The Role of the Youth Justice Lead Nurse

Six months ago, I was working as a Lead Nurse for Children and Young people services within sexual health managing three sexual health clinics. By December 2022 all three were integrated within the Adult Sexual Health Service. Therefore my job was at risk. I had to look for another role within my trust. The Youth Justice Lead Nurse looked interesting, setting up a Physical Health assessment clinic for young people. I have a nursing background in Midwifery, Gynaecology, Specialist General Practice Nurse and Sexual Health. During the COVID-19 pandemic I was redeployed as Named Nurse for Looked after children for six months. I definitely had transferred skills and I applied for the Youth Justice Lead Nurse role and was successful.

Once I started in the role as the Youth Justice Lead nurse, I met with the public health commissioners, the health and wellbeing team, which includes a psychologist, family therapist, and speech and language therapist, service managers for youth justice as well as three team leaders. There are three teams within Youth Justice service (YJS). the court team, the gangs team and the liaison and diversion team. I was so amazed about the different teams within YJS. During the first two months, I was scoping the service, developing the Comprehensive Health Assessment Screening Tools, Health Assessment report template, and was also an active part of wider team doing health needs assessment for children and young people within the borough. I also started thinking about standard operational procedures and national guidelines for physical health assessment and reached out to the RCN for support.

I had to learn new abbreviations, and set up appointment days and times for physical health assessments. I soon realised that these children and young people have a timetable for various interventions and some attend mainstream school as well a pupil referral unit. I decided to be more flexible with youth justice practice to meet the needs of children and young people. I am seeing people well known to the team, and those new to the service. Most of the children and young people I have met are very happy to have a health assessment and happy to talk to a health professional as our conversation are about predominantly about their health and well being and not about their offence.  

There is a need to raise the profile of nursing within youth justice services. It is a role that is varied and complex and offers the opportunity for nurses to use a wide range of advanced nursing skills, work alongside allied healthcare professionals and youth justice colleagues to deliver care in innovative ways for children and young people within the service. This will include conducting health needs assessments, carrying out consultations, undertaking highly specialised clinical assessments and interventions within an integrated multi-agency team who manage young people who are subject to statutory court orders. The role entails working with young people who are presenting with complex risks and vulnerabilities and their immediate families and wider support systems. We now have an online forum which was set up by the RCN Professional Lead for Justice and Forensic Healthcare. This space is where youth justice service nurses can come together to explore the issues impacting children and young people within youth justice services.