Research reports
Our latest research reports and briefings.
Showing 31 of 31
- Guidance
Report:Diversion Practice Guidance
This report – which was co-authored by the Centre for Justice Innovation – focuses on what happens to children at the early stages of the youth justice system when they first encounter the police. This includes both informal diversion schemes that divert children from all formal outcomes and formal out-of-court disposals, which can involve a…Youth Justice1744268400 Youth Justice - Statistics briefing
Report:Statistics update (April 2025): Trends in violence affecting children
This is an update to the statistics published in our Beyond the Headlines report. This update includes latest data on core indicators for knife crime, policing, health, children’s services and the youth sector in England and Wales. Core Indicators Dashboard For more details, see the full briefing or our core indicators dashboard.Children's Services Education Health Neighbourhoods Policing Youth Justice Youth Sector1743669485 Children's Services, Education, Health, Neighbourhoods, Policing, Youth Justice, Youth Sector - Statistics briefing
Report:Core Indicators of Violence
Our core indicator dashboard provides a clear account of whether children’s involvement in violence is improving or worsening, by evaluating the performance of key sectors supporting these children and young people.Children's Services Education Health Neighbourhoods Policing Youth Justice Youth Sector1743624169 Children's Services, Education, Health, Neighbourhoods, Policing, Youth Justice, Youth Sector - Guidance
Report:Focused deterrence guidance
This report offers practical guidance to help organisations deliver effective and equitable focused deterrence (FD) in England and Wales. This guidance is aimed at the delivery of FD programmes to reduce serious violence that involves children and young people. It also acknowledges the role of influential older associates, including adults, who may be contributing to…Policing1741168640 Policing - Report
Report:Racial Disproportionality
The current state of disproportionality Violence has devastating impacts on children and families. While children from all backgrounds can face violence, children from certain ethnic backgrounds are less safe. The majority of children in the youth justice system, and involved in violence, are White. However, relative to their share of the population, some minority ethnic…Policing Youth Justice Education Health1739926860 Policing, Youth Justice, Education, Health - Statistics briefing
Report:Statistics update (January 2025): Trends in violence affecting children
This is an update to the statistics published in our Beyond the Headlines report. This update includes latest data on core indicators for knife crime, policing, health, children’s services and the youth sector in England and Wales. Core Indicators Dashboard For more details, see the full briefing or our core indicators dashboard.Children's Services Education Health Neighbourhoods Policing Youth Justice Youth Sector1738067040 Children's Services, Education, Health, Neighbourhoods, Policing, Youth Justice, Youth Sector - Evidence review
Report:A review of the literature on how the systems of support available to young people and their families work to prevent serious violence
Background This project is part of the wider Serious Violence Research Programme jointly led by the Youth Endowment Fund and the Department for Education. The Serious Violence Research Programme aims to establish the evidence base to inform strategies to tackle serious youth violence. The project commissioned the Systems Evidence and Gap Map (2022; Systems Evidence…1737019975 - Report
Report:Children, Violence and Vulnerability 2024
This is YEF’s third annual Children, violence and vulnerability report. This year, YEF surveyed over 10,000 teenage children aged 13-17 in England and Wales about their experiences of violence. Amid the everyday pressures of adolescence — school, friendships and self-discovery — many teenagers are also having to navigate a more troubling issue: violence. This year’s…1732060860 - Report
Report:Key Facts About Violence
Understanding violence is key to keeping children safe If we want to prevent violence, we need to understand it. The more we know about violence, the better we can focus our efforts to keep children safe. This means asking questions like: Thankfully, there is a substantial evidence base that can help us answer these questions.…1730890544 - Research
Report:Implementing Focused Deterrence: Barriers and Opportunities
We asked OC&C Strategy Consultants to conduct a scoping exercise to help us understand which force areas are delivering focused deterrence and, importantly, how they’re delivering it. The insights collected as part of this project will be used to inform the development of practice guidance on focused deterrence. Research suggests that the average impact of…Policing1724135400 Policing - Statistics briefing
Report:Beyond The Headlines
Purpose and background In this report, we aim to simplify the complexity surrounding violence affecting children and young people in England and Wales. Our goal is to provide a clear account of whether the situation is improving or worsening, and to evaluate the performance of key sectors supporting these children and young people. To achieve…Children's Services Education Health Neighbourhoods Policing Youth Justice Youth Sector1721886300 Children's Services, Education, Health, Neighbourhoods, Policing, Youth Justice, Youth Sector - Research
Report:Effect Size Database
This report summarises the YEF’s Effect Size Database (ESDB), a free repository that reports effect sizes (ES) associated with each study included in the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) Evidence and Gap map (EGM). It enables users to determine the direction and magnitude of impact reported in a particular study for a specific outcome, intervention, population…1719222393 - Guidance
