Reconnect is our multi-agency youth team available to support young people who may need extra support
In addition to our specialist and targeted youth teams, Reconnect is a team made up of professionals including a systemic practitioner, a serious youth violence worker, SOURCE drug and alcohol/specialist youth workers, key workers and a social worker for adolescents.
This team has been created to support young people where there is a risk of harm from outside the home. For example, risk of child sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation and county lines, children who go missing, and serious youth violence.
Reconnect will work with all young people aged 10-18, even if there is no social care involvement.
The service will provide bespoke support around the child’s needs and those of the whole family. Working in a holistic way to address concerns that may be influencing the child, this can include collaboration with the family, school, neighbourhoods and the wider community.
Here's more information about Reconnect
- Young people and their networks (family, peer, school, community) above the age of 10 who are experiencing difficulties in all or most of these areas
- These difficulties will usually show in the form of school and community difficulties such as being disengaged from education, going missing, use of drugs/alcohol, association with other young people/adults of concern, acts of verbal and physical aggression and crime
- It is likely that these young people might also be experiencing difficulties in their family relationships which may include high levels of conflict and defiance
- These young people will likely be seeking independence and autonomy in unsafe and/or inappropriate ways. They might be described as ‘outside parental control or influence’
- We think trauma-informed, respond restoratively, therapeutically and with a whole family approach.
- This means that we take time to understand the young person and their networks, their experience and their context. We pay attention to the strengths and challenges that they face.
- In partnership with the young person we talk about the difficulties and what’s keeping them there. This informs how we work together to build on those strengths and reduce the challenges.
- This could include one to one work with a specialist youth worker and family support, talking together with the wider network about how everyone can work together to create positive and lasting change.
- We offer a flexible service and our interventions include specialist substance misuse support and harm reduction, psycho-education tailored to emotional wellbeing and mental health, as well as Non-Violent Resistance and family work
- We operate a ‘team around the worker’ model which means that a young person has a single point of contact whilst also benefiting from the input of the wider team.
- Increase safety for the young person, their networks and the spaces and places they spend time
- Reduce missing episodes and the amount of time spent unaccounted for
- Reduce contacts with police, anti-social behaviour teams and youth offending services
- Reduction in problematic alcohol and substance misuse (where this is an issue)
- Improved relationships reported by the young person and their networks
- Improved emotional and mental health
- Reconnection with education, employment or further training