During 2006 the Local Area Agreement for Hampshire outlined ‘Safer, Stronger Communities’ as one of its priority areas. From this a Local Public Service Agreement was established to provide funding to meet a self selected target within this category. Wessex Youth Offending Team (YOT), working in this priority area, aimed to ‘reduce violent crime in young people’. They recognised that an innovative way of working with young people committing violent crime would be to address the impact of domestic abuse on their behaviour. The Hampton Trust has several years experience of working in domestic abuse, including delivering perpetrator programmes for Hampshire Probation Service. Wessex YOT, as part of their ‘bid’ for funding had to set a ‘stretch’ target, which was to reduce violent crime by 10% (target being to reduce violent crime by 5%). Wessex YOT approached The Hampton Trust to work in partnership towards achieving this target. Acknowledging that it was a ‘stretch’ target all those involved approached the programme with ‘their eyes open’, and various challenges were predicted. In terms of evaluation it was anticipated that learning would take place in the following key areas.

• Partnership working between YOT teams and the voluntary sector in working with young people and addressing the issue of domestic abuse.
• Writing training material that would adequately address offending behaviour, alongside making links to young people’s personal experience of domestic abuse.
• Delivering material to young people in a way that would help them to make links between their violent offending and their experience of domestic abuse.
• Establishing a multi-agency response for young people upon completion of the programme, i.e. to sustain the dialogue around domestic abuse issues.

The Hampton Trust devised a screening tool for young people to assess their suitability for group work. This training manual was written by The Hampton Trust and delivered to 3 cohorts of young men and 1 cohort of young women. All of the young people who took part in the pilot had violent offences and were currently living with, or had previously experience domestic abuse.

The theme that underpins all of the material in this manual is the link between young people experiences; how they feel as a result of this and the impact it has on their offending behaviour. It was clear very early on in our work with young people that how they felt, (i.e. hurt, isolated and angry) had a huge impact on their subsequent behaviour. A quote from a young person on the programme, “I’ve never felt that anyone cared about me so I just think go out and commit crime” endorsed this. As workers in this field we have to continually remind ourselves that not all young people have the skill to make these links and often it is about surviving in world that can seem very unfair. Offending behaviour is frequently adopted as a survival strategy. The programme was named LINX as a result of making these connections. The three links on the logo each represent the key areas that we engaged young people in; experiences, feelings and behaviour.

The Hampton Trust is currently looking to expand the LINX programme and offer train the trainer courses to agencies/individuals working with young material. The material has potential to be adapted to a range of client groups.

Click here to download a copy of the Daphne evaluation report

Please contact The Hampton Trust should you have any enquiries regarding LINX.