National Survey for Youth Justice Services in England and Wales on Health Needs and Resettlement

The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) have commissioned Cordis Bright to conduct two reviews focused on preventing children from becoming involved in violence during their journeys within the youth justice system.

Project 1 aims to understand what happens when identifying and responding to children’s mental health and neurodevelopmental needs across youth justice pathways, including police custody, diversion/out-of-court resolutions, referral into Youth Justice Service (YJS) and work in the community (excluding children in secure estates). We want to understand how needs are identified, who carries out screening or assessment, what health input is available, how referrals into support are made, and where delays or gaps occur.

Project 2 aims to understand the current practices in resettlement for children and young people sentenced to custody in England and Wales. This includes understanding the support delivered and its quality, as well as how provision may vary across custody types or groups of children.

For more information about these research projects, please visit Project overview for survey.

Why take part?

Your responses will help build a clearer picture of current practice across England and Wales, including where local systems work well, where children experience delays or unmet need, and what changes may improve timely access to appropriate support.

We recognise that local areas have different structures, pathways, resources and challenges. Understanding this variation, both across areas and in relation to national policy and guidance, will help identify what support, recommendations or system changes may be needed to improve timely and appropriate access to support for children.

Please answer the questions to the best of your knowledge. It should take around 15-20 minutes to complete.

You can save your progress at any time and return later to complete the survey. This may be helpful if you need to check figures or confirm details with members of your team before submitting your response.

Confidentiality and data protection

All survey responses will be treated as confidential and stored securely. On completion of the project, the survey data will be deleted in line with Cordis Bright’s data protection policies. Responses will be aggregated and will only ever be broken down by region. Responses to open-text questions, including comments about commissioning arrangements, risk factors, enablers, barriers or gaps in support, will not be attributed to individual respondents. We will review any comments you provide to identify common themes while protecting your confidentiality.

Contact information

For more information about this research, your involvement, or how your data will be stored or used, please contact Dr Jade Farrell (JadeFarrell@cordisbright.co.uk) or Samyukta Srinivasan (SamyuktaSrinivasan@cordisbright.co.uk)

Definitions

For the purpose of this project, we have provided definitions for what we mean by mental health and neurodevelopmental needs.

Mental health needs: emotional, behavioural or psychological difficulties that affect wellbeing, daily functioning or relationships. This includes conditions such as anxiety, depression, conduct disorder, psychosis and trauma-related difficulties. For this cohort, needs may also present as emotional distress, trauma/ACE related distress, self-harm or suicidal thoughts, emotional dysregulation, or difficulties with relationships, safety or engagement.

Neurodevelopmental needs: conditions that affect cognitive, behavioural, communication or social development. Examples include ADHD, autism, developmental language disorder (DLD), learning disability, learning difficulties, speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), and the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI).

For the purpose of this project, we are interested in children with both met and unmet/undiagnosed needs.