The Confident Resilient Children Project

What does this project involve?

The Confident Resilient Children (CRC) Project aims to support Year 5 and 6 children (age 9 to 11) to build resilience and confidence and keep them safe from exploitation and criminality. Teachers are trained to deliver 11 weekly sessions to all children, where they explore decision making. Trained external mentors then deliver eight weeks of group mentoring to a smaller, targeted group of children, identified as being at higher risk of becoming involved in crime and violence (and a further four weeks of one-to-one mentoring for some).

Why did YEF fund this project?

There are many things in a young person’s life that might mean they’re more likely to become involved in crime. Whether at the individual, family, community or societal level, an array of risk factors are associated with offending. These risk factors can help us to understand how, where and when to intervene. However, they also have limitations. Having several risk factors does not mean a child will commit crime and all children are potentially at risk. The Confident Resilient Children (CRC) model recognises this tension. Delivered by the Titan Partnership in conjunction with delivery partners Lime and Emerge Leadership, the CRC programme provides both universal and targeted support that offers guidance to all children alongside bespoke support to those most ‘at risk’. Through developing the resilience, confidence and decision-making ability of children, the CRC programme aims to steer young people away from offending.

As the universal and targeted components of CRC had not previously been delivered together, the YEF was keen to evaluate the approach. We, therefore, funded a feasibility study on CRC which was published in 2022. It found that CRC was largely delivered as intended, while teachers, and mentors had largely positive perceptions of the intervention. Teachers perceived that CRC was supporting pupils to better self-reflect, self-regulate, show empathy, resolve conflict, and develop confidence, and reported that pupils engaged well with the project. YEF, therefore, funded a further evaluation of CRC in the form of a pilot study.

The pilot aimed to further explore evidence of feasibility and assess evidence of promise and readiness for a larger scale randomised controlled trial. To explore these questions the evaluation used a pre-and-post online questionnaire with pupils, collected administrative data relating to pupil demographics and programme attendance, observed CRC training sessions and interviewed five teachers, six CRC champions, four mentors and 35 children. 997 pupils across 12 schools were included in the evaluation. 29% of the children in the study identified as Pakistani, followed by 13% identifying as White, 10% as Bangladeshi, 6 % as Black/African/Caribbean/Black, 5% as having a Mixed ethnicity, 3% as Indian, and 3% as Arab. The remaining third of children identified as Other, or as different groups at different times in the evaluation.

The pilot study ran from June 2021 to September 2022. The evaluation took place during the coronavirus pandemic, requiring both the delivery and evaluation teams to adapt to challenging circumstances.

Key conclusions

What will YEF do next?

While recognising the feasibility and acceptability of the CRC programme, and commending the project team for their delivery, YEF is not proceeding with further evaluation of CRC at this stage.

Download the report