Job Advert: Youth Justice Officer

City of Sheffield – Children, Young People and Families

Location: Hybrid (office, home, and community-based)
Hours: Flexible working, including evenings and weekends as part of a rota (8am–8pm, Monday to Saturday)

Are you passionate about supporting children to achieve their potential? Do you want to champion strengths-based and trauma-informed approaches that make a real difference for children and families in Sheffield?

Sheffield City Council’s Children and Families Service is seeking a Youth Justice Officer who is committed to child-centred practice, partnership working, and continuous learning.

What You’ll Do

Champion Trauma-Informed and Restorative Practice: Build trusting relationships with children and families, recognising the impact of trauma and adversity, and supporting positive change through restorative approaches.

Assess, Plan and Co-Produce Support: Complete high-quality assessments and work collaboratively with children, families and partner agencies to develop, implement and review plans that reflect each child’s strengths, needs, aspirations, risks, protective factors and responsibilities.
Represent the Service in Court: Represent the Youth Justice Service in the criminal courts to support children and their parents/carers to understand legal processes and facilitate communication with court officials. This will also include preparing written reports to assist the court with sentencing, revocation and breach hearings.

Promote Inclusion and Address Disproportionality: Actively address issues of disproportionality and support children with SEND, ensuring equality, diversity, and inclusion are at the heart of your work.
Multi-Agency Partnership: Work closely with a wide range of professionals and agencies to ensure children have access to the right support at the right time, and that risk, safety, and wellbeing are managed effectively.
Promote Victim and Community Safety: Assess and respond to factors linked to offending behaviour, ensuring that interventions address risk, support the safety and needs of victims, and contribute to keeping communities safe.
Reflective Practice and Professional Growth: Engage in regular supervision, reflective practice, and continuous professional development to maintain high standards of practice and improve outcomes for children, victims, and communities.

What We’re Looking For

A relevant professional qualification (e.g., Social Work, Youth Justice, Probation).
Experience working with children and families in a professional setting, with a commitment to trauma-informed, strengths-based, and restorative practice.
Experience of undertaking assessments, analysing information, and developing effective plans to support positive outcomes, manage risk, and promote safety.
Strong understanding of the criminal justice system, child development, safeguarding, victim awareness, and effective interventions to reduce offending and keep communities safe.
Excellent communication, relationship-building, and organisational skills.
A positive, solution-focused attitude and a genuine commitment to empowering children while promoting the safety of victims and communities.
Flexibility to work evenings and weekends as part of a rota.

Why Join Us?

Be part of a supportive, reflective, and passionate team dedicated to making a real difference for children in Sheffield.
Access ongoing training, development, and opportunities to grow your career.
Benefit from flexible, hybrid working arrangements.
Experience the reward of seeing children achieve their goals and contribute positively to their communities.

Sheffield City Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

We are investing in our workforce and are promoting opportunities to our under-represented groups. We value equality, diversity and inclusion and are focused on increasing the diversity of our workforce, particularly the number of Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic, Disabled and LGBTQ+ people, so that our teams reflect the communities in the city we serve. We are also supporting staff with unpaid caring responsibilities to work flexibly.

It is a great time to join us and we welcome your application.

Under the Guaranteed Interview scheme, applicants who are disabled, care leavers, or armed forces veterans will be guaranteed an interview if they meet the essential criteria and indicate their eligibility on the application form. Sometimes, if lots of people apply, we might not be able to interview everyone who qualifies for the Guarantee. In these cases, we’ll interview the candidates who best meet the essential criteria for the job.

Full-time employees work 37 hours for 52 weeks of the year and we offer a generous holiday entitlement. We are open to discussions about a wide range of flexible working opportunities which benefit you and the Council, including reduced hour contracts, working part time or as a job share.

If you are appointed to this role, your starting salary will be at the bottom of the grade. If you provide payslip evidence that your basic pay is greater than the bottom of the grade, we will consider starting you at the point of minimum advantage within the grade.

Equality of pay is extremely important to us. All roles at Sheffield City Council are going through an evaluation process which may result in changes to some pay arrangements from 2026. Find out more on our Sheff news page.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all individuals, ensuring a safe and supportive environment for everyone and where appropriate to the role the successful applicant will be required to undertake relevant safeguarding checks.