Psychological Therapies

Introduction

This grant round focuses on psychological therapies – talking therapies delivered to children and young people who are at risk of becoming involved in crime and violence (known as secondary prevention) or those already involved in the youth justice system (known as tertiary prevention).

What we’re looking to fund

We’re looking to fund projects that aim to treat psychological and emotional problems for children and young people at an individual level through one-to-one, group, online or phone delivery.

The intervention must include psychological therapy as a core component being received by all participants and must be delivered or supervised by a clinically qualified practitioner.

We’re aiming to identify 2-3 projects to fund and evaluate which are ready to be evaluated via a robust impact evaluation. We’re planning to spend up to £3.5 million depending on how well applications meet our criteria.

Projects must be delivered in either England and/or Wales.

Who we’re looking to support

The focus of this round is on supporting children and young people, aged 11 – 18, who are at risk of crime or violence and/or already involved in the youth justice system. Our aim is to prevent violence from happening or reoccurring, so that we can reduce long-term harm.

We’re looking to fund and evaluate projects that target, support and work with children and young people who are:

• Primarily aged 11 – 18

And have one or more of the following characteristics:

• They are demonstrating challenges with externalising behaviours  (such as aggression) as observed by the referrer.
• They have been excluded or suspended from school.
• They are already involved in the youth justice system, either in custodial or community-based settings.
• They are considered at risk of involvement in youth offending, due to:
  • individual, familial or geographical reasons (often referred to as youth violence ‘hotspots’), or
  • being affiliated with groups involved in crime, violence and trafficking (often referred to as ‘gangs’), or
  • being affected by serious violence, criminal or sexual exploitation (as perpetrators and/or victims).

Scale of the evaluation

We’ll prioritise projects that are able to reach and support a large enough group of children and young people to be robustly evaluated.

We estimate that the minimum number of children and young people that that projects will need to support over the course of the funding are:

• For projects measuring offending (either violent or non-violent) outcomes, programmes would be required to recruit to the evaluation between 700 children (for those involved in the youth justice system) and 1,980 children (for those not involved in the youth justice system).

• For projects measuring all other outcomes (such as externalising behaviours) programmes would be required to recruit to the evaluation between 350 children (for those involved in the youth justice system) and 800 children (for those not involved).

All projects would need to deliver the intervention to half of the recruited number (i.e. those in the intervention group) and data would collected from the entire cohort of young people (i.e. those in both the intervention and control groups).

Duration of project delivery and funding

We support projects to start quickly and find our approach works best for projects that can be delivered effectively over a limited time frame.  In this round, we expect the maximum project delivery time to be 24 months and are keen to hear from projects that can deliver within a shorter period.

Application guidances

How to apply

Applications have now closed.

A list of the application questions can be found in the guidance and downloaded below.

Workshops

If you’re interested in finding out more about this grant round, you can watch a recording of our webinar and download the accompanying slides below.

If you’re having trouble registering for one of our workshops, please email grants@youthendowmentfund.org.uk

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Multi-Site Trial (MST) – call for Expression of Interest (EOI)

In addition to this themed funding round, the YEF is also inviting proposals from independent umbrella psychological health organisations to partner with us to deliver a multi-site trial on psychological therapy interventions that aim to reduce serious youth violence.

The trial will be aiming to treat psychological and emotional problems in children and young people at risk of becoming involved in crime and violence or those already involved in the youth justice system.

Applying organisations should:

• Be able to ensure – through an open call to their networks – that at least 50% of organisations funded are led by Black, Asian and other racially minoritised leaders.
• Be able to bring together a network of organisations, delivering psychological therapy interventions to reach a combined minimum 1,000 young people in England and Wales.
• Be able to support young people who identify as Black, Asian or minority ethnic. We would expect applying organisations to be able to reach at least 30% of participants from racially minoritised backgrounds by the end of project delivery.
• Be able to support and lead organisations to agree a core set of delivery principles.

Download the information pack

Apply

To express interest, please fill in the EOI form in Annex 1 and send it to Fahmida Begum via email: Fahmida.Begum@youthendowmentfund.org.uk by 5pm, Friday 24th May 2024.

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Timeline

FAQs

If you have a question not covered in our application guidance (once published) or FAQs, please email grants@youthendowmentfund.org.uk.