This page provides information and guidance for professionals working across Ayrshire.
Practice Guides
Understanding childhood adversity, resilience and crime – this paper sets out a summary of the evidence on the links between childhood adversity and victimisation and criminality in adulthood.
Trauma informed practice is key to the community justice approach. This trauma-informed practice toolkit has been developed as part of the National Trauma Training Programme, to support all sectors of the workforce, in planning and developing trauma informed services.
A new approach to equip justice agencies with the skills and knowledge needed to reduce the re-traumatisation of victims and witnesses of crime has been developed. It underpins a key aim of the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, to embed trauma informed practice across the justice system.
Resources
Community Justice Scotland have created a range of national community justice resources which can be found on their website.
Explore the Scottish Justice System through their interactive map.
Scottish Sentencing Council website hosts information about sentencing across the justice system. They have produced a number of short videos which help explain how judges decide sentences in criminal court cases, and what sentences can be given in Scotland.
The list of justice terms, acronyms and abbreviations document explains a number of key terms used in Court and during legal proceedings as well as acronyms and abbreviations people may refer to. There is also information about the range of community sentences a person can receive.
Community Justice Scotland Framing Toolkit is available to support people and organisations to shape how they speak, write and communicate about community justice in ways that have the potential to increase public awareness and confidence in it as a sentencing option.
The Community Interventions and Support Directory provides information about the range of community support services available in Scotland. It includes details on sentencing measures such as Community Payback Orders, Drug Treatment and Testing Orders, Structured Deferred Sentence, Bail Supervision, Third Sector Programmes and other relevant statutory services and interventions.
Learning & Development
The ‘Second Chancers’ campaign from Community Justice Scotland offers an insight into lived experience of the justice system in Scotland.
The Community Justice Scotland Learning Hub is a library of information aimed at colleagues across the justice sector, and beyond, to develop understanding – and support the delivery of projects both nationally and locally. It contains resources split into categories to explore and learn about the different aspects of community justice. It contains information from communications guidance on how to talk about community justice to training materials, images, restorative justice guides and the latest stats and facts. Community Justice Scotland’s national training is also included.
Community Justice Scotland have devised a new Restorative Justice Learning Module. It has been designed for frontline, operational staff but can be completed by anyone who wishes to understand more about Restorative Justice and can be accessed on their website.