Motivation and Sense

The Quality and Good Practices Subcommittee, in the youth justice field, is an initiative of ADIS Meridianos Association (non-profit organization) which, together with the Regional Justice Ministry and the Civil Service, tries to draw together the representatives of the civil services, university,  civil organizations and professionals from all Europe who wish to improve and unify working criterion in the sector of services and programs destined to minor offenders.   In this first meeting we would like to put forward the legal regulations from the different countries and communities represented, and obtain a common basis of regulations under the protection of the Beijing Rules (1985) and the appropriate European Directives.

Additionally to the study of the rules, we will put forward the quality criterion which are successful in each of the represented countries, using the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Model) quality model, which will be used as an example of self-assessment and evaluation of the results. The advantage of the EFQM is that it allows the comparison between the different systems of intervention with minors.

Finally, and clearly defending the specialization and accuracy in the intervention, we will have a theoretical meeting about the necessity of the professionals to have a previous training to face working with minors, and will tackle the professional development model of competence management, which has shown itself to be the most suitable method to increase the quality of the work to carry out with minors and, at the same time, motivate the competence regarding knowledge, skills and attitudes of the professionals who devote to them.

We believe necessary to develop and to present to the involved sectors an unanimous declaration of the Quality and Good Practices Subcommittee which mean a support to the common progress of the sector, the professionals and, specially, the minors and societies and communities they live in.