Youth Justice Team

Carmarthenshire Youth Justice Team works with children between the ages of 10 and 17 who have been in trouble with the police or appeared before the Youth Courts.

We support children so that we can prevent re-offending. We also offer a prevention of offending scheme to prevent children between the ages of 8 and 17 becoming involved in anti-social behaviour or crime. 

We also work with parents or carers, the victims of crime, volunteers and the local community. The team is made up of staff from Dyfed-Powys Police, the Probation Service, Children’s Services, Education and Health, all working together to reduce youth crime in Carmarthenshire as well working to promote school attendance.

Our Approach

When supervising children, we have to balance their wellbeing with managing risk to the community.

Central to our approach and intervention is the understanding of what our children have experienced in their lives, in particular the impact of trauma on their development, as a response to intense or chronic stress factors.

Our work focuses on trauma-informed practice, which balances the need to create boundaries for their behaviour; promote desistence from future offending whilst protecting people from harm.

We focus on the child’s individual needs and offer a child-first approach. We complete comprehensive assessments, which seeks to identify safety and wellbeing concerns, safety concerns to others and the likelihood of reoffending, leading to providing personal intervention plans that respond to children’s individual needs and risks.

We recognise that children who have experienced inconsistent and unstable environments need support to develop good problem-solving skills and impulse control and we work with them to help them learn and practice new skills. We try to help them regulate the behaviour that might have arisen from their experience of trauma, by teaching them to recognise their triggers and responses when they are in situations they perceive as challenging.