Focus on: skills for justice

Skills for Justice - what is it? The short answer is the obvious one, it's the sector skills council for the Justice sector which aims to understand and develop the skill needs of that workforce. Justice, what it is and how it is maintained, is much more than the statutory elements of the Justice system.

Of critical importance are those community and voluntary organisations involved in providing activities which occupy or 'divert' young people away from committing crime or the potential to do so; organisations which support and work to rehabilitate prisoners, ex -prisoners and their families; organisations focusing on drug and alcohol misuse problems; organisations which recognise the need to make communities safer and in so doing reduce crime and the fear of crime; organisations which support victims.

what is justice?

Everyone has an idea of what Justice is with slightly different definitions of the term and organisations do not immediately identify their work as linking into 'Justice'. We are, for example, now about to consult on a new set of occupational standards for practice in Youth Justice. These standards include a wide range of skills; those needed to mentor young people; work with young substance misusers; work with the families of young people who are offending. Do you recognise the work of your organisation here? If so we want to hear from you and to ensure that you can contribute to shaping practice in Northern Ireland. There are many more areas to be developed, our website www.skillsforjustice.com gives regular updates on our programme of work.

working with the voluntary sector

We are actively involved with a number of organisations in the voluntary sector and have through a range of partnership activities facilitated staff and volunteer access to training and qualifications. These include staff and volunteers supporting victims of domestic violence, mentoring young people, working to deliver community safety initiatives including those members of community safety partnerships.

We developed a voluntary sector forum as a means of widening voluntary and community sector participation in our work. This forum fed directly into the work of the Northern Ireland Country Group, which oversees our work in Northern Ireland and on which Extern and Victim Support Northern Ireland sit as representatives of the voluntary sector and victims organisations respectively.

We want to build on this work and in conjunction with a number of other sector skills councils are trying to obtain a better picture of the work that is being done in the voluntary and community sector and the number of people who are involved in this. Such information will enable us to speak more directly to you, ensure that what we do is fit for your purposes and that Justice in its full breadth is represented in our work here in Northern Ireland.