United Kingdom: Youth Endowment Fund

Deadline: 25-Nov-22

The Youth Endowment Fund is now open for applications to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence.

Scope

• The focus of this round is on supporting children and young people who have been or are at high-risk of being affected by violence, offending and/or exploitation (often referred to as ‘tertiary level prevention’).
• Specifically, specifically children and young people who are:
  • Primarily aged 10 to 18 years old.
• And have one or more of the following key characteristics or unmet needs:
  • Affiliation with groups (often referred to as gangs) involved in crime, violence and trafficking.
  • Affected by serious violence, criminal or sexual exploitation (as perpetrators and/or victims).
  • Part of families with history of harmful or challenging behaviour and repetitive cycles of abuse, trauma and neglect.
• And are:
  • In contact with services that target youth offending and/or affiliation with groups involved in violence and/or child criminal or sexual exploitation.
  • Have been in custody or known to the police and multi-agency safeguarding teams.

Funding Information

• To support this, they’re launching a £500,000 research round.
• They are looking to fund 2-5 projects.
• They expect most projects to be delivered over 12-18 months from initial commissioning.

What research methods and approaches will they fund?

• The types of methodologies they’d expect to see include:
  • Descriptive analysis – particular interest in cohorts or issues which haven’t been explored before, a key example would be issues of racial or other disproportionalities.
  • Relationship testing – for example simple linear regressions or multi-level modelling that look to test for the existence of relationships to offending outcomes.
  • Impact -Quasi-experimental methods that exploit variations in policy or practice to establish casual relationships with offending and other violence related outcomes.

What questions are they looking to address?

• In this call they’re asking for research proposals that fit with the themes of the YEF’s first three fundings rounds:
• Diversion from the criminal justice system;
• A supportive home; and,
• A safe, positive place to learn.

What you will fund?

• They’re looking to fund and evaluate projects that assign children or young people either an adult mentor or a key or case worker to act as a trusted adult.
• That means we’ll invest in:
  • Mentoring projects (tertiary level) – this involves children or young people being assigned an adult mentor.
  • Key and case worker projects (tertiary level) – this involves children or young people being assigned a keyworker or caseworker.

Evidence Gaps

• Some of the important evidence gaps they’ve identified are:
  • Which children are diverted? How does this vary across locations, and what racial and other disproportionalities exist?
  • How are they diverted? How are decisions made for different types of diversion, and are the right young people diverted?
  • How do diversions affect future offending outcomes including frequency and severity? What is the impact of local variation in implementation of diversion and other policy reforms?

Eligible Activities

Activities may include:

• Building genuine trusted relationships that demonstrate care about the young person and their future.
• Setting goals, motivating young people and empowering them to solve problems.
• Providing information, advice and guidance to address practical issues such as housing, employment and debt.
• Signposting to and advocating for access to other services.
• Actively engaging in changing attitudes and thinking and developing skills for reflective thinking.
• Finding opportunities to engage in positive activities (e.g. sport, theatre, music).

Criteria

Projects must be delivered in either England and/or Wales.

For more information, visit https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/grants/a-trusted-adult/