ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a summary overview of the youth custodial estate in England and Wales, detailing current initiatives which aim to transform organisational culture and ensure child-focused, trauma-informed care. A whole-systems approach to providing psychologically informed care to a child who was placed in custody after receiving a six-year sentence for a violent offence is outlined. Shaped by the outcome of a full psychological assessment, the interventions offered were all directed by a trauma-informed framework of understanding and aimed to provide formulation-driven and trauma-informed care. This chapter details the interventions which included both direct therapeutic work and a range of indirect ‘interventions’ with operational staff and the broader multidisciplinary team. This chapter concludes by considering quantitative and qualitative indicators of the impact of these interventions at the level of both the individual and the wider system, and critical evaluation of providing psychologically informed care in the youth custodial estate is presented.
