Biography – Sarah Griffin

Biography

Sarah started working with Bradford Children’s Services in 1998 as a detached youth worker and subsequently qualified as a social worker in 2003. Following this, Sarah held various roles within Children in Care, Child and Family, Early Help, and most notably, over 16 years in Youth Justice. 

Her YJS career has spanned across a range of teams from case managing, court officer, report author, practice supervisor for social work students, to team manager for Custody and ISS. This provided Sarah with a good insight into the requirements of the service, influencing her decision to take on the role of Service Manager in 2019, and more recently in 2025, becoming the Strategic Lead.  

Locally, Sarah represents the West Yorkshire YJSs at the regional MAPPA Strategic Board and is AIM 3 trained with an interest in the practice areas of harmful sexual behaviour and serious youth violence. Sarah has taken up several opportunities within the sector, which she feels have enhanced her practice and enabled greater links within the service nationally, such as peer review training, Coaching, ILM 5, and ILM 7 YOT managers courses.

Sarah prides herself on relational-based and partnership practice with strong values in seeing children as children, prevention / early help, reducing children in custody, the potential for change, fairness, and transparency.  Ultimately, Sarah would like to see the age of criminal responsibility increased in line with other European countries.