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August 9, 2024
The UK’s Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) has granted £11 million to six youth sports, arts and outdoor activity initiatives across the country to test their effectiveness in preventing young people from getting involved in crime and violence. With this themed grant round, the Fund is looking to answer the question: Do positive activities lead to improved violent offending outcomes for children and young people (primarily aged 10-18) who are at risk of being affected by violence, offending and/or exploitation?
YEF was established in 2019 by children’s charity Impetus, with a £200 million endowment and ten-year mandate from the UK Home Office. The charity works to stop children and young people from becoming ensnared in violence by finding out which prevention measures work and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice. It aims to create lasting change by combining funding and evaluating promising programs with policy change advocacy so that children are better supported and violence reduces.
Its current research shows that the sports programs have higher and stronger success rates in reducing youth crime and violence as compared to arts and adventure and wilderness therapy programs. The free online YEF toolkit provides evidence of what works, highlighting sport’s ability to support positive development through building social skills, education, counseling, while reducing the time children are exposed to negative influences.
YEF launched its grant funding round in April 2023, calling for five to six projects to be funded and evaluated. Delivery began in February 2024 with selected projects from youth sports charity Dallaglio RugbyWorks, the National Literacy Trust and Street Games. Programs run by the Rugby Football League, youth employment support firm Ingeus and music charity AudioActive also received funding.
Dallaglio RugbyWorks received £1.93 million to support and evaluate a trial using rugby to engage young people excluded from education, offering activities designed to help them transition into sustained education employment or training after school. The trial will be conducted in Pupil Referral Units, Alternative Provision and mainstream schools with onsite exclusion provisions, focusing on how the program affects youth’s behavioral difficulties.
Rugby Football League is using over £1 million to test its “Inspiring Futures” program that combines universal and targeted sports-based interventions delivered by seven Rugby League clubs’ charitable foundations. Additionally, Street Games received £2.63 million to test its “Toward Sport” program. 50 youth organizations from the charity’s network will participate in a multi-site trial involving over 3,000 young people aged 10-17.
“The transformative power of sport in changing young people’s lives cannot be overstated. Young people in low-income, underserved communities face significant challenges, making them more vulnerable to youth crime,” said Street Games UK director of strategic business relationships, Stuart Felce.
Source: Children and Youth People Now
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