Selecting Practitioners to be interviewed

The primary inclusion criteria for selecting practitioners to be interviewed was that they had experience of observing, facilitating or supporting RJ conferencing with girls who are, or have been, subject to youth justice intervention. Generating practitioner involvement proved relatively straight forward as I had previously been in contact with all practitioners interviewed for the study when attempting to identify girls to be interviewed. Therefore, practitioners were familiar with the study and a total of thirteen out of fifteen scheduled interviews took place.

The Sample of Practitioners

Table 4 illustrates the sample of practitioners interviewed for this study. The thirteen practitioners interviewed were employed within eight different YOTs. A degree of diversity was achieved in terms of their job role and practitioners’

experience of working within the YJS ranged from six months to fourteen years.

Table 4: Job role and gender of youth justice practitioners interviewed for this study:

Job role Male Female

Substance Misuse Worker *Previously Restorative

Justice Worker 1

Senior RJ Practitioner 1 -

Prevention and Restorative Justice Co-ordinator 1

Victim Liaison Officer - 2

Youth Offending and Family Intervention Worker - 1

Restorative Justice Co-ordinator - 1

Youth Offending Team Senior Officer - 1

Restorative Justice and Volunteers Team Manager 1

-Restorative Justice Victim Worker 1 2

Restorative Justice Officer 1

-Total 6 7

159 4.8 Undertaking the Interviews with Girls

Despite my initial concern with regards to achieving an adequate sample size of girls to interview for the research, in July 2016 I was fortunate enough to have had interviewed fifteen girls who had participated in a RJ conference. At this point, it was decided that this sample size was sufficient to move forward with the transcription and analysis of the data.

All the girls I interviewed were given a choice with regards to where they would like the interview to take place. Seven of the interviews took place in the girls’ homes, three took place in the girls’ school, two took place in different family centres, two took place on YOT premises and one interview took place within a private room at a mother and baby unit.

For the interviews undertaken at the young person’s home, privacy proved to be a cause of concern. The majority of these interviews were interrupted at some point for various reasons due family members coming in and out of the room where the interview was taking place, telephones ringing or the young person pausing the interview to answer the door. In order to ensure the confidentiality of the interview process, my reaction to these interruptions was to pause the voice recorder until myself and the young person could continue with the interview in private. Prior to undertaking a home interview, the relevant YOT practitioners would brief me about any necessary safeguarding information, concerning the young person and their family that I should be aware of. In accordance with the youth offending service policy and the study’s research protocols, approved by the LJMU Research Ethics Committee, I also adhered to the relevant lone working procedures.

All but four of the interviews were undertaken in private, between myself and the young person. However, an appropriate adult was always in the vicinity of the interview location. For the interviews undertaken in the girls’ homes, a

160 parent or guardian was always present. For those interviews completed away from the girls’ homes, the appropriate adult was either a YOT worker or a family support worker. For the four interviews which were not undertaken in private, this was purposively arranged at the girls’ request. One of these young people requested their adolescent support worker to be present. Two young people requested that their mother was present during the interview and one young person requested her female friend be present during the interview. I do not feel that the presence of family members, support workers or friends impacted upon the quality or the integrity of the interview process. For two of the girls, I believe the presence of their mothers provided them with practical and emotional support, thus having a positive impact on the interview process.

Each of the girls’ interviews varied with regards to the length of time it took to complete. The longest interview lasted one hour, whereas most of the interviews lasted about twenty minutes. I found that only one of the girls I interviewed was extremely shy, which I believe made the interview shorter than the others. There was also a number of distractions, which affected the length of time the interview lasted for. For example, during one of the interviews, undertaken in school, an altercation between a teacher and a pupil, taking place in the hallway outside of the interview room, disturbed the girl’s concentration on the interview process. During another interview, completed in school, the young person’s taxi, to take her home, arrived earlier than expected. She was alerted to this by another pupil through the window and she became quickly distracted by her desire to finish the school day.

However, despite one last minute cancellation by a young person, which was quickly rearranged, I am grateful to state that all fifteen of the interviews I arranged were completed.

161 4.9 Undertaking the Interviews with Practitioners

I initially began interviewing practitioners for this study in July 2016. In November 2016, I had undertaken interviews with thirteen youth justice practitioners. There were however, a number of practical dilemmas experienced with regards to selecting practitioners to be interviewed. These difficulties can be contextualised in relation to the low numbers of girls who come into the remit of the youth justice service. Three practitioners I approached to be interviewed stated that they had no experience of facilitating or observing RJ conferences with young female offenders, thus preventing them from being able to participate in the research. I received one cancellation of a scheduled interview and one practitioner failed to attend a scheduled meeting.

All the interviews undertaken with practitioners took place at the YOT offices where the practitioner was based. Privacy was not an issue for these interviews as all the interviews were undertaken in either the practitioner’s office or a separate interview room. On two occasions, the practitioner and I were asked to move locations due to the interview rooms being previously booked by other members of staff. In these circumstances, I simply paused the voice recorder and did not continue with the interview until another suitable space had been found.

The length of time each practitioner interview took to complete also varied from forty minutes to two hours. However, on average the length of practitioner interviews usually lasted around one hour. One of the problems encountered during the interview process with practitioners was that some of them would spend more time answering the questions at the beginning of the interview schedule and, as a result, would have to rush their responses to the questions at the end of the interview schedule. This was a difficult problem to overcome, as I did not want to rush participants’ responses in any way. I

162 did, however, explain to practitioners at the beginning of the interview how long the interview would be likely to last so they could ensure they answered the questions in the time they had available to them. Overall, practitioners were very generous with the amount of time they dedicated to answering the interview questions.

4.10 Ethical considerations when undertaking the