- New £5 million fund to support the most
vulnerable children and families
- Funding will support earlier interventions to
turn young people away from crime
- Councils will have the chance to bid for funding
to tackle youth and gang crime in high-risk areas
Families across the country who are vulnerable to the
devastating effects of knife crime and gang culture are
set to receive more support from a new £5 million fund
announced today.
The Supporting Families Against Youth Crime fund will
allow keyworkers, community groups, teachers and other
professionals working with children and young people to
intervene earlier to help them develop the personal
resilience to withstand peer pressure and make their
own positive life choices.
It will also support more in-depth work with parents
and carers to help them fully understand the risk
factors and dangers of their children becoming drawn
into gang crime.
Councils will be able to bid for funding to bolster
their response to youth violence and gangs in their
local area, as part of their Troubled Families
programme.
The Supporting Families Against Youth Crime fund builds
on the government’s wider support available to tackle
serious violence which includes a £22 million Early
Intervention Youth Fund and a £1.5 million Anti-Knife
Crime Community Fund.
Communities Secretary, Rt Hon MP, said:
Knife crime and gang violence can devastate the lives
of young people, families and their communities.
Carrying knives must never become normal behaviour
and we need to change the culture among many young
people.
Early intervention and prevention is vital to
tackling violence. That is why I am announcing £5
million to support initiatives which are helping
young people to take a positive direction in life.
The government has committed £920 million to the
Troubled Families Programme, which aims to achieve
significant and sustained improvement for up to 400,000
families with multiple high-cost problems by 2020. The
programme champions working with the whole family,
ensuring they receive coordinated support from services
working together to solve their problems as early as
possible.
The programme which works with the whole family has
achieved significant progress with:
- nearly 130,000 families meeting the improvement
goals agreed with local services against each of the
problems they need to overcome
- in 16,925 of the families where such progress has
been achieved, one or more adult has succeeded in
moving into continuous employment; and
- the programme’s focus on preventing poor outcomes
for children in troubled families has started to show
positive results including reducing the number of cases
that need to be escalated to children’s social care
The fund will come into effect immediately,
underpinning the government’s ‘public health’ approach
to tackle the root causes of serious violence
underpinned by the Serious Violence Strategy. This
includes new measures recently announced by the Home
Secretary:
- a consultation on a legal duty for public services
like health, education and welfare to tackle serious
violence;
- a £200 million Youth Endowment Fund aimed at
steering those most at risk of youth violence away from
becoming young offenders
- an independent review into drug misuse
