How to apply

Start by finding a suitable vacancy.

You’ll need your National Insurance number to apply. The application is very quick and should only take you about 10 minutes.

You’ll be asked some eligibility questions, such as nationality and your right to work in the UK, then you will need to enter some personal details. You’ll then be ready to submit your application.

Tell us if you have a disability when you apply and we can offer reasonable adjustments to help with the online test and assessment centre. Find out about reasonable adjustments.

We’ll invite you to complete an online test that uses realistic scenarios to see if you have the basic judgement and numerical skills expected of a youth justice worker.

The test will ask you how you’d deal with situations you might face working in a prison, including judging the effectiveness of different actions and solving basic numeracy and counting tasks.

Practise for the online tests:

Behavioural scenario questions (opens in a new tab)

Numerical scenario questions (opens in a new tab)

If you successfully complete the online test, we’ll invite you to the online assessment centre to complete the final stage of selection.

The online assessment centre takes about 2 hours 30 minutes and you’ll need a laptop with a webcam to take part.

Our friendly assessors will meet you and test you to see if you have the abilities, behaviours and strengths to be a youth justice worker.

There will be 4 parts: an interview, 2 role plays and a written test. You can read about these on the application information centre (opens in a new tab).

In one of the role plays, you’ll take on the role of a youth justice worker who’s interacting with a young person in custody. It’s designed to closely replicate the kind of interactions you may have in your role as a youth custody worker.

When you apply to be a youth justice worker, you’ll be able to choose if you want to be assessed for a prison support (OSG) role at the same time. Read about this Aspire programme (opens in a new tab).

You’ll get your online assessment centre results within 3 working days.

If you pass, the next steps depend on if you applied to a ‘pass’ or a ‘merit’ vacancy (this will be stated in the job description). See the pre-employment checks section below for more information.

We’ll only carry out pre-employment checks once there is a youth justice worker position available for you. Checks include security, identity, past employment and health checks.

The checks can take around 8 to 10 weeks.

If you applied for a ‘Pass’ vacancy: you’ll be allocated to the next available vacancy and we’ll start your pre-employment checks straight away. If there are no vacancies, you’ll go on a reserve list until a position becomes available. Your successful pass from the assessment centre will be valid for 12 months and you can use it to apply for vacancies at other prisons.

If you applied for a ‘Merit’ vacancy: you’ll be allocated to a vacancy in order of merit, based on the online assessment centre performance of all candidates. The young offender institution will then make job offers to the people who performed best at the assessment centre as vacancies become available. Your pre-employment checks will begin once you’re allocated to an available position. You can stay on the merit list for 12 months. After this, you’ll need to apply again.

If you get a provisional offer, you’ll be invited to book and attend a medical and fitness assessment at your nearest testing centre. You can claim back your travel expenses up to £100, for costs incurred on UK travel only.

First, you will have a medical assessment, carried out by a trained occupational health professional to check that you can safely take part in the fitness test. The assessment will involve an eye test, hearing test, and basic health screening (including blood pressure check).

Find out more about the medical assessment and fitness test on the application information centre (opens in a new tab).

If you pass your medical assessment, you’ll then be tested on endurance and strength. We test your endurance and agility using a bleep test with a shuttle run between 2 points, and we test your upper body strength to see if you can hold a 7kg riot shield and grip a piece of equipment.

Once you’ve received your provisional offer, and passed your pre-employment checks and fitness assessment, we’ll email you to invite you to a call with a member of our recruitment team to discuss starting as a youth justice worker and arranging your training dates.