Funding opened to test Care Review recommendations on harm outside the home

New funding will help local authorities to learn the best ways to keep children safe from violence outside the home, including criminal exploitation.

The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) has today (Tuesday 7 March) opened a new multi-million pound joint funding round to test recommendations on extra-familial harm from the Care Review.

Partnering with BBC Children in Need and The Hunter Foundation, the grant round will fund local authorities to put into action and test recommendations including providing services based in community venues – like family hubs, schools and health settings – and support that’s tailored to the needs of children and their families/carers.

The fund will invest in up to five local authority partnerships in England and Wales with each partnership initially receiving approximately £500,000 to deliver the project for 18 months. Projects will be funded and evaluated for a further two or three years, if effective.

Each partnership must be led by the local authority and bring together teams from across youth justice services, social care, the police, mental health service, probation, schools and local organisations from the Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise sector. These teams will work in close partnership with children, young people, parents and carers in their locality to design, deliver and review services that are built around their needs.

The evaluations will generate new evidence about how local public services and community organisations can best work together to protect children from harm.

“Children who are most vulnerable to being harmed outside the home often need the support of different public services,” Jon Yates, Executive Director at the Youth Endowment Fund, said. “The problem is that there is little clear evidence on what a good partnership here looks like. This needs to change. We’ll use our funding to test what works and we’ll use what we learn to push for high-quality services that keep children safe from violence.”

Rachel Carter, Head of Funding Partnerships at BBC Children in Need, said: “We’re committed to ensuring vulnerable children and young people have the chance to thrive and be the best they can be, regardless of the challenges they face and we know how powerful it can be when organisations join together to make an impact, so look forward to seeing how this partnership and the learnings it will provide will help make an difference to young lives, both now and in the future.”

“As a society, we invest hundreds of millions of pounds in supporting young people,” Sir Tom Hunter, Founder, The Hunter Foundation said. “That shows we care, but it also shows those investments are failing many of them. We need to realign services to need and join up the dots between those services to offer rounded, customer centric support to those that need it most. Our hope is that these funds will be a catalyst for that change.”