Youth Justice Delivery Safety: Experiences of youth justice access and engagement - Final Report

In Jul 2025, the Children’s Commissioner issued a statement calling for: ‘urgent reforms across housing, transport, education and community safety […] to break the link between a child’s background and future opportunities’ while ‘calling for more accessible and compassionate support and services’ . Currently, a Child First approach is being implemented into youth justice policy and practice, which includes: ‘developing a pro-social identity for positive child outcomes’ , meaning children’s skills, knowledge and access to resources remains important to address. Children in contact with youth justice services are comparatively poorly skilled and resourced, and this report highlights how such circumstances can compromise children's safety. This report is based on a research project that took place at Birmingham Youth Justice Service in 2024 which focused on children’s perceptions and experiences of safety when accessing appointments and navigating the city. Research set out to understand:
• What do children understand by the term ‘safety’?
• How is safety experienced in connection with youth justice access and engagement?
• Does safety vary according to children’s protected characteristics?
This research report focuses on research question two, and unpacks two sub-themes of appointment location and mode of travel to illuminate this question. Research captures the views and experiences of 29 children, with ten practitioners providing further insights from their experiences with the wider cohort. The following research recommendations suggest that holistic, tailored appointment delivery is beneficial when trying to limit children’s exposure to personal safety risks. In particular, three practice principles were found to enhance children’s safety and wellbeing, and it is recommended they continue and (where appropriate) are developed to support children’s personal safety and wellbeing. This research makes eight recommendations within these three practice principles:

Principle 1: Practical appointment arrangements should continue to be individually organised with children to help take different backgrounds and circumstances into account, to promote safety and wellbeing.
1. Risks are different for each child and appointment planning should continue to respond to this. For example, some children had high feelings of safety when travelling and attending appointments, but research identified different personal safety risks including within the home, neighbourhoods, community centres, youth justice offices, city centre, other neighbourhoods, buses, cars, taxis and during walked journeys.


Principle 2. Appointment sites and journeys should continue to be considered together, to promote children’s safe youth justice contact.
2. When organising appointments, collective consideration of appointment access and meeting locations should continue to maximise children’s safety and wellbeing in the context of their needs and circumstances.
3. Flexibilities in journey making and practice should continue to be used, and new opportunities should be sought to deliver appointments in a way that maximises safety and wellbeing. For example, would YJS group transportation enable some children to visit the office and move beyond home appointments?
4. Children’s safety and appointment effectiveness requires joint ongoing consideration to achieve the best of both areas. Appointment effectiveness can be compromised through practice adaptations that address personal safety priorities. For example:
˗ It is recommended that home appointments are reviewed as a response to children’s personal safety risks, and that a variety of flexible options are considered. Such appointments help avoid risks associated with people and places and provide opportunities for enhanced family engagement. However, such appointments can also limit children’s service accessibility practice, lack confidentiality, be unfocused, result in isolated practitioner working and not always be approved as safe practice sites.
˗ Community building appointments provide opportunities to meet in ‘normal’ places that are culturally and child friendly, enabling contact quality enhancement. However, the lack of building security measures and usage controls means some children can never use such settings. It is recommended that balancing engagement with safety continues and new opportunities are sought where possible.
˗ The risk of territorial conflict was reduced through transport planning and an appointment scheduling system. However, rapid escalation of tensions on social media, presents a new requirement for rapid response approaches

Principle 3. Personal safety risks were influenced by different things including where children lived, the extent of their deprivation, the nature of previous offences and presence of protected characteristics. It is recommended that such things continue to be considered when scheduling appointments.
5. Limited family resourcing meant that children sometimes had limited available options and a lack of control over contact with different people and places. Some buildings and transport modes caused concern for children, whether they had been directly victimised or not
6. Longstanding area-based conflict meant that children faced higher risks travelling to some areas, and that unsafe areas varied according to children’s home addresses.
7. Prior involvement in some types of crime could mean public spaces (buses and community buildings) were less safe to visit due to the anticipation of things like outstanding reprisal attacks.
8. In terms of protected characteristics, girls expressed concerns with predatory behaviour, but violence and theft were most problematic for boys. Children with some visible racial, ethnic or religious backgrounds experienced heightened anxiety in public places during some episodes of national disturbance like the hostile, anti-immigration period during the summer of 2024. Children with neurodiversity sometimes had restricted travel options and in other cases were willing to widely navigate the city, irrespective of area safety.
These recommendations acknowledge the varied nature of children’s personal safety concerns, while underlining the importance of flexible approaches to journeys and appointments to best fit children’s backgrounds and circumstances. Although such considerations are important for children’s safety in its own right, meeting quality can be impacted by what children experience immediately beforehand, further emphasising the interconnectedness of appointment access and engagement. Different examples of excellent practice were found in this research and it is recommended that opportunities are sought to share such examples while developing new, responsive opportunities to enhance children’s safety in an evolving societal context, wherever possible.