The Youth Endowment Fund 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, they’re investing in their Agency Collaboration Fund. They want to find out how agencies can better share data, power and information to prevent children from becoming involved in violence.
For the second grant round of their Agency Collaboration Fund, they’ve partnered with BBC Children in Need and The Hunter Foundation to launch A supportive home.
A supportive home will test specialist multi-agency and multi-disciplinary teams located in neighbourhoods to support children, young people and their families/carers who are vulnerable to – or experiencing – violence or criminal exploitation outside the home.
The grant round will fund local authorities to put into action recommendations from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.
Who they’re looking to fund
They will fund and evaluate up to five local authority area partnerships in England and/or Wales.
Each successful partnership application will test a multi-agency team approach in two different neighbourhoods/localities within one local authority area.
They seek applications from local authority area partnerships where the lead partner is the local authority.
As a minimum, partnerships must include:
- Local authority – inclusive of early help; children’s social care; Youth Offending Team; education; youth work (where delivered by the local authority); relevant services to support young adults
- Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) delivery partners – these may be large specialist organisations and/or local specialist grassroot organisations who are known and trusted by the communities
- The police
- Probation
- Mental health professionals for both children and young adults
- Education, (if not part of the local authority) including schools.
In addition, there’s an expectation that partnerships will place a strong emphasis on involving children and young people and their parents/carers as partners in the service design, delivery and review.