Report:Education guidance
Our Education, Children and Violence guidance provides school, college and alternative provision (AP) leaders across England and Wales with fiveevidence-based recommendations on how to help prevent children’s involvement in violence. Recommendations The recommendations in this report provide guidance on the ‘best bets’ from the underpinning evidence. School, college and AP leaders’ professional judgement on how…Education1715817540 Education - Race Equity Progress
Report:Race Equity Progress Report 2023
In October 2022, we published our race equity goals and objectives. These provide us with clear and actionable targets to work towards and mean that we can be held accountable for our actions, internally and externally. Our Race Equity Progress Report outlines our advancement towards these published goals over the past year. It describes what…1702477927 - Systems Guidance
Report:Systems Guidance: Arrested Children
The Youth Endowment Fund exists to prevent children from becoming involved in violence. One of the ways we seek to achieve this mission is improving support for children when they are arrested. This includes diverting them from formal youth justice processes like appearing at court. This is a critical moment where effective support can change…1702288622 - Research
Report:Children, Violence and Vulnerability 2023
This is the YEF’s second annual Children, Violence and Vulnerability report (see the 2022 version). It includes survey responses from over 7,500 teenage children aged 13-17 in England and Wales about their experiences in the past 12-months. This builds on last year’s survey of 2,000 children. We’ve used the same online panel provider (Walr) that…1699833600 - Evidence review
Report:Place-based approaches to tackling local youth violence: A review of evidence on models, implementation and impacts
This report sets out the findings of a series of linked studies drawing together evidence about place-based approaches to reduce youth violence.1692186401 - Research
Report:Serious violence – foundational system mapping
The research aimed to create a system map: a visual representation of the structure and relationships within the system of support for children and young people around serious violence. The map is accompanied by commentary on how the system is perceived to interact, where it works well and less well, and what this means for…1688032805 - Youth voice
Report:Peer Action Collective: Leading research, driving change
‘Leading research, driving change‘ summaries the insights gathered by 120 PAC peer researchers, aged 16 to 25, and involved 4,600 participants (aged 10-20).1679309537 - Research
Report:Children, violence and vulnerability 2022
Combining a survey of 2,025 children and young people with a review of national statistics, the Children, violence and vulnerability report explores the ways in which violence – and fear of violence – is shaping children’s lives.1667469700 - Research
Report:Systems Evidence and Gap Map
The Systems Evidence and Gap Map is part of a joint research project, run by the Youth Endowment Fund and Department for Education.1654678611 - Statistics briefing
Report:Statistics update (May 2022): The latest data on police recorded crime, youth victims of homicide and modern slavery
This is our second regular statistics update, looking at the latest data on crime and violence affecting young people.1652701893 - Statistics briefing
Report:Statistics update (February 2022): The latest data on crime and violence affecting young people
This is our first regular statistics update, looking at the latest data on crime and violence affecting young people.1643877955 - Briefing
Report:Evaluation in times of uncertainty: applying learning from COVID-19
This is the the third Insights Brief from our COVID-19 Learning Project.1639045773 - Research
Report:Making change: What works?
This report seeks to understand what key ingredients enable movements to realise significant change – as well as what we can learn from movements associated with partial or little change.1636994924 - Evidence review
Report:Supporting families, preventing violence: the evidence base
We commissioned our partners at the Early Intervention Foundation to conduct a review of what the evidence already tells us about different types of family support programmes. This briefing is a summary of their findings.Children's Services1632736046 Children's Services - Research
Report:Building safer neighbourhoods
This report sets out how we’ve identified the areas we’ll invest in through the first round of the Neighbourhood Fund.Neighbourhoods1620378000 Neighbourhoods - Briefing
Report:Learning and adapting to support young people – how a core components approach can help
This is the second Insights Brief from our COVID-19 Learning Project.1614589200 - Research
Report:Programmes Evidence and Gap Map – Report
The Youth Endowment Fund's Programmes Evidence and Gap Map is the largest map of studies on this topic in the world.1612170000 - Briefing
Report:Engaging young people during the COVID-19 pandemic
This is the first in a series of Insights Brief from our COVID-19 Learning Project.1605776400 - Briefing
Report:What works: Preventing children and young people from becoming involved in violence.
This briefing was an interim resource, which has now been replaced by the YEF Toolkit. While we were working on detailed evidence resources, we created the briefing to provide an interim summary of what the evidence says about how effective different approaches are at preventing children from becoming involved in violence. Since it was published, we’ve produced the YEF Toolkit, which provides fully accessible summaries of the best available research based on a comprehensive and systematic approach to the evidence.1601542800
