Call for Proposals: Multi-Site Trials (MSTs) of Interventions that aim to reduce violence affecting children

Introduction

The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) invites proposals from members of the YEF Evaluation Panel to propose the evaluation and delivery of a multi-site trial of an intervention aiming to address children and young people at risk of becoming involved in crime and violence or those already involved in the youth justice system. 

If you are a delivery organisation who wishes to propose themselves as the umbrella organisation for an MST, please apply through the delivery application form. While the guidance here is aimed at evaluators you may still find it useful to read first.

What is a multi-site trial (MST)?

Multi-site trials – or ‘aggregated trials’ – involve identifying a group of organisations delivering a similar approach, aligning their approaches, running small concurrent evaluations (preferably Randomised Control Trials – RCTs) and aggregating the results. The benefit of this approach is that we can identify consistent elements of delivery (sometimes termed ‘core components’) that could be more widely adopted if found to be effective, and the collective evaluation provides scale to generate more reliable findings.

Why are we funding multi-site trials?

Many of our evaluations work with individual organisations to assess the impact of the intervention that they solely own and deliver. One organisation may have the capacity alone to reach a large number of young people.

However, much of the provision for children and young people at risk of violence is not provided through one organisation delivering their intervention in isolation. Many initiatives, approaches and practices are delivered by a host of connected organisations. They may deliver the same core intervention, be underpinned by the same principles and be aligned under an umbrella organisation; however, they are a collection of separate organisations, who may serve different populations of young people.

Together, networks of organisations may be able to deliver to a much larger scale than they otherwise would have been able to alone. Furthermore, these networks often comprise smaller ‘grassroots’ voluntary and community organisations who can be uniquely placed to identify, engage and support young people at risk, but may lack the scale and resources to engage in large impact evaluations that can generate robust results.

Such smaller organisations may also be established by Black, Asian or other racially minoritised leaders specifically set up to serve minoritised children and young people. We know that some children and young people are overrepresented in the youth justice system or struggle to access mainstream support services. We’re particularly interested in projects which can show that they successfully and appropriately support these groups.

What we’ll invest in

Projects must align with one of our seven focus sectors

Proposed interventions must sit within one of the following sectors:

1. Youth sector
2. Children’s services
3. Youth Justice
4. Policing
5. Neighbourhoods
6. Health
7. Education

Any MST proposals must be able to identify a suitable umbrella organisation. See the guidance for more information on how they are defined.

Projects must support children at risk of violence

Projects must primarily support children and young people aged 10–18 who are either:

• At risk of crime or violence (‘secondary prevention’), or
• Already affected by violence, offending or exploitation (‘tertiary prevention’).

While children outside this age range can be included, they should not be the primary focus.

Please note, that we are not accepting projects aimed at universal provision for all children and young people (i.e. ‘primary prevention’).

Application guidance

Please read our application guidance for more information about this funding round, our eligibility criteria and application process.

How to apply

Applicants are asked to apply through the Evaluator Open Call application form.

This is a two-stage application:

• Part One – A high level summary of the proposed intervention and some description of how this might be evaluated
• Part Two – Further detail on delivery of the intervention, plus details on your areas of expertise and suggested methodology

If the application successfully meets the criteria for part one, you will be contacted with a link to the second part.  Following completion of the second part, you are likely to be invited to participate in an interview.  More detailed criteria will be shared with interviewees ahead of this step.

Questions

Questions can be sent to evaluation@youthendowmentfund.org.uk.