A ground-breaking intervention programme in the North East has now helped hundreds of young offenders and families, one year on from its launch. Tom Burgess visited the team at Cleveland Police Station to hear about their progress.

The custody navigator programme, run by the Cleveland Unit for the Reduction of Violence (CURV) through the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, has been hailed a great success after launching last year.

The scheme helps offenders under the age of 24 when they are at their most vulnerable entering the custody suite.

In the last year, the team has made 724 interventions within custody and worked with just over 200 first-time offenders.

Remarkably, after those sessions, there has only been a six per cent reoffending rate.

Through their work with young offenders, they gain a better understanding of the issues on a street level in Cleveland.

Will Swinburne, who has been a custody navigator for the last year, described the service as "not just a plaster" because they want to do more than be a short-term fix.

He said: "We want to build the foundations for people so they don't get back in the same patterns.

"We want people to be able to fight for themselves.

"I worked in youth services before becoming a navigator so I had an idea of the scale of the challenge.

"But it is shocking the number of young people coming through custody and the offences they are coming in for.

"There's a lot of knives, a lot of firearms. A lot of like arsons to endanger your life trying to burn each of these houses down, shooting through doors, shooting through windows, and this is young people.

"It's not just a problem that we have. No, but at least we have this. At least we have this for the young people that coming through, nowhere else has this."

Will highlighted that often the parents get blamed for young people committing offences.

He explained that in all his 20 years working with young people he had never met a parent who didn't want to help.

He said: "People think "Oh, blame the parents".

"They say that the parents are this and that but they're not.

"We have yet to come across the parent that doesn't want to help. 

"We're up against it from the start against these organised criminal groups.

"The stories we hear every day would amaze you but it is just normal now.

"It shouldn't be, but it is. 

"We can educate as many people as we can and work with families to make things better for them. That makes a difference."

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Here is a summary of the services the custody navigators offer: 

- All young people seen by the custody navigators receive a 24-hour follow-up call and home visit within 5 working days.

- On average the custody navigators, complete around 8-10 community-based sessions and attend multi-agency meetings, where appropriate, dependant on individual circumstances for the young people they come into contact with.

- In the last year they have worked with 126 young people who were not previously open to another service.

- The custody navigators also attended a variety of multi-agency meetings in relation to young people already known to services, in the last year this has equated to approximately 250 meetings.