Preventative Services

The aim of pre-crime prevention is to identify children and young people who are at high risk of offending and help them to avoid entering the Youth Justice System. The Youth Justice Board has developed a variety of programmes which are intended to achieve this aim.

Youth Inclusion Programme (YIP)

Junior Youth Inclusion Programme

Youth Inclusion Programmes (YIPs), established in 2000, are tailor made programmes for 13 to 16-year-olds who are engaged in crime or are identified as being most at risk of offending, truancy, or social exclusion.  Junior YIPs are for 8-13 year olds. Youth Inclusion Programmes  target young people in a neighbourhood who are considered to be most at risk of offending, but are also open to other young people in the local area. The programme operates in 72 of the most deprived/high crime estates in England and Wales.

Youth Inclusion Programmes   aim to reduce youth crime in neighbourhoods. Young people on the YIP are identified through a number of different agencies who work together. These include the Youth Offending Team (YOT), police, social services, local education authorities or schools, other local agencies and the community. The programme gives young people somewhere safe to go where they can learn new skills, take part in activities with others and get help with their education and careers guidance. Positive role models – the workers and volunteer mentors – help to change young people's attitudes to education and crime.

Each project has the following targets:

• to ensure that at least 75% of the target group (the 50 most at risk young people) are engaged, and that those engaged receive at least five hours of appropriate interventions per week
• to reduce arrest rates among the target group by 70% compared to the 12 months prior to their engagement
• to ensure that 90% of those in the engaged target group are in suitable full-time education or employment

Youth Inclusion and Support Panels (YISPs)

Youth Inclusion and Support Panels (YISPs) aim to prevent antisocial behaviour and offending by 8 to 13-year-olds who are considered to be at high risk of offending.

They have been designed to help the YJB meet its target of putting in place, in each YOT in England and Wales, programmes that will identify and reduce the likelihood of young people committing offences.

Panels are made up of a number of representatives of different agencies (e.g. police, schools, health and social services). The main emphasis of a panel's work is to ensure that children and their families, at the earliest possible opportunity, can access mainstream public services

In Cheshire East the YISPs provided by Crime Concern is in Crewe.