n July, the first tranche of organisations to receive grants through the fund were announced, with 130 charities, social enterprises, youth groups and local authorities sharing £6.5m to tackle problems linked to violence during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Earlier this month, the YEF launched a call for people and organisations to contribute views on what the fund’s priorities should be for the three-year period 2021-23.
The charity says it wants to hear from anyone involved in keeping children and young people safe from involvement in violence, including individuals working in the community and youth charities, councils, school leaders, community police teams and health professionals.
The first step is to fill in a brief form on the YEF website.
The YEF will also be talking to children and young people who have experience of being involved in violence. Their views will also help the charity understand how they can make the most difference in the next three years.
Ten-year strategy
The call is accompanied by the publication of the YEF’s 10-year strategy, where it sets out its approach. This includes identifying one or more priority themes for grant rounds such as tackling exploitation, school exclusion or detached youth work. Themes will be chosen on the basis of “where change is possible, where we can learn about what works and build a coalition with those who want to do things”, the strategy states.
It wants its work to be rooted in communities and has created a “neighbourhood fund” to improve understanding about the specific needs of local areas and test out different interventions and approaches.
Innovation beyond priorities
The fund also wants to invest in projects that are innovative but don’t fit into the priority themes. All themes and projects will be rigorously evaluated. The strategy states: “The aim is to find out what works, for whom and why. We will work closely with our grantees and evaluators to design robust and proportionate evaluations. None of this will matter though if the results are hard to understand. Everything we learn will be easily available. We’ll explain what we’ve found in plain English.”
The strategy also makes clear that it wants to support projects and approaches that cut across a range of sectors – education, youth work, social care, justice and mental health – because a barrier to tackling youth violence is the lack of join up across the system. “We’ll work hard to build these networks and connections, so that we don’t just produce reports that sit on a shelf,” it states.
Jon Yates, executive director of the YEF, said: “The fund’s 10-year strategy is an ambitious long-term plan to use evidence, expertise and young people’s voices to make children’s lives safer.
“When children become involved in violence it’s devastating to them, their families and their communities. Preventing violence is complex. There isn’t a simple solution. But together we have a once in a generation opportunity to find what works best and make change happen to keep our children safe.”
The YEF is a charitable trust overseen by the Early Intervention Foundation, Social Investment Business and Impetus, a charity that works with disadvantaged young people.
More from: https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/
Funding roundup
- The National Lottery Community Fund’s HeadStart programme has received a further £8.7m to continue to support the mental health and wellbeing of young people until July 2022. HeadStart is a £67.4m programme set up by the lottery to explore new ways to improve the mental health and wellbeing of 10- to 16-year-olds. The six local authority-led HeadStart partnerships – Blackpool, Hull, Kent, Kernow, Newham and Wolverhampton – have received a share of £8.7m and will continue to deliver their existing work, but with a revised focus on supporting marginalised young people to access the help they need as they respond to the increased demand.
- Uptown Youth Services in Colliers Wood has received a donation of £5,000 from charity Little Lives UK. Uptown organises weekly activities and learning support for young people that have challenging backgrounds and struggle with learning difficulties. Uptown Youth Services has been a charity for three years but have been operating in Merton for more than 20, helping supply mentoring to young people in the south London borough.
- Schools and colleges can bid for a share of £440,000 through the Edtech programme to deliver remote teaching and meet the needs of students facing a variety of disadvantages, from socioeconomic to special educational needs and disabilities. The programme is being run by innovation foundation Nesta in partnership with the Department for Education. Each of the seven successful bids will be working with 10 partner schools and colleges, with learning shared across the sector in late 2021.
