This Youth Justice strategic plan is deliberately ambitious. It responds to every recommendation made by the Armytage Ogloff Youth Justice review, and it will be the guide to help us realise our vision.

Working in partnership

We cannot achieve the ambitions of this strategic plan in isolation. Success depends on the strength of partnerships between departments, service providers and professionals and children and young people and their families.

We must deepen these relationships over the life of the strategic plan to intervene early and reduce offending.

Our relationship with the Aboriginal community, including through the Aboriginal Justice Forum, Aboriginal Justice Caucus and Aboriginal Youth Justice Steering Committee, is integral to reduce offending among Aboriginal children and young people.

We extend our thanks to the members of the Youth Justice Reference Group, which is the primary advisory and consultation body on the Youth Justice reform program, including implementation of the Armytage Ogloff Youth Justice review recommendations. The guidance and contributions of the members have shaped our reform directions and will inform our reforms into the future.

Several governance groups have also been crucial to this strategic plan:

  • Youth Justice Custodial Facilities Working Group – an advisory and consultation body established to oversee and collaborate on actions to address key challenges relating to Youth Justice’s custodial system.
  • Youth Justice Education Steering Committee – providing oversight and implementation of key reforms aimed at achieving the effective, integrated delivery of education services to young people in Youth Justice.
  • Youth Justice Custodial Reform Committee – a representative group of custodial staff from both the Parkville and Malmsbury Youth Justice Centres who are engaged and consulted on key reform initiatives relating to Youth Justice.
  • The Leadership Council of young people and the Parkville Youth Congress – these are forums involving children and young people and custodial management to improve two-way communication and custodial operations and inform the delivery of services and supports to young people in custody. The Council operates during the school term, delivered with the Department of Education and Training, with Youth Justice supporting the Parkville Youth Congress during school holidays.

Monitoring success and continuously improving

The Armytage Ogloff Youth Justice review pointed to the need for both system-level strategic planning, as well as transparent mechanisms for holding the system to account for the impact it has on young people and its contribution to community safety.

This strategic plan provides the foundation for a transparent 10-year blueprint for Youth Justice, detailing the reform directions, objectives and key actions for the system to realise its strategic vision. However, it is not an exercise in setting and forgetting. Over the life of the strategic plan, Youth Justice will continue to monitor its progress and continuously improve itself by undertaking the following:

  • Track and model demand to inform demand management activities, including forecasting custodial system demand for individual cohorts of children and young people.
  • Develop a new performance measurement framework for the system, reflecting the objectives and key actions in this strategic plan.
  • Continue our workforce planning activities.
  • Build up and track key data sets, evaluating trends and gleaning insights to improve service-delivery approaches.
  • Engage actively with contemporary research and best practice by partnering with key stakeholders, experts and institutions, to drive continuous improvement.
  • Review our performance against the 2020–2024 key actions in this strategic plan, and re-setting our priorities for the forthcoming years through a midway action plan.