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POLICY AND PRACTICE IMPACT CYCJ calls for pioneering public health response to harmful sexual behaviour The Centre for Youth & Criminal Justice has been part of a report calling for Scotland to pioneer a public health response to harmful sexual behaviour among children and young people.
New briefing published to support supervisors in adult social care
The Expert Group on Preventing Sexual Offending Involving Children and Young People report calls for more preventative activity tailored for boys and young men, given that the majority of adolescents displaying harmful sexual behaviour are male.
Dr Trish Hafford-Letchfield, Professor of Social Work in the School of Social Work and Social Policy, has recently published a briefing paper commissioned by RiPfA - Research for Practice in Adults - a national organisation who bring together evidence from research, practitioner expertise and the experience of people accessing services to provide learning and development support for the health and social care sector.
As secretariat to the expert group, Fiona Dyer from the Centre for Youth & Criminal Justice welcome the publication of the report and the announcement that Scotland is developing a national strategy to tackle sexual offending by children and young people. Fiona says: “The evidence shows that around 1/3 of sexual offences against children are committed by children and that sexual offending by children is on the increase in Scotland. These statistics are concerning and coordinated support needs to be offered to already stretched services to address this behaviour, support those involved and provide appropriate assessments and interventions. I am confident that, if fully implemented, the recommendations of the expert group will start to address this issue to ensure our children and young people, families and professionals receive the help and support they need.”
The briefing, titled Leading with compassion: Supervisors’ Briefing, explores what is needed to support the development of compassionate leadership skills in both supervisors and those they directly supervise and work with. The briefing also provides some practical tools to support the development of compassionate leadership skills across organisations. Alongside the briefing, Dr Hafford-Letchfield also ran a UK webinar hosted by RiPfA to discuss the evidence the briefing was based on.
Conference ‘Regional policy in Scotland after Brexit’ This Conference was organised by the Scottish Government in partnership with the Regional Studies Association (Scottish Branch), the European Policies Research Centre (University of Strathclyde) and the ESRC Centre on Constitutional Change (University of Edinburgh). The Conference took a fresh, evidence-based look at regional and local development in Scotland and the regional policy responses that are required. The final agenda can be viewed here. The Conference was opened by Professor Sir Jim McDonald, Principal and ViceChancellor of the University of Strathclyde.
Policy and practice impact
