1. Another chance: Diversion from the criminal justice system 

Is this grant round still open for applications?

Our Another chance – diversion from the criminal justice system grant round closed for applications on 14th May 2021.

If you’re looking for further information about what we were looking to fund and evaluate through this grant round, please read the application guidance here.

To see which funding opportunities are currently open for applications, please click here.

---

---

When will we find out the outcome of our application?

We have contacted all applicants to provide an update on the status of their application. If you applied and have not yet heard from us, please email as on grants@youthendowmentfund.org.uk.

---

Will we be able to get feedback on our application?

In this grant round we are aiming to fund around 10 to 20 projects, but received over 300 applications. Due to the number of submissions, unfortunately, we’re unable to provide detailed feedback on every application. But we’ll be publishing an explanation of how and why we made our decisions for this round on our website in July 2021.

---

What criteria did you use to score applications?

To decide which projects progressed to the next stage, we scored all applications on the following eight criteria:

1. A worthwhile outcome – would the outcome(s) hoping to be achieved prevent children from becoming involved in violence?
2. If delivered well, how likely the project is to achieve the outcome – how likely was it the project would work?
3. Aiming to reach the right type of young people – were the young people the project was targeting at one of four turning point moments before court action is taken for a crime?
4. Likely to lead to future change – if a project was shown to be effective, could delivery be scaled up in someway?
5. Likely to reach the right type of young people – did projects have experience of reaching the type of children they were hoping to work with and how plausible and realistic were methods for engaging young people in the project?
6. Able to deliver – how likely was it that a project could deliver the activities outlined?
7. Evaluable – could we properly evaluate the project?
8. Able to deliver to the right number of young people – could a project work with enough children so that a randomised control trial (or another rigorous evaluation) could be conducted?

Please see our application guidance for further details about the criteria above. We’ll explain how we used this criteria and the trends we saw in applications, when we publish how and why we made our decisions on our website in July 2021.

---

---

2. Themed grant rounds

When will your next grant round open and how can I find out more?

In September 2021, we’ll open our second themed grant round A supportive home – helping families overcome challenges. This will focus on finding out which approaches are most effective in helping families and carers to create a supportive home environment for 6 to 14 year-olds (including looked-after children), reducing the likelihood of them becoming involved in violence.

We’ll publish more information about this round in August 2021.

---

What will you be looking to fund in this round?

We are still developing the final scope, but we’re likely to be interested in funding and evaluating programmes where the evidence of positive impact on children is promising. This may include activities like:

• Family counselling and therapy
• Workshops for the whole family
• Support programmes for parents
• Support programmes for foster families and looked-after children

We’re also considering whether we can begin to build evidence of whether programmes which support the victims or witnesses of domestic abuse at home, and those that help reduce conflict between parents, could help reduce the risk of children becoming involved in violence.

---

How much money will be available in this round?

We’ll aim to identify around 5-20 programmes that are ready for robust impact evaluation. We’re planning to spend between £6 million and £20 million depending on the how well applications meet our criteria.

---

When will you release more themed rounds?

We’ll open one or two themed grant rounds per year – each will explore an area of interest linked to one of our themes. These will run alongside our Neighbourhood Fund, Agency Collaboration Fund and funding for targeted projects.

You can read more about our other funds in our prospectus.

---

My work covers more than one of your funding themes, which grant round should I apply or wait for?

We recognise that the work of organisations may not always fit neatly within just one of our funding themes. To provide clarity for prospective applicants, for each grant round we’ll publish guidance clearly outlining the types of approaches and programmes we’re interested in funding.

---

What will you look for in applications to the two grant rounds you’ve announced?

In our themed grant rounds, we’ll prioritise applications from projects that are already delivering, are supported by some kind of evidence that they work and are ready for robust evaluation. This will improve our knowledge and understanding of what works to prevent children becoming involved in violence and help ensure every child gets the best possible support.

These requirements do mean that these grant rounds won’t be quite right for every organisation. But we are working on other funding areas ways to get involved in our work. For further details, please see our prospectus.

---

---

How did you decide on these grant rounds?

We’re here to improve the lives of children and young people. We’re building all of our work around a set of themes – the conditions that we think children and young people need in their lives to keep them safe from becoming involved in violence.

