Agenda item

The Chair invited John Yates, Executive Director and Gail Gibbons, Head of Change at the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) to discuss the work of the Fund and to share how councils can make use of their research. Jon Yates explained that the YEF is a charity, independent of Government but established with a £200 million endowment from the Home Office to discover what works to reduce violence and then put this into practice, which is also known as a ‘What Works Centre.’

Members comments:

·       A member highlighted that in their area, children were sent to diversionary panels rather than court to avoid young people getting a criminal record.

·       It was highlighted that schools have the knowledge to identify vulnerable students, and there needs to be a method to easily refer these students to receive preventative support.

·       A member requested clarity on the data, for instance, how many therapy sessions had a positive effect on a young person’s behaviour.

·       It was raised that a collective approach is needed to communicate this data, such as work with the County Council Network (CCN) and the District Council Network (DCN) to ensure this evidence focused approach is taken.

·       A member described a scheme they had been running with the police which involved football, food, and discussions with police officers for young people involved in low level crimes, which has seen a positive impact on reducing their involvement in crime thus far.

·       There was a request for any data that evidenced the effectiveness of early help/ prevention.

·       A member commented that the data presented is a useful corrective for biases that had developed which create misconceptions about which factors help to reduce youth violence, for instance, there is no evidence that police in schools has an effect on reducing youth violence.

·       A concern was raised regarding whether the effect of contextual factors that cannot be controlled across different case studies had been considered, for instance, the strength of services around young people.

·       It was raised if there is scope to work with the Safer and Stronger Communities Board on some of this work.

·       A member requested thoughts on how to make young people feel safe enough to share information on offenders and what is going on in their communities.

·       It was raised whether the effect of speech and language difficulties has been considered. 

Jon Yates responded to comments:

·       The YEF has begun a stream of work on education, to understand what are the small changes in schools which could make a difference.

·       There is a need for greater clarity on who should be responsible for vulnerable children, as often vulnerable children are identified, but no one is accountable to make sure they are ‘looked after.’

·       The positive evaluations of the effectiveness of therapy tends to be six meetings plus, generally of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Access to therapy is a problem.

·       The data shows only high-quality trials, where there is a control group.

·       Jon Yates raised the importance of strengthening families and provision of loving supporting environments is essential, as there is a positive correlation between children being neglected/mistreated in their early years and involvement in violence later.

·       Data shows that early intervention should not be the only focus as many young people grow out of being violent.

·       Gail Gibbons added that the YEF fund projects focused on children at risk of involvement in violence through family work, parenting intervention and family focused therapy to address family support and early childhood trauma. There are also resources available on the toolkit.

·       Jon clarified that context matters and every summary on the toolkit describes what is needed for good implementation, more work on this is being done.

·       Mentoring has been found to be successful in allowing young people to feel safe enough to share information, particularly if the mentor is of a similar background to the young person.

·       Speech and language has been found to have correlations with involvement in violence, however there had not been a high quality review of the evidence of speech and language interventions, therefore YEF is hesitant to comment until the data demonstrates this.

Decision 

The Board considered the presentation by the Youth Endowment Fund and offered 

perspectives from their own authorities on the Fund’s current and future 

work. 

Actions  

·       Share slides.

·       Members to contact the YEF for any more information or speaking requests. hello@youthendowmentfund.org.uk. 

·       Officers to share the evidence the YEF shared around sports programmes would be useful for the LGA Culture, Tourism and Sport Board.

·       Officers to connect the YEF with the DCN and CCN.