Engaging parents to reduce youth violence: evidence from a youth justice board pathfinder programme

Abstract The Youth Justice Board’s 2019–2022 strategic plan set youth violence as a priority. As part of this, a ‘pathfinder’ approach was launched to assist local authorities and their partners to devise, develop, and disseminate whole systems approaches to serious youth violence (Youth Justice Board in Pathfinder—YJB, https://yjresourcehub.uk/working-with-partners/item/651-pathfinder-yjb.html Youth Justice Board Annual Report and Accounts 2020/21, 2020). In partnership with a regional Violence Reduction Unit, seven local Youth Offending Teams worked together with a programme that facilitated peer support networks for parents of children known to the youth justice system. The programme presented a challenge to a view in statutory youth justice of parents as part of the problem (Burney and Gelsthorpe in Howard J Crimin Justice 47(5):470–485, 2008). The aim of the programme was to engage parents of young people involved in the youth justice system, facilitating peer to peer support through a blend of online and face-to-face meetings. Taking a mixed-method approach, the research sought to investigate the impact of the programme on participants’ well-being and perceived competence with parenting. A secondary aim was to explore experiences of the self-care and peer support activities offered by the programme. The quantitative findings showed statistically significant increases in parents’ self-reported well-being and perceived competence with parenting during engagement with the programme. Effect sizes reached the minimum important difference for all of the quantitative measures, with a large effect for well-being. The qualitative findings highlighted that the self-care focus was important in engaging parents and helps distinguish the programme from statutory services. The findings are combined in the paper to produce a potential model of peer support for parents of children known to the youth justice system. Future research should investigate the impact on the children of parents who took part in this programme with a specific focus on youth violence.