Young offenders and looked after children

Question 1

what are the three main reasons why there is a higher prevalence of youth offenders with SLCN?

Answer 1

1. Young people with learning difficulties and mental health difficulties are more likely to offend than young people without these difficulties. Learning difficulties and mental health difficulties involve language and communication difficulties.
2. Children with language and communication difficulties are more likely to have emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD). Young people with EBD are more likely to offend than young people without EBD.
3. Young people who offend are more likely to come from home and social backgrounds that are described as impoverished and chaotic, e.g., experience abuse, be in looked after provision and have poor attendance at school and low educational attainment. Young people from these backgrounds also have higher rates of learning difficulties and language and communication difficulties.

Question 2

what are the five main reasons why SLCN impacts a persons ability to engage in the criminal justice system?

Answer 2

1. Talking to and understanding their case workers
2. Engaging in group work to understand their offending behaviours
3. Participating in education type programmes
   4.. Participating in rehabilitation services that will reduce offending behaviour
4. Targeted by other prisoners
   GRUET!

Question 3

what are the reasons that people in the looked after provision are more likley to develop BESD/

Answer 3

1. They are more likely to have come from disadvantaged backgrounds where a number of social/environmental risk factors are present.
2. People in the looked after provision are more likely to have come from families with mental health, learning disabilities or physical health problems
3. Or/ and the increased risk factors for people in the looked after provision can directly cause the development of BESD:
4. The increased risk factors of biological inheritance and environment may increase the risk of mental health, learning difficulties and SCLN. Either one of which will increase the risk of developing the other. This increases the risk also of developing BESD.

Question 4

why are mental health and learning difficulties said to involve language difficulties?

Answer 4

1. Some mental health problems and learning difficulties are associated with language and communication difficulties
2. Sometimes language difficulties can lead to mental health and learning difficulties because many features of SLCN can make a child more vulnerable to developing mental health problems and learning difficulties.

Question 5

why are people with communication difficulties more likely to develop BESD?

Answer 5

1. Communication problems may lead to frustration and aggression
2. Communication problems may lead to the ‘isolating effect’
3. SLCN reduces educational attainment

Question 6

what are the shared risk factors of SLCN and offending behaviour?

Answer 6

1. poor attachment
2. Low ses
3. abuse neglect trauma

Question 7

EXPLAIN EXECTIVE DYSFUNCTION

Answer 7

Executive dysfunction and cognitive processing deficits can lead to emotional and behavioural problems as they affect the speed at which children can process emotional cues and their inner-speech to self-regulate their behaviour(rock et al.,1997)

Question 8

what are the shared risk factors of mental health and learning disability and offending behaviour?

Answer 8

1. poor attachment
2. Low ses
3. abuse neglect trauma

Question 9

what is the social deviance model?

Answer 9

children with SLCN, mental health and learning difficulties have an impaired underlying socio-emotional trait that has a negative influence on socioemotional development. This innate psycho-emotional impairment also influences the development of appropriate language skills. For example, working memory and executive function in particular support successful social cognition, which may involve emotional perception, problem solving and self-cognition (Marton et al., 2005).

Question 10

What is the evidence that mental health and SLCN are co-morbid?

Answer 10

Cohen et al (1998) found that 40% of young people in contact with mental health services had undiagnosed language difficulties.

Question 11

what is the evidence that language and com difficulties predict behaviour difficulties?

Answer 11

Petersen et al. (2013) found that language ability had an independent effect on behaviour problems controlling for other characteristics. Even after controls for prior levels of behavior problems, language ability predicted later behavior problems more strongly than behavior problems predicted later language ability, suggesting that the direction of effect may be from language ability to behavior problems.
Sanger (2003) - study, female incarcerated adolescents with language problems spoke of feeling humiliated and disliked by friends, family and teachers. This led to negative attitudes to school and low self-esteem and maladaptive communication patterns, such as yelling, bullying, as the use of physical force.

Question 12

what is the social adaptation model?

Answer 12

This model proposes that children with communication difficulties have the same psychosocial attributes as their peers, but are more at risk of developing socioemotional behavioural difficulties because of social adaptions to their language limitations.

Question 13

how can communication problems lead to greater frustration and anger?

Answer 13

communication problems may lead to increased frustration as children, who have problems understanding language, may inappropriately believe themselves to be the object of ridicule, and therefore resort to violence (Beitchman 1985). As language is also a key factor in the self-regulation of behaviour, verbal deficits may mean that children do not develop the inner speech which helps them plan and modify behaviour, thus making them more likely to have behavioural outbursts (cross, 2004).

Question 14

how can communication problems lead to an ‘isolating effect’?

Answer 14

Communication problems may lead to the ‘isolating effect’ (rutter and marwood, 1991)- this suggests communication disorders can lead to problems with interaction and, then as a consequence, children with communication problems may be rejected by their peers and even bullied or scape-goated. This can initiate a negative spiral of interactions where the child with communication difficulties finds it increasingly difficult to interact in a positive way (Rice 1993). Thus, children and young people with communication problems are at risk of negative interactions, which can bring about and maintain behavioural difficulties as well as leading to problems of low self-confidence, low self-esteem and social withdrawal remained.

Question 15

how does reduced educational attainment increase BESD and crime?

