This week, the Home Office announced that a partnership of the Early Intervention Foundation, Impetus and us – Social Investment Business - has been successful in our application to manage the Youth Endowment Fund. The Youth Endowment Fund was announced by the Home Secretary in December last year, as part of the government’s long-term plan for tackling serious violence.
For our partnership, we view this as a generational opportunity to reduce youth offending, and to tackle this problem in the long-term.
The Youth Endowment Fund will take a public health approach to tackle the root causes of youth offending, placing an emphasis on early intervention with children and young people (especially 10-14 year-olds), and galvanising multi-agency action across different sectors such as local government, education, social services, youth offending, health and probation.
It will also provide welcome resource and support for charities and social enterprises that are rooted in their communities, and are best-placed to address the multiple causes of youth offending.
We are combining strengths from the three organisations to maximise the potential impact of the fund.
Impetus is bringing significant experience from setting up the Education Endowment Foundation and from building high-impact education charities. The Early Intervention Foundation is bringing in-depth learning from being the What Works Centre for early intervention to improve outcomes for children.
We, at Social Investment Business, are bringing our expertise in running major government projects, designing and managing grant programmes that are fit for purpose, and our in-depth understanding of building the resilience of charities and social enterprises.
Developing local capacity
We know that excellent evidence alone won’t deliver impact. So, in addition to building a robust and rigorous evidence base of what works, we’ll deliver the Youth Endowment Fund with a strong emphasis on both the development of local and organisational capacity for impact and sustainability, and working with young people and the sector to get the best approaches adopted.
We plan to work with a wide range of organisations and interventions, including promising initiatives at an earlier stage, and we will move quickly from the start. We will also provide tailored support for organisations throughout the process: from help with applications through to specialist evaluation readiness.
The Youth Endowment Fund will support social enterprises and charities to prevent children and young people from getting caught up in crime and violence, by making sure that those at most risk get the best possible support.
We look forward to playing our role, at Social Investment Business, in making that happen, and doing so as effectively as we can with our partners. There has arguably never been a more important time for this long-term project to take place, addressing the causes of a growing problem in our society, and we can only achieve the change we all want to see through working together.
Those interested in the work of the Youth Endowment Fund can follow on Twitter @YouthEndowFund and find further information on the website.
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