Supporting Your Child in Youth Custody: A Family Guide
- Written By The Kulturalism Team
- Nov 1
- 8 min read
Updated: Nov 4
→ Read Part 1: Life in a Young Offenders Institute
Family Contact and Visits
Research consistently shows that maintaining family connections during custody is one of the most important protective factors against reoffending. Young people who receive regular visits, phone contact, and letters from family members have better outcomes than those who become isolated.
YOIs have visiting arrangements where approved visitors (usually family members and close friends) can visit at scheduled times. Visits typically last 90 minutes and occur in supervised visiting halls. The frequency of visits depends on the young person's incentive level and the institution's capacity. Visiting can be challenging for families. Many YOIs are located far from young people's home areas, making travel expensive and time-consuming. Families face security procedures including searches, which some find intrusive. The environment of the visiting hall, while designed to be as comfortable as possible, remains an institutional space that can feel intimidating.
Some YOIs offer specific family support including themed visits such as children-only, sibling-only, or grandparent visits, family days with activities to maintain parent-child bonds, visitor centres providing refreshments and information before visits, and help with travel costs for families on low incomes who receive certain benefits. Young people can make phone calls to approved numbers, typically using a PIN phone system. The number and length of calls depend on the incentive level and available funds (phone credit must usually be purchased from wages or sent in by family). Calls are usually monitored for security purposes.
Letters and cards can be sent and received, providing another vital connection to home. Some institutions offer email services allowing families to send messages that are printed and delivered to the young person.
For young people whose families are unsupportive, abusive, or absent, maintaining connections is more complex. In these cases, relationships with positive mentors, caseworkers, or other supportive adults become even more critical.
Rehabilitative Programmes and Support
→ Offending Behaviour Programmes
YOIs deliver programmes specifically designed to address offending behaviour and reduce reoffending risk. These evidence-based interventions include cognitive skills programmes teaching problem-solving, consequential thinking, and perspective-taking, victim awareness programmes helping young people understand the impact of their actions, anger management programmes developing emotional regulation skills, programmes addressing specific offending types such as violence, theft, or drug offences, and for those involved in county lines, exploitation awareness and exit planning support.
Participation in these programmes forms part of the young person's sentence plan. Completion is often a requirement for progression through incentive levels and for parole considerations.
→ Mentoring and Positive Relationships
One of the most powerful rehabilitative factors is the development of positive, trusting relationships with staff. Research shows that when young people form therapeutic relationships with staff members, they are more likely to engage with interventions, regulate their behaviour, and maintain hope for their future.
Effective staff-young person relationships are characterised by consistent support and boundary-setting, genuine interest in the young person's wellbeing and progress, non-judgemental attitudes that see the young person as capable of change, advocacy for the young person's needs and rights, and modelling of prosocial behaviour and communication.
Unfortunately, staff shortages and high turnover rates undermine relationship-building. When young people experience frequent staff changes or interact with different officers daily, they struggle to form the trusting bonds that facilitate positive development.
Youth justice workers receive training in behaviour management, safeguarding, mental health awareness, and trauma-informed practice. The most effective workers combine authority with empathy, maintaining security while genuinely caring about young people's futures.
Preparing for Release
→ Release Planning
Release planning should begin early in the sentence, ideally during induction. Planning addresses accommodation arrangements (where will the young person live?), education or employment (returning to school, college, training, or employment), family relationships and support networks, health and mental health follow-up, substance misuse support if needed, and financial support including benefits, opening bank accounts, etc.
Effective release planning involves multi-agency cooperation between the YOI, Youth Offending Team, local authority, education providers, health services, and housing services. When this works well, young people leave custody with clear pathways and wraparound support. When agencies fail to coordinate or resources are inadequate, young people are released to chaos with predictable results.
→ Resettlement Support
Some young people transition through resettlement units or step-down accommodation designed to bridge custody and independent living. These provide more autonomy than a YOI while maintaining support and structure.
Post-release support is crucial. Young people face multiple challenges including stigma and discrimination due to their record, difficulty accessing education or employment, poverty and financial instability, housing insecurity, return to previous criminogenic environments and peer groups, and trauma and mental health needs requiring ongoing treatment.
The Harsh Realities: What Families Need to Know
Families deserve honesty about what their young people will face in custody. The system has genuine challenges that cannot be glossed over.
Violence and fear are real. Many young people experience or witness violence in YOIs. Assaults between young people, intimidation, theft of belongings, and verbal abuse create an atmosphere of threat. Young people must navigate complex social dynamics and power structures.
