Community-based interventions and sentences provide opportunities for applying the constructive, encouraging and enabling principles advocated in this book. Supervision of offenders in the community has traditionally fallen to probation services and the youth offending services of local authorities. This chapter therefore looks at shared aspects of these two public sector services. Although probation and youth justice have separate histories, infrastructures and bodies of professional and academic expertise, they both have their roots in social work and what has been called ‘penal welfarism’ (Garland, 2001), and they have each relied on a similar practice model for working with those under their supervision. The evidence base on their effectiveness is also linked. During the past 30 years, seismic changes have altered their governance, their statutory purpose and, therefore, their professional priorities and working culture.

A detailed account would need to have regard to differences in the legislative and organisational structures and the distinct histories of probation (Raynor and Vanstone, 2007) and youth justice (Morgan and Newburn, 2007), but, in the context of community responses to crime, it is worth bringing both services together in order to consider valuable common ground, particularly as they relate to shared concerns for promoting welfare, social inclusion and rehabilitation. Even though in recent decades these public sector community services have been politicised and driven by ‘the neo-liberal legalistic ethos of responsibility and punishment’ (Muncie and Hughes, 2002, p 1), there is research evidence to suggest that most practitioners in these services are still motivated by an ethic of care, and they continue to attract people who want to help people (Burnett and Appleton, 2004; Annison et al, 2008).

The way they were

In their former capacity as branches of social work, probation and youth offending services applied a welfare model of service delivery. Although engaged in tackling ‘social problems’ for the benefit of the broader society, they were primarily focused on looking after the interests and wellbeing of those they saw as their caseload – and termed ‘clients’. The traditional model of working with offenders in the community was through a one-to-one relationship that combined mentoring with monitoring, and practical help to them and their families with casework, to support the psychosocial development of the person (Burnett, 2004a).