Salzburg Global speaks to Peter Henderson and Laura Knight from the Youth Endowment Fund
Peter Henderson and Laura Knight work for the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), an independent charity working to prevent children and young people from becoming involved in violence. Peter is head of toolkit and synthesis, while Laura is toolkit and evidence engagement lead.
They spoke to Salzburg Global while participating in "A Whole System Approach to Justice: Creating a Brighter and Safer Future for Today's Youth," which is part of the multi-year Global Innovations on Youth Violence, Safety and Justice initiative. This program took place between February 8 and 12, 2023.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Salzburg Global: What exactly is the Youth Endowment Fund toolkit, and how did it come about?
Peter: We are an independent grantmaking charity. We were set up in 2019 by the UK government as an independent charity. That's very important to us, our independence. We're not part of the UK government. We're not civil servants. We have an independent board of trustees who make decisions and give us the independence necessary to produce really rigorous research.
We were set up with the mission of keeping children safe from involvement in serious violence, and we essentially do three things. The first thing we do is we fund promising programs of activity, which we hope are going to be effective at keeping children safe.
The second thing we do is fund research and evaluation to better understand whether these programs are actually effective. We're very interested in trying to understand whether the things we're funding are actually having the impact that they say they are on keeping children safe. We fund rigorous evaluations of the programs.
Then the third thing we do, which is what Laura and I do, is to summarize the existing research and try and make that as accessible and actionable as possible and then try to support the UK government and others to apply that research to better decisions in policy and practice.
We're very aware that much research has been written in a language which is very difficult for non-academics to understand. It's hidden in journals that you have to pay huge amounts of money for and doesn't always cover topics that are the most important topics for policymakers and practitioners.
A few months into our time at the YEF, we thought, "Well, what kind of product could we develop which overcomes some of these barriers to accessing research and makes it more widely available?" That's where the toolkit comes in.
Salzburg Global: What is the toolkit?
Laura: It's a free online resource for anyone to use. It summarizes the best available research evidence on approaches to reducing youth violence. At the moment, it has 24 different approaches and interventions, and we've got many more planned for this year.
When you access the toolkit, you basically see a summary card for each intervention type, and they provide you with three key pieces of information. So, firstly, an average impact rating. For example, if you are looking at mentoring, cognitive behavioral therapy or restorative justice, they each provide an average impact rating on reducing violence.
The second piece of information is an evidence security rating. We're basically telling you how confident we are in that impact rating. So that's a score from zero to five. A higher score is better; it means more reliable evidence. And the third key piece of information is a cost rating. So relative to all of the other interventions in the toolkit, we have a cost rating of low, medium or high, and that's based on the cost per child participating in the intervention. Then you can click in and get some more information, which includes the summary of what each intervention is and explores what are the key mechanisms for change: how does this generally work? It also provides some guidance around how it could be implemented.
Sometimes we're able to link to existing programs so that you can go and have a look at more information about programs that are already running. But often those types of things aren't available. So, a lot of our work is constantly looking at what's the best available research and then also asking, 'What can we learn from the practice that's happening? What new questions have we got to stimulate more research so that we can keep adding to the toolkit?'
Salzburg Global: You mentioned some new interventions that are coming into place. What's the timeline for that? What kind of interventions are these? Could you talk a bit more about that?
Laura: We've got 10 areas of work that we're looking at, at the moment. We tend to publish updates to the toolkit as the work becomes available. So, throughout this year, we've got several updates planned, some really interesting areas of work. Arts participation, for example, looking at children and young people's involvement in artistic and creative programs.
Salzburg Global: Why the arts?
Peter: There are various ways in which the arts might be used. So, it's often used as this specific art therapy, using it as a context for children to work with therapists on difficulties or challenges they might be having. This is also being used as an early prevention activity. By getting children involved in positive activities like art, these children might be protected against involvement in violence. So that's the theory, and that's what we're kind of looking at the research to see what evidence there is.
Salzburg Global: And what is the evidence so far?
Peter: Well, we funded one of the systematic reviews. So that's in progress at the moment. That's going to give us this overall picture of the after-effects. My sense at the moment is that there isn't much research yet, but I don't really know until we get the review back.
Salzburg Global: So how does that work exactly?
Peter: We fund a team of academics. The first thing they do is really carefully define the area, and looking at this, they say, "Well, what do we mean by arts? What do we mean by children? What kind of outcomes are [we] interested [in]? We're interested in preventing violence.
Salzburg Global: What other interventions have you got lined up besides art?
Laura: We're looking at summer job programs, knife crime education, and drug prevention sessions in schools. We're looking at post-custody resettlement programmes too, which has been a big discussion over the last few days about really different practices globally. So for young people coming out of secure settings, what kind of support is provided to them, and what impact does that have on their reoffending rates?
We have quite an established approach in the UK that may be less well-established elsewhere. So, this is interesting because when we describe this approach that's taken on these big systematic reviews of evidence, it's also really, really important to understand [the] context and, I would say, making sure that you're asking the right question right at the beginning. This is why we use a lot of existing systematic reviews, but this is why we also need to fund new ones so that we're asking the specific questions that we need answered, [and] which is why YEF started with a ten-year mandate to reduce violence. When you really think through how long it takes to get some of our questions answered, it's many years.
Salzburg Global: What are the most helpful interventions so far in preventing youth violence?
Peter: There are a few things that are particularly sort of powerful according to the research we've been doing. For example, particular forms of therapy. A lot of the time, children's involvement in violence is related to their own experience of victimization or traumatic experiences in childhood. Therapies which address those issues and support children are particularly effective. There are also social skills and social-emotional development programs that work with children to support the development of social relationships and their ability to communicate well.
Peter Henderson and Laura Knight were participants at the Salzburg Global program "A Whole System Approach to Justice: Creating a Brighter and Safer Future for Today’s Youth," which is part of a multi-year series Global Innovations on Youth Violence, Safety and Justice initiative. The program was hosted in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the David Rockefeller Fund.
