This guidance from the UK's Department for Education presents a framework to help social care and criminal justice agencies keep looked-after children out of the criminal justice system. This national protocol is aimed at local authority children’s services, local care providers (fostering services, children’s homes and other arrangements), police forces, Youth Offending Teams (YOTs), the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS), local Youth Panel (Magistrates), and local health services including mental health. Its key purpose is to encourage and provide the framework for these agencies to co-develop local arrangements to reduce the unnecessary criminalisation of looked-after children and care leavers.
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