The NAYJ Manifesto is built upon the foundation of the Philosophical Base for Working with Children in Trouble. It contains, firstly, a set of aims to guide the development of policy and practice at the level of the local delivery of youth justice services and, secondly, a campaigning agenda to influence legislative reform.

Policy and Practice Development

The youth justice system is undergoing a period of significant change and development. In addition to the guidance and standards issued by the Home Office and the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, the NAYJ believes that there are a number of guiding principles that should be applied in the local and national development of policy and practice to ensure that services are consistent and effective. It is crucial that these principles do not conflict with either mainstream child welfare legislation or the pressing demand for a committed human, and children?s rights approach. The following aims and principles are intended to guide development:

1. The promotion of policies and practices to end discrimination against black children, other ethnic minority children and other socially disadvantaged children throughout the youth justice system.
2. Exposing the policies and practices in the youth justice system which discriminate against, and result in the over-representation of, children who are in the public care.
3. The avoidance of services, practices and use of language which unnecessarily criminalise or label children as offenders.
4. Ensuring the full application of child protective legislation and practice throughout the youth justice system. Children deprived of liberty should be given equal statutory protection. Children in the youth justice system should always be considered as potentially being ?children in need?.
5. Ensuring the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international instruments, standards and rules throughout the youth justice system, together with adherence to the Local Authority Checklist for Children. The Human Rights Act 1998 should be effectively implemented and applied.
6. Ensuring adherence to principles of proportionality throughout the youth justice system, including where non-judicial processes are applied. Principles of proportionality, fairness, advocacy and the paramouncy of welfare should not be compromised in the development of approaches and orders aiming to prevent offending.
7. Ensuring that adherence to the integrity of evidence based work programmes does not displace a focus on children?s welfare and developmental needs. Professional interventions should be meaningful and of benefit to the child as opposed to being either exclusively procedural, punitive or inconsequential. Those charged with the responsibility for such programmes and interventions must have the necessary expertise, knowledge and skills to deliver them.
8. Developing principles, safeguards and guidelines in order to establish coherent restorative justice practice.
9. Ensuring that youth offending teams do not undertake direct preventive work with individual children who have not committed offences or are under the age of criminal responsibility.
10. Providing non-criminalising family support services in preference to child safety orders, anti-social behaviour orders and parenting orders.
11. Ensuring that the appropriate agencies meet children?s needs outside the youth justice system to the maximum extent possible and in accordance with statutory needs.
12. Ensuring that the use of assessment tools is not harmful (emotionally or psychologically) or discriminatory and is subject to the application and monitoring of principles, safeguards and review - including the adherence to procedures to reduce the risk of inaccurate or adverse labelling.
13. Establishing boundaries as to the range of work that can be undertaken by different agencies in multi-agency arrangements (such as the management of lay appropriate adults or reports to court) while ensuring that those involved work to their individual expertise and specific professional education and training. Youth offending teams should maintain sufficient knowledge and expertise amongst their staff to effectively understand and apply proper legal process throughout the system and to be able to confidently pursue appeal strategies. Equally, youth offending teams should comprise sufficient welfare and social work expertise to ensure that full account is taken of children's development and the impact of material and emotional disadvantage on children.
14. Ensuring that the use of volunteers or sessionally paid workers conforms to professional and national standards regarding recruitment, training, supervision and accountability.
15. Ensuring consistency and parity (locally and nationally) in decision making as to reprimand, warning or prosecution together with safeguards against inappropriate admissions of guilt, poor identification of mitigating factors and levels of culpability, abuses or failures of process and inconsistent choice of offence type.
16. Establishing protocols, policies and practices that minimise the use of powers that directly, or consequentially, result in separating children from their families unnecessarily. Services provided by youth justice and other agencies should be targeted at maintaining children with their families, however constituted.
17. Ensuring that reports to court offer comprehensive alternatives to custodial sentences (where custody is likely to be a consideration) and, thus, do not usurp the responsibility of the court to decide between sentencing options.
18. Ensuring that efforts to reduce delays in the youth justice system do not compromise quality information gathering and assessment, deny children?s rights or limit the potential for preparing and testing the efficacy of comprehensive community sentences.

Legislative Reform

Youth justice legislation has become increasingly fragmented and complex with an unacceptable lack of congruence with mainstream child welfare provisions and principles. The NAYJ seeks major reform in the law relating to all children's rights. Such reform should be well considered and farsighted, with wide consultation and research and, pending this, campaigning will continue for changes to current legislation:

1. The age of criminal responsibility should be raised to 16. This age is otherwise deemed a significant milestone regarding child and adolescent development and responsibility in regard to important matters of consent, independence and capacity for decision making. Legislative provisions for dealing with children below the age of criminal responsibility should be put in place which contain comprehensive powers to intervene effectively, with safeguards to protect children?s rights, and which reflect a view of childhood which absolutely rejects the criminal label to younger children who are in trouble.
2. Legislation should be consolidated and harmonised for all children under the age of 18. In particular amendment is needed to allow those aged 17 to be dealt with as children:
   • under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and related Codes of Practice
   • for all bail and remand purposes.
3. Legislation should be introduced specifically preventing those under the age of 18 being placed, for whatever reason, in adult prisons. The statutory basis of, and standards within, the so-called "juvenile secure estate" should be those which apply to all children in the public care. Provisions should ensure that young women and black children are protected and that their rights and needs are met appropriately.
4. Priority should be given to reversing the legislative trend of recent years to allow younger children to be sentenced to long term detention for other than the most grave crimes (under s.53 of the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933).
5. The legislative trend to provide for custodial sentences for younger children and for longer periods must be reversed. Powers for magistrates to remove the liberty of children should not be greater than those that apply to adults.
6. The provisions allowing for "adult" oriented sentences (probation, community service and combination orders) to be imposed on children should be repealed as unsuitable, confusing and unnecessary.
7. There should be clear legal safeguards ensuring that the wishes of victims do not directly or systematically influence judicial decision making.
8. The provisions for appropriate adults for juveniles under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and Codes of Practice should require the attendance of a trained person even where the parent is present.

The Association?s campaigning will be informed by:

• the provisions of international conventions, standards, treaties and rules;
• the expertise of the practitioner communities and the lessons drawn from practice experience (nationally and internationally);
• the knowledge of the academic and research communities and the messages from research (nationally and internationally).