Position Paper 2023

Transdisciplinary Research for Youth Justice – Position Paper 2023 28 5. Developing the transdisciplinary research design The Problem Statement The responses to the story of Charlie - written in his own words - formed the first phase of the research process and helped form our problem statement: Children who offend have multiple and complex situations and circumstances that provide fertile conditions for them coming into conflict with the law. A comprehensive multi-disciplinary, multi-layered understanding of what can prevent offending is essential in order to foster positive outcomes for these children and (potentially) their families. This phase worked to identify and define the issue and the problem, from which the overarching research question and sub questions were formulated. The Research Questions How can a transdisciplinary approach help to map a comprehensive picture of contemporary understanding of what prevents children's offending? What can a transdisciplinary approach contribute to adopting child-first practices within and between systems offering support to prevent offending? What does Child First practice look like within-and-between systems offering support to children? Sub-questions • What additional insights can a transdisciplinary approach give above traditional disciplinary approaches? • How can a transdisciplinary approach to research be used to better inform youth justice/education policy making for children who offend, within a child first framework? • How can we develop a transdisciplinary framework or model of working across disciplines and sectors, with an effective integration of practice partners? The Research Design The research design provides an opportunity to devise a framework for transdisciplinary research which will be developed, tested and refined as a key contribution of this research. In order to retain the dynamic, interactive and complex nature of the range of issues in any one child’s journey into, through and out of the youth justice system as central to the problem statement, a case approach is proposed as a key part of the process. This ensures that a child first approach is fore fronted throughout the research design. It also means is accessible to non-academic users, for example, practitioners and policy makers.