Head of Early Intervention and Prevention - Youth Justice

Grade 7

Youth Justice and Offender Policy

The Youth Justice Policy Unit is recruiting permanently for a Grade 7 Head of Early Intervention and Prevention policy. This campaign is open to current civil servants on level transfer and suitable candidates on promotion.

Location:

Successful candidates will have the option to be based at one of the following locations:

• 102 Petty France, London

• 5 Wellington Place, Leeds

Occasional travel between the two locations may be required. We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your base location (102 Petty France or 5 Wellington Place Leeds).

Ways of Working

At the MoJ we believe and promote alternative ways of working, these roles are available as:

• Full-time, part-time or the option to job share

• Flexible working patterns

If we receive applications from more suitable candidates than we have vacancies for at this time, we may hold suitable applicants on a reserve list for 12 months, and future vacancies requiring the same skills and experience could be offered to candidates on the reserve list without a new competition.

We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce and pride ourselves as being an employer of choice. To find out more about how we champion diversity and inclusion in the workplace, visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity

Salary

Existing Civil Servants will have their salary calculated in accordance with the Department’s pay on transfer / pay on promotion rules.  

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ)

MoJ is the largest government department, employing over 90,000 people with a budget of approximately £10 billion. Each year, millions of people use our services across the UK - including at 500 courts and tribunals, and 133 prisons in England and Wales.

Further information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice

The Work of the Youth Justice Policy Unit

The Youth Justice Policy Unit is a team of around 40 people responsible for policy development across the whole youth justice system. We are a friendly, high-performing team committed to making a real difference for some of the country’s most vulnerable children.

The past decade has seen an impressive reduction in the number of children entering the youth justice system. However, beneath this headline, there are clear indications that there are challenges to be tackled across the system to rehabilitate children effectively and prevent reoffending. For example, our most recent statistics show that around two-thirds of children leaving custody committed another offence within 12 months.

The aim of the youth justice system is to prevent offending by children and to support those who do offend in turning around their lives. The Youth Justice Policy Unit has a mixture of policy roles and roles running programmes. Areas of focus include:

• Prevention, early intervention and community justice - working across Government and with Arm’s Length Bodies on policies and programmes to address the needs of children at an early stage, and work to prevent offending.

• Youth justice service funding and performance - owning policy around ensuring the sufficient funding of youth justice services and effective monitoring and oversight.

• Courts and sentencing - improving outcomes for children through the courts system, custodial and community sentencing, the use of remand, and the criminal records regime.

• Reform of our youth custodial estate - improving the existing estate, as well as the delivery of secure schools, a new type of custodial provision for children.

• Youth justice strategy - including monitoring and coordinating delivery of the recently published Youth Justice system reform and delivery plan: Cutting Youth Crime, Changing Young Lives.

Head of Early Intervention and Prevention policy - the role

We are recruiting for a Grade 7 Head of Early Intervention and Prevention policy, responsible for leading a small team to work across the unit and with colleagues across government to develop and deliver policy to prevent children from offending and entering the formal youth justice system.

Around 80% of prolific adult offenders begin committing crimes as children. Intervening when children are already in crisis is much more expensive than providing earlier support, and it can be harder to solve problems once they have escalated.

Many of the policy areas which could influence whether young people end up committing crime sit with other social policy government departments. The role holder will be responsible for leading the Youth Justice Policy Unit’s work to influence and support government policies and programmes “upstream" of the formal youth justice system in order to protect children from harm and criminalisation. We also know that strong local leadership and local level partnerships between youth justice services, policing, children’s social care, health and education are critical for intervening early when children are at risk of or first show signs of being drawn into crime. The role holder is also responsible for developing our devolution agenda, including delivering the Ministry of Justice’s trailblazing partnership with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

The role holder will:

• Maintain a strategic overview of youth, family, education, children’s social care and health policies across government, and any reforms around the law that could affect children at risk of or on the cusp of offending.

• Identify links and dependencies between these policy areas and build strong relationships with colleagues in other government departments to influence policy development and ensure it is joined up with MoJ’s interests.

• Ensure that policy decisions are taken on the best available evidence, both across government and within the Youth Justice Policy Unit, by developing and maintaining a strong understanding of the evidence base in the sector, and strong relationships with government social policy leaders, analytical colleagues, and sector experts.

• Represent the department at a range of cross-government boards focused on relevant policy areas.

• Work closely with policy teams in the wider unit and beyond to develop and deliver our devolution programme, including the devolution of certain youth justice programmes and funding streams to the Welsh Government and Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

You will lead a team of around three SEOs and one HEO, and work closely with colleagues across government, and policy leads across the team and department, as well as wider partners such as the Youth Justice Board.

We work flexibly across the Youth Justice Policy Unit, so it may be that the job description and objectives of this role evolve over time, and according to business need.

