Agency Collaboration Fund

Introduction

We know that many children and young people at risk of becoming involved in violence are known to local agencies. Yet this knowledge is often fragmented across multiple organisations, with different people holding different pieces of the puzzle. Opportunities where agencies could and should work together are missed.

To help understand where those opportunities are, we’re investing in our Agency Collaboration Fund. We want to find out how agencies can better share data, power and information to prevent children from becoming involved in violence.

The questions we’re aiming to answer:

Which partnership models  work best to support children and young people and how?

How do local conditions and contexts affect change?

Which agency collaboration activities, interventions and approaches are most effective at preventing children and young people from becoming involved in violence?

Our approach

Through our Agency Collaboration Fund, we’ll fund and evaluate activities to find the most effective ways agencies can work together to identify and support the children most in need of support.

We’ll do this by running at least one grant round each year, which will link to one of our funding themes. The activities we’ll fund must be delivered by a minimum of two statutory agencies (for example, the local police force and a local authority, or a hospital trust and local schools), although it might also include working with organisations in the voluntary and private sectors. The project will need to focus on improving the structures and systems that can prevent children and young people from getting the support when they need it. To make sure we fund the right kinds of activity, each Agency Collaboration Round will be shaped by people working to keep children and young people safe from violence.

There’ll be three phases to each Agency Collaboration Round:

1. Consultation

We’ll consult with statutory and voluntary agencies to identify and understand the collaboration challenges and opportunities related to our chosen theme. We’ll examine the best available research on the approach and learn from what’s worked in the past.

2. Design

With insight from our consultation and guidance from our advisory group, we’ll define the grant round’s scope. This will set out what we’re looking to learn and what we’re looking to fund. When required we’ll commission or conduct additional research to inform where we focus our investment and learning.

3. Grant round launch and delivery

Funding will be available for up to three years for projects that meet the requirements set out in our grant round’s scope. For each round we’ll appoint an independent learning partner, who will be responsible for evaluating the project and sharing learning as the plan is put into practice.

Second round: A supportive home (closed 16th May 2023)

First round: Another chance (closed 21st March 2022)