Targeted project
Trauma-informed practice and its impact on youth violence
Run in partnership with the Home Office
Opening in September 2022
Targeted project
Opening in September 2022
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) is a charity with a mission that matters. We’re here to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice.
This means that we gather, build and share the best available evidence on what works, for whom, and why. We do this so that we can support you to keep children and young people safe.
We’re launching a new targeted project, Trauma-informed practice and its impact on youth violence, to find out what difference trauma-informed practice has on keeping children safe from violence. We’re particularly interested in trauma-informed practice delivered in criminal justice, education and child protection services.
The harmful effects of childhood exposure to traumatic events has been demonstrated consistently and across many different areas of a young person’s life, including health, education, employment, and involvement with the criminal justice system. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been associated with a range of concerning behaviours and there is growing evidence that shows the high prevalence of ACEs among young people who’ve committed offences.
Increasing awareness and understanding of the impact of trauma, how to recognise its signs and symptoms, and how to work sensitively with young people to avoid re-traumatisation has become an increasingly popular approach across lots of services related to violence prevention. However, there is very little research on the effectiveness of this approach for protecting children from involvement in violence. In the YEF Toolkit, the strand looking at Trauma-informed training and service redesign shows that, at the moment, there’s insufficient evidence to know whether these approaches have an impact on crime and violence.
That’s why we need to conduct robust evaluations, like randomised control trials, which is what we want to achieve throught this grant round.
As part of this project, we aim to find, fund and evaluate trauma-informed practice programmes or approaches in England and Wales. All of the projects we fund will be within the education, child protection and criminal justice sectors.
We are keen to fund programmes or approaches that deliver activities that focus on the following areas:
Out of scope for this funding round are therapeutic interventions (for example, trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder).
We are interested in finding trauma informed practice activity falling within the areas above so that we can evaluate its impact. Our evaluations would look at the links between this activity and the following child-level outcomes:
We will update this section shortly with more information on the eligibility and exclusion criteria for applicants.
Thursday 1 September – applications open
Wednesday 30 October – applications close
Late 2022 – application assessment and interviews with shortlisted applicants
Early 2023 – funding awarded, evaluators appointed
Spring 2023 – co-design of programmes start with evaluators and grantees
Summer 2023 – delivery and evaluation begins
When we release the full application form we will also share assessment guidance and a guidance video with relevant information about this funding round and the application process.
You’ll be able to access the application form and guidance (in English and Welsh) on this website on 1 September 2022.
If you are interested in this funding round and have questions, please get in touch with Mollie.Bourne@youthendowmentfund.org.uk.