Mentoring could help to reduce crime and violence, research finds 

Today, the Youth Endowment Fund has updated our analysis of international research on mentoring, finding that it could be an effective way to reduce crime. Our summary of the research evidence suggests that, on average, mentoring programmes have had a moderate impact on keeping children safe from involvement in violence. We’ve also published new research on adventure and wilderness therapies, which often involve activities that help children and young people work together to overcome a challenge, as well as sessions with counsellors or therapists. It’s important to say that we have less confidence in this than we do for our mentoring strand, because our summary is based five studies that were all of low quality. Overall, we found that these kinds of activities have a low impact on violent crime and a moderate impact on reoffending.

All of this new information is published in the YEF Toolkit, a free online resource to help you put evidence of what works to prevent serious violence into action. It doesn’t just summarise research on the impact of mentoring or adventure and wilderness therapies on reducing violence – it also summarises the research on how to implement them well. For mentoring, this includes carefully assessing the personal qualities and motivations of potential mentors and advice on providing training. For adventure and wilderness therapies, you might want to consider using trained therapists as programme leaders, for example.

Find out more and visit the YEF Toolkit today.