Answer 15

Reduces educational attainment and securing employment - all academic subjects require speech, language and communication skills.Whether that is in reading, writing or understanding. Therefore, there is a strong link between SLCN and poor educational attainment. According to the national literacy trust’s study (2014) poor literacy and poor educational attainment exacerbates risk factors associated with offending behaviour. Evidence suggests that young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are 20 times more likely to be convicted of a crime (PRT, 2010). Negative experience at school is also a key factor linking literacy to crime. Those with low literacy are more likely to be excluded from school and more likely to truant. 9% of very poor readers are persistent truants compared to 2% of those who are average or above average readers.

Question 16

explain Bryan (2007) study

Answer 16

Bryan et al (2007) Screened a random sample of 58 young offenders aged 15-17 and found that:
66-90% had below average language skills of these 46-68% were in the poor and very poor range compared with 9% of the general population
62% had not achieved level 1 in literacy

Question 17

explain Gregory and Bryan (2011) study.

Answer 17

Gregory & Bryan (2011) Investigated the prevalence of slcn in a group of persistent and prolific young offenders sentenced to an issp (intensive supervision and surveillance programme) and to evaluate the impact of SLT intervention, they found that:
65% of those screened had profiles indicating that they had language difficulties
As a cohort their language skills were lower than those of general populations, 20% scored at the severely delayed level
8% were known to slt service but none were receiving treatment.

Question 18

who are young offenders?

Answer 18

Young people between the ages of 10 and 17 years of age who have been found sentenced for a proven offence. Attending a YOT or resident in a custodial setting.

Question 19

Peterson et al (2013)

Answer 19

Petersen et al. (2013) found that language ability had an independent effect on behaviour problems controlling for other characteristics. Even after controls for prior levels of behavior problems, language ability predicted later behavior problems more strongly than behavior problems predicted later language ability, suggesting that the direction of effect may be from language ability to behavior problems.

Question 20

sanger et al (2003)

Answer 20

In Sanger et al. (2003) study, female incarcerated adolescents with language problems spoke of feeling humiliated and disliked by friends, family and teachers. This led to negative attitudes to school and low self-esteem and maladaptive communication patterns, such as yelling, bullying, as the use of physical force.

Question 21

define looked after children

Answer 21

The term `looked after’ was introduced by the Children Act (1989) to refer to children who are subjected to care orders and those who are accommodated.

Question 22

talking to and undersatnding case workers

Answer 22

Contact with the youth justice system exposes youth to a range of experience for example police interviews, court proceedings and intervention programmes that rely heavily on expressive and receptive language skills (Lavigne & Van Rybroek 2011)
They are likely to struggle with police questioning and cautions, with the result that they may incriminate themselves even if they are innocent
People with learning disabilities or learning difficulties often have trouble complying with community-based orders. Research into anti-social behaviour orders, for example (BIBIC 2005), found that people with learning disabilities or autistic spectrum disorders often did not understand the terms of the order or why the order had been imposed. This makes compliance with such community-based penalties highly unlikely, which in turn increases the likelihood of

Question 23

engaining in group work

Answer 23

SLCN often associated with other learning disabilities they are likely to have difficulty understanding and adjusting to complex rules and regimes

Question 24

participating in education type training

Answer 24

They are often barred from available programmes, including offending behaviour programmes, due to their impairments. They respond either by lashing out at others or by isolating themselves – or being isolated by prison staff for their own protection – thereby increasing their vulnerability to problems such as mental distress and suicide (Prison reform trust 2007)

Question 25

rehabilitation

Answer 25

Evidence shows that around 40% of offenders find it difficult or are unable to benefit from and access rehabilitation programmes that are delivered verbally, such as drug rehabilitation courses (Bryan, 2004)

Question 26

services not meeting thier needs

Answer 26

They have poorer access to mental health services (mooney et al 2009)
The common assessment framework for england and wales does contain a section on SLCN but it remains to be seen how effective this assessment is in identifying problem. The rate of unidentified communication problems for children in care is twice as prevalent than the normal population, at 16% (meltzer et al 2003)

Question 27

reduced stability

Answer 27

the greatest barrier for meeting these children’s needs is their frequent changes of placement and the professionals working with them. Children and young people in public care stress the negative effects of discontinuity and want more choice in the support they receive (stanley, 2007)

Question 28

attachment in looked after

Answer 28

Howe and Fearnley (2003) note that children who come into care are more likely to have experienced weak or broken attachments due to poor parenting, abuse, trauma or neglect, which can directly and indirectly lead to BESD. As asinsworth noted the attachment realtionship provides the developmental context for the main developmental tasks of infancy, including emotional regulation, reading emotions aand the ability to ‘mentalise’ Children with disorganised attachments may not be able to regulate thier emotions, may have less emotional vocbulary and may not be able to read the emotions of others (Pollack et al, 2000). It can aslo lead to problems establishing relationships, language ability and will have kncok on effcts to eduational atttainment and self-esteem (rice,1993) - all of which can influence to maladaptive behaviours and BESD.

Question 29

prevalence of BESD in looked after provision

Answer 29

Children who fall into this category are more likely to have BESD (behavioural emotional and social difficulties) than children who live at home, with around 80% of children in care having some form of behavioural difficulty (leslie et al, 1997).

Question 30

education in looked after children

Answer 30

1. Department for education, schools, children and families (2010) - LAC’s have poorer out comes that their peers
2. Berridge (2007) - barley half of LAC achieve one GCSE, they are more likely to be excluded from education, recieve lower levels of parental interest