Policies and Professional Standards
. Policies and procedures provide the framework within which an organisation operates. They define what your organisation does and how you do it. Clear policies and procedures support effective decision making and delegation because they provide guidelines on what people can and cannot do, what decisions they can make and what activities are appropriate.
A clear policy framework means there will be fewer misunderstandings or debates about what to do in particular situations and there will transparency and consistency in the way you operate as an organisation and make decisions. It is important to keep your policies and procedures under review. Your needs as an organisation might change, or the law might change, either of which might mean you need to adopt new policies or to update existing ones. In particular, if you begin to employ staff, there will be several policies required by law, and several others it is wise to have
There are literally hundreds of different policies and procedures that the statutory services have to follow in order to adhere to and comply with. All Youth Offending Servicing in the United Kingdom are run and managed my local government authority (County Councils) as its part of the law, every council MUST have a Youth Offending Team or YOT as they are known in the trade. Youth Offending Teams have a national level of policies to follow from Youth Justice Board, now as the YOT’s become more modernised, they will work with outside agencies and organisations to create a multi-disciplinary teams. These partners to the YOT will have their own organisational policies but they will have to adhere to the county councils own policies and procedures, enabling everyone to comply safely, efficiently, and within the guidelines for effective practise.
The Youth Offending Services are governed by the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, here; they set out nationally recognised policies that they must follow. There over 100 documents on the Youth Justice Board and website relating to different key areas, E.g. Safeguarding Young People, Assessing Young people, the justice system and protocol’s, etc… There are national policies and protocols to follow but also local government authority have their own policies which are similar or adapted from the national policies.
In Local Government, each department will have specific documents to adhere to but will have a general policies and procedures that everyone will follow. The policies are: Equality and Diversity, Financial Controls, Volunteer policy, Health and Safety, Confidentiality, Data Protection, Conflict of Interest, User involvement, Reserves, Environmental, IT, Complaints Organisations working with Children, Safeguarding of Children, Grievance, Disciplinary, Health and Safety, Capability, Sickness and absence, Parental leave – maternity / paternity, Compassionate leave, Whistleblowing, and Redundancy. These are the types of policies that local authority councils will have to ensure a good working environment that is fair for all, and that everyone can work by in a safe and efficient manner.
The professional standard that a YOT worker must have is quite similar to that of a youth worker. The key purpose of the occupation of Youth Work ‘To enable young people to develop holistically, working with them to facilitate their personal, social and educational development, to enable them to develop their voice, influence and place in society and to reach their full potential’ (YMCA Community college Wales, 1st June 2010) All youth and community workers must have value bases as youth work is a vocation and not just a “Job”.
The youth justice board have a Document called National Standards for Youth Justice Services where they talk about the national strategy’s to deal with young offenders, how to prevent youth from offending again, the courts system, bail and remand, planning and delivering intervention and so on. This along with the basic values of anyone, especially youth workers is important.
It is essential that services reviews and monitors all the policies and procedures regularly. This helps them to learn from experience and as the services grows and evolves, the client's needs might change, therefore so should some of the policies and procedures.