The varying levels of implementation of international standards concerning children in conflict with the law have become a problem inherent in the field of Juvenile Justice, due to various reasons, with a lack of specific training in Juvenile Justice at both the EU and the local level being key. Current training methods in how Juvenile Justice stakeholders communicate with children in conflict with the law is somewhat lacking.
Therefore, the project ‘Improving Juvenile Justice Systems in Europe: Training for Professionals’, elaborated by the International Juvenile Justice Observatory (IJJO), intends to provide information, knowledge and training to juvenile justice national authorities and staff working with juvenile offenders at a European level, in order to promote a better implementation of international standards concerning children in conflict with the law. It involves the IJJO think tank and formal network: the European Council of Juvenile Justice.
The project focuses on improving juvenile justice national systems and exchanging promising practices concerning juvenile offenders subject to sanctions or measures. It consists of training modules on the creation on child-friendly justice and follows a two part approach:
Training of trainers (national Juvenile Justice stakeholders) and,
National interdisciplinary workshops on child-friendly justice (for defender, social, healthcare professionals, penitentiary staff, etc).
The training of trainers focuses on capacity building for juvenile justice stakeholders and the content of national workshops will follow the recommendations of the IJJO White Paper ‘Save Money, Protect Society and Realise Youth Potential - Improving Youth Justice Systems during a Time of Economic Crisis’, in particular how and why assess the need of children in conflict with the law deprived of liberty, with a special interest in promoting alternative measures and restorative approaches.
The accent is given to the importance of developing individualised programs for children in conflict with the law, and developing specific knowledge for professionals concerning children rights, communication with children and preparation to the release.
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The main objective of the project ‘Improving Juvenile Justice Systems in Europe: Training for Professionals’ is to improve the EU youth justice systems and to understand where they can be made more efficient and more child-friendly, focusing on a better implementation of the Guidelines of the Council of Europe on Child Friendly Justice and international standards.
General objectives:
To enhance of cooperation among public and private stakeholders operating in the field.
To promote the horizontal and vertical dissemination and mainstreaming of good practices.
To strengthen national and European networks.
To impact both on policies and practices through dissemination of identified good practices to enhance already existing measures.
To promote and develop coordination, cooperation and mutual understanding of juvenile justice training among key actors.
The specific expected outputs are:
Results of an online survey of needs in the field of training.
Compendium of promising practices on training and juvenile justice programme
A focus group with children in contact with the juvenile justice system.
Production of a toolkit and a manual.
Training of trainers in Brussels.
National workshop for stakeholders and professionals.
Creation of a national coalition group on juvenile justice.
Online training.
Final conference in Brussels to present the results of the project.
Final evaluation.
The results will be displayed on the project's web section.
Coordinator:
Partners:
- Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS (Latvia)
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (Vienna, Austria)
- Hope for Children - UNCR Policy Centre (Cyprus)
- Rubikon Centrum (Czech Republic)
- Association Diagrama (France)
- Greek Ministry of Justice (Greece)
- Istituto Don Calabria (Italy)
- Portuguese Ministry of Justice (Portugal)
- Fundación Diagrama (Spain)
- Include Youth (N.I., United Kingdom)
- Finish Forum for Mediation (Finland)
- The University of Cork (Ireland)
With the support of: