPO), Civil Orders and/or Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs) for anti-social behaviour.
Background Checks
Admin will complete multi-agency background checks on all referrals to inform decision making.
Allocations Meeting and Prevention and Diversion Panel
Eligibility for Turnaround will be checked for all referrals in the weekly allocations meeting before being taken to the bi- weekly P&D Panel.
All children eligible for Turnaround are required to be recorded on Core+.
All children will be recorded on the Prevention and Diversion Tracker.
Assessment
The Turnaround Early Intervention Assessment must be completed for all children and families on the programme. An Asset Plus is not required. However, if the child becomes ineligible for Turnaround during intervention, you must then complete a Prevention and Diversion Assessment or Asset Plus.
If a child is referred by police for consideration of a Community Resolution, Youth Caution or Deferred Caution (Outcome 22) and offered Turnaround in regard to access to intervention they will also have a Prevention and Diversion Assessment tool completed
The timeframe for completion remains the same as other out of court work (15 days from allocation with management oversight added within 20).
The Turnaround Early Intervention Assessment must be reviewed every 12 weeks to ensure actions are on track and to offer any further identified support. Once all there is no longer an identified need, the assessment will be reviewed for closure. All documents must be uploaded to Multimedia on Core+ and oversight added to Process (Case audited and discussed with practitioner).
Intervention
Interventions aiming to prevent the child from future offending should match services to the child’s assessed level of need. They should be strengths based and address the range of needs holistically, rather than in isolation. Consideration should be given to the wider context which could create vulnerabilities including physical and social/emotional/mental health needs, family, school, peer, and community issues. Taking a whole family approach, interventions could meet the needs of siblings and parents/ carers as identified through assessment.
Youth Endowment Fund Toolkit
The length of intervention will be dependent on the needs of the child and family. Children on the Turnaround programme will have access to all of the services within YJS such as police, CAMHS, health, speech and language and MIND.