Desistance and young people

4.8. Few case managers reported that they had had any extensive training on desistance theory. A
number mentioned having had “briefings” or “one-off sessions” about desistance prior to the
inspection, while others recalled its inclusion in the Youth Justice Board training for the Professional
Certificate for Effective Practice (Youth Justice).
4.9. Others with professional qualifications in social work or criminal justice also said that while they had
some course input on desistance as part of their training, this had been delivered as a specific topic
rather than providing the wider framework or perspective for practice.
4.10. Overall, we concluded that case manager knowledge about desistance thinking and its application
to practice was not detailed enough and we detected some confusion about its core concepts. In
particular, we found what appeared to be an overly simplistic conflation of offence focused practice
and desistance thinking, and consequently a lack of clarity about the relationship between the two.
This lack of understanding was also often compounded by the operational context within which
workers were practicing.
38 Desistance and young people