An Evaluation of the British Red Cross’ Educational Pilot Project for Young People Serving Reparation Orders

Using Newcastle Youth Offending Team (YOT) as a case-study, this report presents the findings of the evaluation of the British Red Cross (BRC) Educational Pilot Project (EPP) for service users serving reparation as part of Community Orders. The EPP was implemented between November 2011 and June 2012. However prior to this development, the BRC and Newcastle YOT had been working in partnership since 2005, to offer young people alternative forms of youth justice, focused around more physical tasks, such as cleaning and re-stocking on-site ambulances and creating packs for events in the North East such as the Great North Run. Whilst such tasks were generally considered successful, such work was not sustainable due to staff change-overs. In 2007, the BRC and Newcastle YOT once again entered into collaboration to meet the needs of young people serving reparation as part of Community Orders. This time, individuals were tasked with the maintenance of wheelchairs and litter picking. Regrettably, service users found it increasingly difficult to engage with these tasks and thus such work did not have the positive impact envisaged. Latterly, the EPP was introduced in 2011 - initially as a five-week programme - designed to introduce service users to the humanitarian work undertaken by BRC.