This set of themes provide a focus for the knowledge we want to build about what works to help put these conditions in place for every child and young person. Each themed grant round will explore an area of interest linked to one of the themes.

• Our first themed grant round opened for applications in April 2021. The theme was giving children and young people another chance. The specific area of interest for the round was diversion from the criminal justice system.

• In September 2021 we’ll open our second themed grant round. The theme will be making sure children have a supportive home. The specific area of interest will be helping families to overcome challenges.

To develop these themes, we asked everyone working to keep children and young people safe to shape our future. Over 450 of you – including teachers, community and youth workers, police officers to social workers – shared your ideas and experiences.

We made sure that we heard from young people too. Working with our partners at Leaders Unlocked, we spoke to young people with lived experience of violence and the youth justice system.

We also looked at the evidence, which shows us some of the things that can help to protect children from involvement in crime.

We know that, over time, evidence might change. And your views – and young people’s – might not always stay the same. So, over the life of the fund, we’ll keep revisiting these themes to make sure they’re right. We’ll keep listening to you and adapting. Because to get this right, we need to work together.

---

I attended one of your roundtables last year, where can I find out about the outcomes of these sessions?

We want to thank everyone who took part in our roundtables. Your insight has been invaluable. Thanks to you, we’ve made some significant improvements to the way we’ll do things – from a specific grant round investing £20 million in family support programmes to ringfenced funding for Black, Asian and minority ethnic-led organisations.

You can read about how your feedback shaped our thinking and decisions, in our report:

---

3. Evaluation

What does the evaluation mean?

We’ll evaluate every project we fund. This means that – along with funding to deliver your activities – we’ll commission an independent research organisation to measure your programme’s impact. We do this because we want to understand what interventions work to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence, for whom and why.

If you’re applying for funding, you don’t need to worry about factoring in the evaluation costs into your bid. We’ll look after commissioning the evaluation and matching you with the right research partner. As evaluations are such an important part of our work, we want to get it right. That’s why if your application is shortlisted, we’ll ask you to work with to co-design the evaluation for your project.

You can find out more about our application process as part of our published grant round guidance.

If you’d like to learn more about the different types of evaluation, the Early Intervention Foundation has produced this useful guide.

---

How do you choose evaluation partners, and how are they matched with a project?

Evaluators are appointed through a competitive process and are eligible to apply if they are part of our evaluator panel. In the first instance they will be invited to submit and expression of interest to lead on the evaluation of a specific project. If shortlisted, they will then be invited to submit full evaluation proposals.

The successful candidates will be appointed based on a range of factors including the capability and relevant experience and knowledge of the project team, the quality of methodology and approach, and value for money.

---

---

Why do you want to focus on randomised control trials? It seems unfair on young people who need help and may end up in a control group.   

This is an understandable concern. However, it is also unfair on young people to work with them without properly testing whether we are helping them rather than making things worse. Just as we benefit from robust trials in medicine, young people deserve the support that they receive to be properly evaluated. We believe that using randomised control trials are a critical way for us to make sure that children get the right services. By following two groups of children (one where children take part in a project and one where they don’t), we can truly understand whether the programme works.  

In our later years, we plan to use our funding to fund activities that have been proven to help children in this way. 

For more information, watch the video on our approach to evaluation.

---

4. Our other work

Which regions will your place-based work cover?

For the first round of our Neighbourhood Fund, the five areas we’ve chosen to receive funding are:

1. Birmingham  
2. Manchester  
3. Norfolk  
4. Bradford  
5. Cardiff  

In our report, Building safer neighbourhoods, we outline the methodology and data we used, and explain some of the judgements and trade-offs we made in identifying and choosing these areas. We hope that, by publishing our methods, we’ll provide transparency in the thinking behind our decisions.

---

How can I apply for your ringfenced funding for Black, Asian and minority ethnic-led organisations?

As part of our commitment to equality, we’ve ringfenced £5 – 10 million over the next three years to fund Black, Asian and minority-ethnic led charities that are working to prevent children and young people from becoming involved in violence. We’ll share more details of how we’ll allocate this funding soon.