Isolation and loneliness are common. Extended cell time, separation from loved ones, and the artificial environment of custody take a psychological toll. Young people describe feeling forgotten, abandoned, and hopeless.
Mental health often deteriorates. Despite mental health services, the environment of custody can worsen existing conditions or create new ones. Self-harm rates are concerning, with inspection reports regularly noting inadequate responses to mental health crises.
Educational opportunities may be limited. Despite legal requirements, many young people receive inadequate education and training, missing the chance to catch up academically or develop employable skills.
Stigma persists after release. A criminal record creates barriers to education, employment, housing, and social acceptance. Young people leaving custody face an uphill battle to reintegrate.
Reoffending rates are high. Approximately 69% of children released from custody reoffend within 12 months, committing an average of five new offences per reoffender. While this partly reflects the complexity of the population, it also evidences system failures.
These realities are difficult to confront. They may leave families feeling angry, scared, and helpless. Yet understanding them is essential because it clarifies what young people need from families, advocates, and support services to navigate custody and emerge with a chance of success.
What Makes a Difference?
→ Research and experience identify factors that support positive outcomes:
Meaningful education and skills development. When young people genuinely engage with education, achieve qualifications, and develop employable skills, their post-release prospects improve dramatically. Education provides hope, purpose, and practical pathways out of crime.
→ Strong family support. Young people whose families remain involved, visit regularly, and prepare for their return have significantly better outcomes. Family reconnection and reconciliation work during custody lays foundations for successful reintegration.
→ Positive mentoring relationships. Whether with staff, volunteers, or community mentors, having adults who believe in them and invest in their future helps young people develop new identities beyond "offender."
→ Practical release plans with wraparound support. When accommodation, education/employment, and support services are genuinely in place upon release, young people can focus on moving forward rather than mere survival.
→ County lines exit programmes. For those exploited through county lines, specialist interventions addressing the trauma of exploitation, safely exiting the criminal network, and building alternative futures are critical.
The Importance of Advocacy
Families play crucial roles as advocates. By visiting regularly and maintaining connection, ensuring their young person accesses educational and mental health services, challenging inadequate provision or unfair treatment, preparing home environments for successful return, and believing in the young person's capacity for change despite setbacks, families fundamentally improve outcomes.
When systemic problems arise, such as extended cell time preventing education access, inadequate mental health support despite clear need, unfair disciplinary sanctions, or poor release planning, families can escalate concerns through official complaints, contact Independent Monitoring Boards (volunteers who monitor prison conditions).
Young people in custody are vulnerable and often voiceless. Family advocacy ensures they are not forgotten.
Custody as a Crossroads
Life in a Young Offender Institution is difficult. Custody is a consequence of serious wrongdoing. Yet punitive consequences alone do not create safer communities or rehabilitate young lives. What happens during custody matters profoundly.
A young person's time in a YOI can be a destructive experience that embeds criminal identity, traumatises, and sets them on a path toward long-term incarceration. Or it can be a difficult but ultimately constructive experience that provides education, addresses trauma, builds skills, and offers a foundation for a different future.
The difference lies not primarily in the young person, though their engagement matters, but in the quality of provision, the commitment of staff, the availability of services, and the support of families and communities.
For families facing the reality of a child in custody
The message is this: do not give up. Your young person needs you now more than ever. Stay connected, advocate fiercely, believe in their capacity for change, and prepare for their return.
→ For young people potentially facing custody
Custody might be part of your story, but it does not have to define your future. You may have made mistakes, harmed others, and now face consequences — but you also have potential, resilience, and the power to transform. Engage with education, seek mental health support, build positive relationships, and keep your focus on the life you want to create.
→ For communities, understand that young people will return from custody
The question is whether they return more damaged or better equipped. Supporting families, funding services, providing employment opportunities, and offering second chances determines whether young people leaving custody become success stories or repeat offenders.
Behind the walls of Young Offender Institutions are children and young people facing the consequences of their actions.
Within those same walls are opportunities for learning, healing, and growth. Whether those opportunities are realised depends on all of us.
For further information
You can explore more on our website:
Youth Justice & Custody Overview – how the system works for children and young people.
Family & Friends Handbook – guidance for families supporting a loved one in custody.
First Time in Prison Handbook – what to expect from induction to release planning.
Leaving Prison Handbook – rebuilding life, employment and housing after release.
Knife Crime Handbook – understanding youth violence and prevention.
HE Voice™ – resources for men in the justice system.
For official information or direct support:
Youth Justice Board (YJB) – www.gov.uk/government/organisations/youth-justice-board-for-england-and-wales
HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) – visiting rules, complaints, and family
