Read how Habitat ReStore works in partnership with the Youth Justice Agency to provide young people with valuable and meaningful opportunities.
The aim of the Youth Justice Agency is to make communities safer by helping children to stop offending. We work with young people who have offended, or are at serious risk of offending between the ages of 10-17 years. We also offer a range of services often in partnership with others, to:
1. Help children and young people address their offending behaviour.
2. Support them to make amends for the harm caused by their behaviour.
3. Divert them from crime.
4. Assist their integration into the community.
5. Meet the needs of victims of crime.
Restorative values and practices underpin all aspects of our work. We work directly with victims of crime providing an opportunity for their voice to be heard. The views of victims are central to the steps whereby a young person may be asked to undertake various ways of making amends, one being in the form of a reparative activity, formerly known as community service.
A reparative activity is an important component of restorative justice which provides a constructive, proactive means of repairing the harm caused with the potential of improving a young person’s self-worth. Habitat Restore has been working in partnership with the Youth Justice Agency for a number of years to provide such valuable and meaningful opportunities. The charity has enabled our young people to increase their confidence, work and social skills to become more employable, to work as part of a team and provide structure to their week.
Young people who have been placed with ReStore would say they were given a warm welcome by staff, made to feel part of the team, treated with respect and accepted for who they are. Following their induction they are buddied up with a member of staff during the initial period to support them to complete the tasks and jobs given to them. Whether it is offloading the van, building furniture, stock taking or engaging with members of the public, Habitat has drawn on our young people’s strengths and capacity to enable them to not only give something back to the community but regain a sense of self-worth and belief that they have something positive / worthwhile to contribute to the community.
The partnership with Habitat ReStore is one which the Youth Justice Agency greatly values and looks forward to continue to develop and strengthen in the years to come.
