PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Youth Services (20 October 2020)

It is vitally important that we prevent young people from being drawn into violent crime, exploitation and abuse. The Government recognises that high quality youth services can transform the lives of young people.

The Government has invested £200 million in a 10-year Youth Endowment (YEF) Fund to tackle the drivers behind serious youth violence. An extra £5million has been awarded to the YEF in 2020 to develop a National Centre of Excellence, which will share knowledge and expertise with those working with vulnerable children and young people at risk of involvement in serious youth violence.

In July 2020, the YEF offered a total of £6.5m to 130 organisations across England and Wales as part of its COVID-19 grant round. The funding will help charities, social enterprises, local authorities and youth organisations to re-connect with young people at-risk of being drawn into violent crime and tackle any problems to emerge because of COVID-19.

The Government has invested £70m over two years (19/20 – 20/21) in establishing Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) in the 18 police force areas most affected by serious violence. VRUs bring together police, local government, health and education professionals, community leaders and other key partners to identify the drivers of serious violence and agree a multi-agency response to them. In addition to leading and coordinating local responses, VRUs are also delivering interventions to support those most at risk of involvement in serious violence. In year 1 of their operation, VRUs applied £23.1m to enable delivery of 175 different interventions, which reached over 100,000 young people.

We are significantly increasing investment in specialist support for county lines victims this year. With investment of £860k the St Giles Trust will be delivering one-to-one support in London, Merseyside and the West Midlands (the three largest county lines exporting areas) which will help over 200 vulnerable children and young people who are criminally exploited by county lines gangs to exit their involvement.

The Home Office is also continuing to fund Missing People’s SafeCall service (c.£200k FY20/21). This specialist 24/7 helpline provides advice and support to children, young people and their parents/carers who are concerned about county lines, criminal exploitation and gangs.

Through the £13.2m Trusted Relationships Fund we are identifying innovative approaches to tackling vulnerability among children and young people at risk of exploitation and abuse. The local authority-led projects, which went live in August 2018, provide support for children and young people identified as at high risk of child sexual exploitation and abuse, criminal exploitation and peer-on-peer abuse.

The Government also funded £22 million of funding for 40 projects through Early Intervention Youth Fund which ran from 2018 – 2020. This included awareness raising and education programmes, diversionary activities, tailored interventions, and programmes which aimed to cease offending or reoffending. A process evaluation of the EIYF will be available in Autumn 2020.