Skills and Experience

We are looking for applicants who can demonstrate the following skills and experience:

Essential:

• An ability to see the big picture - you will need strong skills in understanding complex policy issues across government and understanding how MoJ needs to influence them to help vulnerable children at risk of offending, drawing on your understanding of the wider context.

• An ability to understand and further develop a complex evidence base to inform policy decisions and confidence in taking decisions in ambiguity.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills - including the ability to communicate confidently with a range of stakeholders, and the ability to oversee the production of clear and well-written briefing to Ministers.

• Organisational and planning skills - you will need the ability to drive forward a broad portfolio of work, autonomously managing a busy workload to deliver competing priorities, often to tight deadlines. The scope of the policy area is very large, with elements of reactive work, strategic thinking and policy delivery, so you will need strong skills in prioritising where we spend our time and effort and allocating resource appropriately.

• Strong relationship-building skills and a track record of collaborative working - you will need experience of building trusted relationships across government and with external experts to deliver successful outcomes, as well as strong influencing skills.

• Excellent leadership and team management skills - you will need to demonstrate evidence of successfully leading others to deliver across a broad range of often complex work, and motivating teams, particularly in ambiguity and uncertainty.

Desirable:

• Experience in or an understanding of the youth justice system and policy delivery at a local level is desirable.

Candidates applying from HMPPS should note that the Ministry of Justice does not have the same conditions of employment as HMPPS. It is the candidate’s responsibility to ensure they are aware of the terms and conditions they will adopt should they be successful.

The MoJ is proud to be Level 3 Disability Confident. Disability Confident is the approach through which we offer guaranteed interviews for all people with disabilities meeting the minimum criteria for the advertised role as set out in the job description.

Application process

You will be assessed against the Civil service success profiles framework.

You must ensure that any evidence submitted as part of your application, including your CV, statement of suitability and behaviour examples, are truthful and factually accurate. Please note that plagiarism can include presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own.

Experience

You will be asked to provide a CV during the application process in order to assess any demonstrable experience, career history and achievements that are relevant to the role.

You will also be asked to upload a Statement of Suitability of no more than 500 words stating what you would bring to the role, with reference to the Skills and Experience listed above.

Behaviours

During the application process you will be asked to provide an example of how you have met the following behaviours (see Annex A for more information):

• Seeing the Big Picture

• Making Effective Decisions

• Communicating and Influencing

Please also refer to the CS Behaviours framework for more details at this grade:

CS Behaviours 2018

Should we receive a large number of applications, we will sift primarily on the Statement of Suitability and the lead behaviour of Seeing the Big Picture. Successful applicants will then be invited to an interview, testing both behaviours and strengths.

Candidates invited to Interview

Please note that interviews will be carried out remotely.

You will be assessed against the following behaviours at the interview stage where you will be asked to provide examples of how you have demonstrated them. In addition, you will also be asked strength-based questions.

Behaviours:

• Seeing the Big Picture

• Making Effective Decisions

• Communicating and Influencing

It may help to use one or more examples of a piece of work you have completed or a situation you have been in and use the WHO or STAR model to explain:   

• WHO - What it was? How you approached the work/situation? What the Outcomes were, what did you achieve? Or

• STAR - What was the Situation? What were the Tasks? What Action did you take?  What were the Results of your actions?

Strengths:

It is difficult to prepare for strength type questions. However, you can think through your answers, focus on your achievements and aspects you enjoy and decide how these can be applied in the organisation and role. While strengths questions are shorter and we do not expect a full STAR response, the panel is interested in your first reaction to the question and information or reasoning to support this. Further information on Civil Service Strengths can be found here.

Interviews are expected to take place in late July or early August.

Contact information  

Please do get in touch if you would like to know more about the role or what it is like working in our team: anna.jones1@justice.gov.uk

Annex A - The STAR method

Using the STAR method can help you give examples of relevant experience that you have. It allows you to set the scene, show what you did, and how you did it, and explain the overall outcome.

Situation - Describe the situation you found yourself in. You must describe a specific event or situation. Be sure to give enough detail for the job holder to understand.

• Where are you?

• Who was there with you?

• What had happened?

Task - The job holder will want to understand what you tried to achieve from the situation you found yourself in.

• What was the task that you had to complete and why?

• What did you have to achieve?

Actions - What did you do? The job holder will be looking for information on what you did, how you did it and why. Keep the focus on you. What specific steps did you take and what was your contribution? Remember to include how you did it, and the behaviours you used. Try to use “I" rather than “we" to explain your actions that lead to the result. Be careful not to take credit for something that you did not do.

Results - Don’t be shy about taking credit for your behaviour. Quote specific facts and figures. Explain how the outcome benefitted the organisation or your area. Make the outcomes easily understandable.

• What results did the actions produce?

• What did you achieve through your actions and did you meet your goals?

• Was it a successful outcome? If not, what did you learn from the experience?

Keep the situation and task parts brief. Concentrate on the action and the result. If the result was not entirely successful describe what you learned from this and what you would do differently next time. Make sure you focus on your strengths.