The focus of this review is effective techniques for engaging young people who offend,
although it also considers young people at risk of offending. The early work for this
review indicated that there is a paucity of research that focuses upon effective
techniques for engaging both these groups of young people. Continued searching of the
literature, use of multiple and varied search terms, and exploration of databases around
particular themes failed to uncover a useful mass of studies upon which robust
conclusions could be drawn. Notes on the process undertaken and developed are
included in the Appendix; suffice to say, we found that although there is a growing body
of research that focuses upon interventions, there is rarely detailed consideration of td, it was agreed by the research team and the YJB that the most
recent research in relation to effective interventions was being explored by other Key
Elements of Effective Practice source document reviews commissioned 2006–07 and
that in order to include this material, this review should include evidence of effective
techniques that those reviews of interventions establish. Our approach enabled this
source document to draw on the most up-to-date evidence across interventions without
requiring an additional systematic review of each area of practice to be undertaken. It
was also agreed that this source document would benefit from an exploration of practice
literature from the areas of social work, probation and youth justice, and youth work so
that relevant messages from this body of work, often rooted in evidence of good or
emerging practice if not research and evaluation, could be included. Thus, this review
moved away from the ‘systematic review’ model to draw on three sources:
A systematic review of research highlighting effective techniques for engaging
young people who offend.
The systematic and literature reviews undertaken to produce Key Elements of
Effective Practice source...