As a parent of a nine-year-old autistic child who looks older, but in many respects behaves much younger than his years due to developmental delays, one of my biggest fears is that my son will one day get caught up in the youth justice system. Through my work as a child protection lawyer, I know all too well how easily this can happen, especially for children with additional needs. I began reading this book in the hope my fears would be allayed and that I would come away reassured that it’s not easy for a child to be labelled a criminal. Alas, that was not the case. It is seemingly too easy for children to be criminalised, and quite often for utterly ridiculous ‘offences’, prosecuted in order to boost governmental statistics rather than in the public interest.

The foreword hits the reader with the frightening but important reality that no child is immune from this. Thereafter follows a comprehensive and easily accessible tour of youth justice, through which Aika Stephenson exposes the many pitfalls of a broken system where the child’s voice is rarely heard and reasonable adjustments are frequently seen as an inconvenience, and often quite scandalously ignored. This is an important read for a broad spectrum of individuals including law students, parents and policymakers.

The catalyst for Aika’s journey into law, as she puts it, was visiting her father in prison as a child, which, she says, ‘changed the course of my life’. It is clear that this initial brush with criminal justice through the innocent eyes of her 10-year-old self sparked an inextinguishable determination to make a positive mark on an incredibly flawed system, not only on a human level (in terms of the emotionally intelligent representation she provides to her clients), but also by way of reform.

Reading about the personal experience that has motivated Aika’s work deeply resonated with me. We are like-minded in the sense that we have both experienced a problem first hand and have an unwavering determination to make things better. My work as a co-founder of FLANC (Family Law Advice for the Neurodivergent Community) aims to address barriers to participation in family proceedings for neurodivergent children and adults, and has been inspired entirely by what I have learnt about neurodivergence from parenting my son alongside the knowledge gaps and discriminatory practices that this has helped me to identify in my practice area.

There is much FLANC hopes to achieve by way of reform and it can feel like an overwhelming mountain to climb. However, reading about Aika’s success in helping to change the law in 2013, so that an appropriate adult must now be called for a 17-year-old in custody, was hugely inspiring and boosted my thirst to effect positive and meaningful change within family justice, reminding me that anything really is possible if you put your mind to it and work hard enough.

I drew many parallels between my experience as a child protection lawyer and Aika’s description of hers as a youth defence lawyer. One similarity that struck me is what I call the ‘painting by numbers approach’ that infiltrates criminal justice, family justice and the child protection systems, ie, it is easier to follow the same old formula rather than take a step back, think about the individual profile of a person and adjust your practice accordingly.

Never is this truer than when dealing with individuals who are neurodivergent, who are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system and, in my view, also in the family justice system. It is clear that Aika and I concur that this approach is fuelled by two systems that are underfunded, understaffed and with professionals who usually mean well but frequently lack the necessary training to understand the needs of these individuals or how and why to make reasonable adjustments. It is quite shocking to think that disability legislation is so frequently ignored in two areas of law where there are such high stakes.

It will take many more years of work within criminal justice for fairness to prevail; however, with Aika and other equally determined individuals leading the way, there is hope. While no parent, me included, ever wants their child caught up in the criminal justice system, I can honestly say that, having read Aika’s book and learned about the care and attention she gives to every one of her clients, if the worst did happen, any parent would want a lawyer like her on their child’s defence team.