CRIME DIVERSION: Splash Development
Tim Burke
Tuesday, June 3, 2003
The decrease in crime credited to last summer's Splash Extra diversionary schemes has got the Government excited. Tim Burke examines plans to extend the initiative
This is what led to the introduction in summer 2000 of Splash, a programme of arts, sport, adventure and activities designed to keep potentially distruptive young people out of trouble during the long holiday. The plan was put into action through the collaboration of Youth Offending Teams (YOT), youth services and the voluntary sector.
At a recent youth crime conference, Maggie Kelly, director of youth affairs at independent crime reduction charity Crime Concern, said: "Splash has been called 'a group of people with mutual loathing who come together in pursuit of funding'." Such an alliance was never going to be comfortable, but as Kelly points out, "it seems to work".
Making a splash
Despite initial skepticism, Youth Justice Board (YJB) figures show that in the first year of Splash there was an average drop of 36 per cent in domestic burglaries and an 18 per cent drop in overall youth crime in the areas where the programmes ran.
It's not that no-one before had realised the potential of good quality work for maintaining calm, but the responses of youth services to the summertime blues has been patchy. Many voluntary organisations have long run excellent summer programmes of activities, though their members may not have been the ones that caused most concern. Some youth and play services also have a history of running popular summer schemes. But equally, others have found it difficult to resource a full service over the summer, as evenings draw out and numbers attending clubs fall, staff want holidays and school premises get harder to access.
The point of Splash was to make all that effort a lot more focused. It was introduced as part of the Government's wider Street Crime initiative and was administered through the YJB. In summer 2000 it ran with funding of 1.5m from the Home Office in 100 of the highest crime neighbourhoods across England and Wales. In 2001, the scheme ran in 146 neighbourhoods, coinciding with an 11 per cent drop in car crime in Splash areas compared with a 39 per cent rise in comparable areas, a 25 per cent fall in drug offences and a 16 per cent cut in "juvenile nuisance".
A local policeman in Torbay said: "One hundred per cent of youth offending team referrals hadn't offended during the project and 100 per cent hadn't offended since."
The Government and others took notice. For 2002, the New Opportunities Fund came in to develop Splash Extra - extending the age range covered down to nine-years-old and targeting neighbourhood hotspots in the 10 Street Crime and Robbery Initiative regions, covering 37 YOT areas.
When launching Splash Extra at the Ensign Youth Club in Tower Hamlets, culture secretary Tessa Jowell pointed out: "This is not rocket science.
If you give young people something to do, somewhere to go, something to aspire to, they will spend less time on the street or on the sofa."
The Connexions Service, aware that results were not just about crime reduction but longer-term change and acceptance of education and training, got in on the act with Summer Plus. This ran in 34 local education authority areas covered by the Department for Education and Skills' Behaviour Improvement Programme. Key worker support was provided for targeted individuals, of whom some 70 per cent were able to return to or continue in education and training or employment.
A short-term view
So far, so good: minister for young people, Ivan Lewis, paid tribute to staff he said were "at the frontline of our collective failure of a society". But there was an undercurrent of frustration coming back from that frontline. These schemes exhibited some of the worst aspects of short-term funding: extremely short lead times left little time to plan. Other long-term work was disrupted as everything was dropped to get local schemes up and running. Voluntary groups suffered as money was slow in coming through, staff were hard to recruit and retain for eight-week periods and young people who had expectations raised were sometimes left high and dry. "The lack of continuing support for young people meant they reverted to their old ways," acknowledged a Connexions report this year.
The response of the Government was to institute a review led by the DfES, with input from other stakeholders. The result, announced on 30 January this year, was the Positive Activities for Young People (PAYP) programme, which pulls Splash, Splash Extra, Summer Plus and other Home Office community cohesion funding into a pot of money to provide activities at holiday time all year round.
PAYP is being rolled out through government offices for the regions that will deal with local lead delivery agents to deliver programmes combining diversionary effects with the key worker support of Summer Plus. At the same conference as Crime Concern's Kelly, Bernard Lane, head of youth crime reduction at the Home Office, said: "PAYP is designed to be a one-stop shop, with less bureacracy and less chasing of different funding streams, so agencies can focus on delivering programmes to young people."
Typically, lead agents are Connexions partnerships, one such being Connexions Cornwall and Devon. PAYP kicked off there during the Whitsun holidays with various projects.
Splashing out
Shaun Newman, director of delivery for the partnership, says: "We've established a steering group including youth offending teams, education welfare officers, the police, youth service and the voluntary sector and will be liaising with those groups."
In areas where there is a history of Splash or related projects, there is a clear steer in Government guidance to ensure that "existing good practice is mainstreamed into this programme".
This will please those such as Ian Groom, safer schools officer in Thanet, Kent, who has built up successful summer programmes since 1998, later incorporating Splash. "I welcome the move if it comes through Connexions," says Groom. "What does concern me is that heavy targeting will take out those not identified as at risk but who would really benefit. I've seen figures that Kent as a whole had to focus on 120 young people: that's less than we worked with in Thanet alone."
Government guidance talks about "local flexibility", but emphasises "clear and robust" targeting.
Back in the Southwest, Newman is delighted to be running a programme so central to the Connexions mission. "Our cohort group will be able to include the peers and siblings of those who are referred," he says. "We've been given targets of 250 places, which means we could be working with up to 700 young people over the summer."
Cornwall and Devon has a budget of 300,000 for the programme this year, about one-third of which is for key worker support, the rest for the activities programme. "The most important outcome is structured learning," continues Newman. "And key worker support. That person will offer dedicated support between the holidays."
FACTS AND FIGURES
- Last year there were about 370 Splash and Splash Extra programmes, working with 90,000 young people. Funding for these was 8.8m
- Positive Activities for Young People started in May. It will run throughout the year and incorporates Splash Extra, Connexions Summer Plus and community cohesion cash from the Home Office. Total funding for the first year is understood to be 25m. Former minister for young people John Denham said in February that "we are planning on each region having an increase (in budget) compared with last year"
- The core age range for the scheme will be eight to 19, with a weighting towards 13 to 17-year-olds
- Key targets are that 80 per cent of those with a key worker remain engaged throughout the year and 65 per cent make progress in learning measured by improved attendance, improved SAT or GCSE achievement, engagement in post-16 learning or involvement in out-of-school activity or volunteering
CASE STUDY - BURNLEY YOUTH THEATRE
Lisa O'Neill, of Burnley Youth Theatre, is an example of a frontline worker who is ambivalent about targeted schemes such as Splash. Last year, the Burnley summer programme was known as Shout and was supplemented by community cohesion money, in the wake of rioting between racial groups in the town. The theatre was one of a number of agencies involved in running a wide range of arts activities as well as supporting an anti-racism conference and other events to bring young people together from across community divides.
She has concerns about the operation of schemes that appear to be quick fixes and is also dubious about how possible it is to separate out young people as being at risk. "I don't think we should have had all that money at once," she explains. "It should have been invested in core funding for agencies on the ground. We have to spend so much time raising money and it's not like they haven't seen what we do: I've had Home Office people out with us until midnight." The Positive Activities for Young People programme aims to address some of the concerns of people like O'Neill, but after the riches available last year, what's on the table now is looking rather thin. "We're doing projects with youth offending teams, but the information is coming down rather slowly," she says. "It seems a bit sketchy. Will PAYP work?
You'd better call me back in a year." "I don't think we should have had all that money at once. It should have been invested in core funding for agencies"