4A: How to achieve success in guidance and support

All young people in custody need to be encouraged to develop a sense of responsibility and self-discipline in order to prepare them for the challenges they will meet when they rejoin the community. Guidance and support towards this should be provided through a coherent experience across the detention and training order (DTO) with full inter-agency cooperation.

Partnerships between all providers and relevant agencies are crucial in ensuring this coherence. Young people need:

• relevant and effective individual support on personal issues across the DTO
• accessible information, advice and guidance about courses, programmes and future employment.

The two key objectives of this support are to remove barriers to learning, in particular low attainment levels in literacy, numeracy and language, and to assist the young person in developing their capacity to participate and progress more effectively in mainstream education, training or employment. Individual support therefore should face outwards in terms of ensuring continuity of processes and more effective communication across agencies and inwards in terms of providing a significant adult role model for young people.

Within the classroom and workshop, this will be provided by support staff and mentors. More widely across the education programme, it is provided by personal tutors and across the regime as a whole by personal officers and other custodial staff. It is crucial that all staff understand the significance of literacy, numeracy and language skill acquisition and that they know how to provide appropriate support in these areas.

Procedures should be in place to recognise and deal with poor attendance, punctuality and performance, both in custody and in the community part of the sentence.

Support for learning

Learning support should be available across all learning opportunities provided. The Youth Justice Board has funded a special educational needs coordinator post, a literacy and numeracy coordinator post and a significant number of learning support assistant posts in all juvenile YOIs to provide one-to-one support for individual young people and support for learners working in groups.

While the special educational needs coordinator in most establishments is responsible for coordinating the work of learning support assistants, close working relationships between learning support assistants, teachers and trainers are also vital to ensure that the support provided is contributing to the achievement of young people in learning programmes.

Learning support assistants should be deployed across all areas of work in the establishment, including workshops and enrichment activities. The main focus of their role should be to support the literacy, numeracy and language needs of individual young people within these settings. They are therefore a vital resource in terms of ensuring the transfer of skills and knowledge from one context to another.

 

Young people value the one-to-one support they get as it provides a safe environment in which they can try things out and test the boundaries of their skills and knowledge.

However, learning support assistants should be careful not to create dependency in learners as such intensity of support is not likely to be available to young people when they return to their communities.

In addition, they should ensure that there is an effective balance of support provided in one-to-one situations and in group settings.

Close negotiation with teachers and tutors is required to ensure that any one-to-one sessions do not result in young people being withdrawn from courses or group sessions so as to further disadvantage the young person in succeeding.

Information, advice and guidance

Guidance work should enhance the capacity of the young people to think more purposefully about the future, improve their decision-making skills, raise their awareness of legitimate opportunities and develop their coping strategies. Procedures should be in place particularly to cover the quality and accuracy of the guidance given to learners to ensure they access the right learning programmes for their literacy, numeracy and language needs on return to the community.

Guidance workers, such as Connexions personal advisers, must understand the importance of continuity of course, materials and approaches in this respect. They need to have:

• a detailed knowledge and understanding of the learner’s literacy, numeracy and language needs
• an appreciation of the additional support learners may need in order to access, participate and make progress in learning programmes
• an understanding of the literacy, numeracy and language demands of the community-based programmes that are arranged for young people
• an awareness of the achievement awards in literacy and numeracy that are available to learners, and knowledge of appropriate progression routes.

Vocational guidance should be provided by a combination of one-to-one work and the careers education programme within the curriculum. All careers education programmes must be at a level appropriate to learners’ literacy, numeracy and language attainment. They should provide opportunities for learners to develop the skills needed for accessing, participating and progressing effectively in appropriate work or further training.

Examples of appropriate work in this area include writing job application letters, interview skills, and so on. As with any other learning programme offered, these activities and programmes should be mapped to the core curricula objectives.