Today, the Youth Endowment Fund
(YEF) has launched their new Toolkit, which shows what works -
and what doesn’t - to reduce youth violence. It is easy to
understand, free and online. The tool is there to help police
forces, local authorities, youth charities and school leaders and
others use the evidence to decide what support to provide to
children at risk of involvement in violence.
Founded in 2019 with a £200 million endowment from the Home
Office, the YEF is here to make sure every child gets to live a
life free from involvement in violence.
At the moment, finding out what really works is difficult.
Knowledge about how best to support children is:
-
Hard to access, hidden behind journal paywalls
or on complicated websites
-
Hard to understand, written in complicated
academic language without clear recommendations on what the
findings mean for the people who decide what to invest in.
That means it’s hard to make judgements about the right services
to invest in, so that children get the right support at the right
time and violence is reduced.
The YEF Toolkit will change that. It summarises
the available evidence and shows how effective different
approaches are at preventing violence.
This is the first version, which includes evidence about 13
different approaches. It’ll be updated every six months with new
topics and evidence that people working with children need.
To access the Youth Endowment Fund’s Toolkit, please
visit: www.youthendowmentfund.org.uk/toolkit
So what does the YEF Toolkit say?
The YEF Toolkit tells us how likely it is that an activity will
successfully prevent violence. One of the approaches that has
shown the most promise so far is focused
deterrence.
Developed in Boston in the mid-1990s, focused deterrence works
with the small number of people who are involved in the majority
of crimes or acts of violence in a community. The local
community, as well as teams from the police, social care, health
workers, youth workers and others offer them tailored support to
change the path they’re on, including things like help with
getting a job, drug treatment and building their skills. The
community and authorities clearly communicate that they want
violence to stop and those involved in violence to be safe, and
that further violence will have consequences. It makes the
consequences of violence clear, while offering a route out.
It’s been done successfully in the UK in Glasgow, when people
involved in violence were offered opportunities in exchange for a
“no violence, no weapon” pledge. Research suggested that violent
offending was reduced by half for young people who participated
in the intervention for two years.
Another promising approach is a talking therapy called
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). When it is
applied to youth violence prevention, it is based on the idea
that negative or impulsive thoughts and behaviours might make
someone more likely to lash out or act aggressively. These
thought patterns will often be related to trauma accumulated
through experience of violence and other distressing events. They
could include a tendency to misconstrue comments as disrespectful
or provocative, be hypervigilant and always ‘on guard’, or seek
revenge. The therapist might work with a child to better
understand other people’s behaviour and motivations and use
problem-solving skills to cope with difficult situations.
Social skills training can also support children
to develop self-control and positive relationships with their
peers. It helps children to think before they act, understand
other people’s perspectives, communicate effectively, and use
strategies for managing impulsiveness or aggression. Research
suggests supporting children to develop self-control can protect
them from becoming involved in crime and violence.
There are also approaches that the YEF Toolkit has found can be
actively harmful. Unlike therapies or programmes
that offer children support, activities that are solely focused
on deterrence and try to “shock” children into changing their
behaviour (like military-style bootcamps) can lead to
more reoffending.
Using the YEF Toolkit
The YEF Toolkit will be strongest when combined with the local
knowledge that people working in police forces, local
authorities, youth organisations and schools hold about the
children in their community. It’s there to enhance that expertise
and help people use evidence when they’re making decisions about
how to help children stay safe from violence.
, Executive Director of the Youth Endowment Fund,
said: “The YEF Toolkit comes at an important moment. As
the restrictions we’ve all been living through start to lift,
many of us are worried that we’ll see an increase in violence in
our communities.
We need to make sure that doesn’t happen. The Toolkit is here to
help make sure that we’re investing in services that prevent
violence.
Some Police and Crime Commissioners and police forces have
already decided to invest in focused deterrence. I hope the
Toolkit will encourage more to do the same and help us build the
evidence by evaluating their efforts. I’d encourage schools to
use the Toolkit to invest in making sure children develop social
skills. I want to see local authorities use it to help shape the
support that families get, so that every child gets to grow up in
a supportive home.
The Toolkit is there to enhance your local knowledge and help you
to make the best choices for your community. By working together,
we can make sure that no child becomes involved in violence.”
To access the Youth Endowment Fund’s Toolkit, please
visit: www.youthendowmentfund.org.uk/toolkit
