National referral mechanism: Considering its relevance from youth to adult services

I joined the Youth Justice Service (YJS) working in an outer London borough over eight years ago, initially as a Seconded Probation Officer, then 3 years later, taking up a Youth Justice Officer (YJO) post. I had not heard of the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) at the beginning, but there was soon a push by our local authority to ensure that any and all cases of young people linked to ‘county lines’ activity were referred in. I admit that back then I hadn’t fully witnessed what it might mean for the young people, not until COVID hit and the backlog of Court cases began. This is when I began to observe the prevalence of Youth Court cases being discontinued due to charges being withdrawn, all following Conclusive Grounds decisions on the NRM. Mostly this related to cases of drug supply, but occasionally also weapons and robbery related allegations. This trend appeared to slow in recent years, and instead of withdrawn charges, the Conclusive Grounds NRM would be taken into account as mitigation by the Courts at sentencing hearings, after many months of adjournments awaiting the final NRM decision.

The Local Authorities in the NRM Pilot areas found improved awareness among practitioners, speedier decision-making, and overall enhanced multi-agency collaboration; all of which seemed much weaker in my experience of safeguarding young people in a non-Pilot region.

Over the years I have noticed inconsistencies around young people being referred into the NRM or not. There were cases where the Police arresting them or the Social Workers attempting to safeguard them had not made NRM referrals despite being the ‘first responders’ with a responsibility to do so. One of the very best aspects of working in the YJS is that we have access to the Children's Social Care (CSC) system, which provides us with information to current and historic contact the local authority has had with the child or their family members. Of course, it is limited to whatever the allocated Social Worker at the time records, which may lead to gaps in the chronology. Yet, there is often a clear trail of recording when a child under the age of 18 is in contact with the Police for any reason, and this provides a reliable timeline of points when an NRM referral could have and should have been made. There have been times when the YJO will be the first professional to make that referral, despite the concerns around exploitation being clear in the records for several years preceding that point. The lack of awareness among Social Workers is often highlighted when they ask what NRM means during multi-agency meetings about young people who are frequently going missing and being linked to various criminal acts. There is a clear need for wider training and awareness-raising among CSC staff, particularly when safeguarding and support is the core of their role.

Furthermore, while we may all acknowledge that multi-agency collaboration is only effective if information is properly gathered, clearly recorded, and appropriately shared, there are so many barriers to this within and between most organisations. I recall in my early days as a Seconded Probation Officer realising that when I had previously made requests to Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs (MASH) relating to my former adult cases, I would receive just a fraction of the information which was held on CSC systems, and the limited information I would get back would be of very little value in trying to understand the person before me and their journey through life from their early years, through adolescence and into adulthood. There is a misconception that individuals are able to maintain a clear recollection of their own significant life events, which usually only applies to those who have led unfragmented lives, not those who most commonly will find themselves in the criminal justice service due to their fractured families and chaotic childhood experiences. This then necessitates proper collaboration by services, being able to know what really does need to be shared and what may be important for other agencies to be made aware of in the pursuit of safeguarding, risk managing, and supporting these often exceptionally vulnerable young people and their younger family members. All too often, each agency will gate-keep information, crucial knowledge, which, if shared much earlier might assist in the safeguarding efforts of young people and the risk management of adult's exploiting them. This might then help young people to trust in the safeguarding systems and believe that a safer and more stable life might be possible for them.

In my time with the YJS, I have personal knowledge of only one young person who accepted that he was a victim of exploitation and openly worked with the Modern Slavery Expert in providing as much detail as possible of his experiences, many of them violent which he had normalised. Most other young people dismiss the idea they are a victim of anything, let alone of being groomed and exploited into criminal activity. When asked at the transition point to adulthood whether they would consent to the NRM continuing after they turn 18, almost all of them will say no, because they see no true benefit to them and view it as irrelevant to them unless it will have some bearing on their court cases. The availability of support from services such as Barnardo's rarely registers upon young people, who may view this as ‘just another professional’ they prefer not to engage with. In my experience, the benefits of the NRM process are mainly felt by the professionals and relate to support letters to help a vulnerable family move area or to focus the attention of Judges when considering the young person before them.

Most of the cases I have been involved in are of young males involved in county lines and related Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE), those often groomed and exploited by groups outside of their homes and families. In recent years there has been an increasing trend of exploitation within specific demographics, originating within the family and immediate community. In 2025, our team had four young people from the Roma community who were all at one time or another using the same ‘home’ address, which a search on Court systems found that upwards of 20 individuals (both adult and young persons) had also used for Court purposes. Most notably, a high proportion of these young people were unaccompanied minors, or if they were accompanied by a parent, they had a pattern of moving between several local authorities to evade the safeguarding measures being taken. This brings additional challenges to safeguarding and supporting vulnerable children, not only moving between areas, but also when the children are then taken abroad either to the home Country or to other unknown locations where the exploitation continues out of sight. In such cases, we are often limited to making checks with UK Borders Agency and alerting Embassies of their countries of origin; knowing that within months they may return to the UK but begin again in another area where they are not already known. In these cases, it is almost impossible to track these vulnerable young people. Collaboration of information with local agencies can help, but institutional barriers can also be immovable, and it is exceptionally difficult to ask a young person in these circumstances to trade in the life and community they were born into for a local authority care placement in a country they would never consider their permanent home. In such cases, a Conclusive Grounds NRM will be of no benefit at all to the young person or to the wider services around them.

