Black Lives Matter, Staff Open Forum – Oldham Youth Justice Service (February 2021)
Summary
Attached is a short description of some of the work undertaken by Oldham YJS in relation to Black Lives Matter and working with staff members.
Aims
- To facilitate an open discussion with Youth Justice Service staff on issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Description
The open forum was created as a need was identified to look at the Youth Justice Service response and ways to move forward for the staff, children, families and victims in relation to inequality and disproportionality. The first session that took place had four questions posed:
- The impact of the murder of George Floyd
- Children and family- responses
- The Service- response as professionals within the Justice system
- Over representation of BAME children in the criminal justice system and what the Service could do
The initial forum was facilitated by the Service lead for Youth Justice and Prevention but as the forum has evolved staff members take an opportunity to facilitate and develop the session.
Here can be found an overview of how the staff discussions were approached in regards to Black Lives Matter through the creation of the ‘staff open forum’.
Implementing the practice
- At the initial meeting the group set the topics for the future forums and staff volunteer to plan, facilitate/deliver the sessions
- Where appropriate, external specialists from the local authority and local community have been invited to deliver sessions
- The forums run every 6 weeks
- They have created a Teams channel where staff share research, reading and any useful resources.
- The sessions are run online
- Feedback concerning the forum are taken from the chat facility, through supervision and team catch ups.
- Following the first session, managers also spoke with BAME members of staff to gain their personal feedback.
Contact
| Youth offending team: | Oldham Youth Justice Service |
| Name: | Suzanne Taylor |
| Email: | suzannetaylor@positive-steps.org.uk |