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Although leaving statutory out-of-home care can be a challenging time for many young people, it is recognised that young people who have multiple or complex needs find this transition particularly difficult. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by care leavers who have complex needs, as well as to identify some of the best strategies for assisting this population to engage with services and make the transition successfully. Semi-structured individual interviews and focus groups (n = 29) were conducted with 66 individuals who were working in organisations (both government and non-government) that have knowledge of, or contact with, young people leaving care in South Australia. Responses were analysed thematically in relation to the principal challenges and needs of care leavers and the best strategies for encouraging service engagement. The principal challenges related to difficulties in matching the structure of formal services to a population with highly unstructured living arrangements, a history of problematic engagement with the care system and difficulties in social interactions. A set of suggestions for improving service engagement was developed. This included the need for flexible and persistent services, creative, indirect and person-centred approaches to engagement that emphasised the importance of building peer and adult relationships, and developing adaptive life-skills.

Adolescent relational violence has significant and pervasive impacts for young people's current and future relationships. It is known that there is a cross‐over between adolescent family violence and other offending behaviour, meaning there is a need for youth justice systems to recognise and respond to these forms of violence. This paper outlines a pilot intervention, the KIND Program, run in Youth Justice South Australia, and aimed at intervening with adolescent family and dating violence. KIND aims to provide tailored systemic intervention to young people and their support network, reducing violence while increasing connection and strength within relationships. The pilot of KIND ran for seven months in 2017, and had eight families participating in the program. Participation in, feedback from, and impact of the program suggest that participation was worthwhile and useful for young people and their families. The KIND Program would benefit from a more extensive pilot period to explore the outcomes of this form of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This systematic review synthesized current knowledge about the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) among young people known to have offended and examined evidence of associations between ACEs, trauma symptoms, and offending behavior. A systematic search of English-language, peer-reviewed studies published from the year 2000 onwards was conducted. A final pool of 124 studies that reported quantitative data were included in the review. The Cambridge Quality Checklist for the assessment of studies on offending was used to assess methodological quality of included studies. Pooled data indicated that almost 87% of justice-involved young people across 13 countries experienced at least one traumatic event. The odds of experiencing at least one ACE were over 12 times greater for justice-involved young people compared with nonjustice-involved young people. Prevalence of individual ACEs ranged from 12.2% for childhood sexual abuse to 80.4% for parental separation among justice-involved young people. Those who reported both a higher number and multiple types of ACEs were more likely to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress symptoms. However, when considering only high-quality studies, there was minimal evidence to suggest that a higher incidence of ACEs predicted trauma symptoms or that trauma symptoms mediated the association between ACEs and offending behavior. Further research is needed to elucidate factors that differentiate young people exposed to ACEs who go on to offend from those who do not. This research is essential to understanding whether ACEs and trauma are drivers of offending behavior and for informing prevention and intervention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]