Other somewhat hidden exploitation concerns sexual grooming, whether applying to females or males. One such case came to light only after the young person's activity of uploading and downloading indecent images triggered the authorities. It was not until much later when forensic investigation of his devices took place that his own contact with an adult sexual predator online became known, resulting in a powerful online dynamic with a male who incited him into committing contact sexual offences. The NRM in this case was undertaken again by the YJO but was over two years after the sexual exploitation had taken place. This highlights another issue in detecting exploitation of this nature, which may only come to light if other offences are detected first; in this case the young person's harmful sexual behaviour had to escalate before his own exploitation online could be discovered. This illustrates that the juncture between being recognised as a victim requiring safeguarding and becoming a perpetrator of criminal acts oneself is difficult to navigate due to the nature of the offending actions – be they sexual contact, sexual non-contact, acquisitive violence, drug couriering, carrying weapons, or territorial violence.

Perhaps one of the biggest barriers to the efficacy of the NRM lies within the individuals concerned themselves. We operate from the premise that victims of exploitation will want to be identified as such and will welcome the safeguarding and support which is offered. This may be the case years into their future, but in the context of many of the young people we see in the YJS making the choice again and again to return to those who place them in harm's way, they are not yet at the point of recognising themselves as victims of exploitation and modern slavery. They often place too much value on the short-term sense of belonging within the criminal network, on the mistaken belief that they are acting autonomously, and on the meagre benefits by way of drugs or money or a very basic roof over their heads in a trap house, as being a better way of life than living in a neglectful family unit or similarly neglectful care home.

So many of the young people we work with will be in the Care system or at least will have been known to CSC on a Child in Need or Child Protection Plan. Those who are unable to desist while they are within YJS will progress to adult Probation services which bring more challenges. I recall in my Probation days thinking that so many of the adults who exist in isolated and lonely lives might thrive if they were offered adult foster placements or a semi-independent communal living space where professional support would be on hand as well as a community of other people who are facing similar obstacles. In the YJS, I have observed adolescents needing these same things but rejecting them so frequently by their challenging behaviours. It then becomes nigh on impossible to find stable residential placements, leading to a series of short-term accommodations, inconsistent interventions, and fewer positive relationships to help build and sustain positive change. This reflects the way an adolescent tends to view the NRM and how little it means to them; versus how an older, more mature adult in probation might view it retrospectively: as an opportunity that was not taken advantage of at the time, and by the time you might be ready for it, it is no longer available to you. Sadly, many of the adolescents known to our service are unable to discern any difference between the NRM and any other safeguarding plan they are already subject to. Often the response to being told they have a conclusive grounds result is only meaningful if it removes personal responsibility for offences they have been charged with.

So many of the adults in probation will have experienced turmoil and upheaval in their early lives, often more than they have the ability to remember themselves, let alone recount in a meaningful way to professionals. This means that collaboration between agencies is crucial to being a more trauma-led service focusing on helping individuals to understand themselves and find value and purpose through positive connection with others. This is, in my view, the only way to work in people-related roles. We cannot ever hope to make any difference if we are not able to form bonds with, build some sort of relationship, and give that person a sense of themselves in a way which may not be reflected back to them in any other part of their life. Youth Justice Officers are Probation Officers for those under 18, but the nature of the roles is the same, it is empathic and relational at its core.

We can help the people we are working with feel that they matter by learning about them and helping them piece their own lives together. We can do this by utilising the leaving care worker if they still have one, trying to locate the original home local authority; asking their former CSC for past Child and Family Assessments or a Chronology which should be available for those who were former looked after children or on full care orders. The Chronology is a document which provides key information through their time in Care and can assist you to understand key aspects of their journey. We may need to tread carefully with the information received, not everything in a person's CSC records will be things they know about, and how sensitively we approach this realm of the known and unknown life story is crucial. We can empower the person to be courageous in seeking their own answers, and to work through some of the trauma they have been carrying for years. We will also at times need to take enforcement steps and issue reprimands to provide them with fair and firm boundaries which they may have lacked earlier in life. The YJS way of writing warnings is individually tailored to the person, written to be considered therapeutically aware, by highlighting positives of behaviour alongside the infraction which is the cause of the warning letter. This is something the Probation Service could return to.

What I have learned through both my Probation and Youth Justice roles is, we cannot base our perceptions of success or failure in whether or not the people we work with re-offend or desist, whether or not an NRM referral was made, or if the person views themselves as a victim of exploitation or master of their own life. None of these things is within our control, and sometimes not even in the control of the individuals themselves. What we can do is make those individuals – whether they are children in the YJS or adults in the Probation Service – feel like they matter, that we will take the time to know them, to treat them as human beings despite their actions which may cause untold harm to others or to themselves. We can demonstrate that we see beyond their negative behaviours, so that eventually they might be able to find their way to a stable and less harmful way of life by understanding themselves better.