Community Safety Serious Violence Fund 2026/27

This is an existing project, launched in April 2025 by Mind in Harrogate District, providing trauma informed, community based mental health support for young people. Current statutory and specialist social and emotional learning interventions for young people at risk of becoming involved in serious violence or already involved in it across North Yorkshire is largely online/telephone support, or through workshops or mentoring in education environments, with the only in-person specialist therapeutic provision focused on victims of crime, not clients at risk of becoming involved in serious violence based in Malton. Travel distance, cost, rural transport limitations and the need for parental involvement all restrict uptake, particularly for vulnerable young people.  This will enable project to expand local, non school based provision, bringing trauma informed counselling and structured wellbeing drop ins for young people at risk of becoming involved in serious violence directly into Harrogate and Ripon. This funding will reduce waiting times, improve accessibility for rural communities, and provide trusted safe spaces where young people can engage earlier. It will also strengthen preventative workshop delivery in local schools and youth settings, addressing risk factors linked to violence.  The service is designed and delivered using recognised trauma informed principles, ensuring young people feel safe, listened to and empowered, and that their experiences of trauma are understood within the context of their behaviour, relationships and wellbeing.  This project will deliver trauma-informed, community-based early intervention mental health support for young people aged 11–18 in Harrogate and Ripon who are at risk of becoming involved in serious violence or are already involved. It aims to reduce risk, harm and escalation into serious violence by providing accessible, trusted support to young people, helping them recognise harmful patterns, build healthier coping strategies and make safer choices before behaviours lead to further harm or involvement with the criminal justice system, aligning with Police and Crime Plan priorities.

Yorkshire Mentoring (YM) is established in York, but this is a new, specialist intervention specifically designed for Danesgate PRU and Inclusive Education. YM have identified a critical gap: there is currently no dedicated resource to support parents of PRU students who face the intersectionality of neurodiversity and serious violence risk. This project addresses this by introducing a Parental Advice and Information strand alongside intensive 1:1 parenting support to bridge the gap between home and school safeguarding. Furthermore, rather than just delivering sessions, YM will implement a Train the Trainer model. This builds long-term local capacity, equipping the York-based workforce with a suite of Home Office-approved resources to ensure the project leaves a permanent legacy of trauma-informed practice within the city’s alternative provision. Danesgate suggest using their established ‘Parent review days’.   1:1 mentoring utilises relational, consistent approaches to build trust, support emotional regulation, and promote resilience in high-need cohorts. Specific group interventions, such as Voices for Change, HFBL, and Wrong Look, Wrong Time, Wrong Place, are delivered with acute awareness of emotional triggers, encouraging reflection without retraumatisation.  Through the Train the Trainer model, YM will cascade these specialist interventions to staff at Danesgate PRU and York Youth Justice. This aligns with and enhances Danesgate’s existing trauma-informed language and restorative practices, ensuring professional training equips the wider system to understand how trauma impacts behaviour and vulnerability to exploitation. This approach ensures that all interventions are not only preventative but healing in nature, leaving a permanent legacy of compassionate practice in York.  Project specifically targets the intersectionality of neurodiversity and serious violence risk within alternative provision. By integrating Parental Support with staff Train-the-Trainer models, the protective network around the most vulnerable children in York is strengthened, ensuring a long-term, sustainable impact on local safeguarding capacity. Secured £6,000 in-kind match funding (20%) through York-based partners.

York BID’s Night Safe Officer programme is a proactive safety initiative designed to enhance public safety and support York’s evening and night time economy. Two SIA trained officers patrol the city centre every Friday and Saturday night from 8pm–2am, providing a visible, reassuring presence in areas with high footfall and concentrations of licensed premises. Their role is to identify and de escalate emerging issues, support vulnerable individuals, administer first aid, and act as a vital link between the public, businesses, door staff and emergency services. This approach has proven highly effective. In 2025 alone, officers responded to 144 hostile incidents, 176 disorderly behaviours, and 48 first aid cases.

This funding will cover 90% of the officer’s hours from July – New Year’s Day. The previous programme demonstrated that NSOs significantly reduce the burden on police and door staff, who frequently face high demand on weekend nights. Businesses have praised the officers’ professionalism, rapid response and ability to deter escalation, helping to maintain a safe and welcoming nighttime environment.Since launching in July 2025, York BID’s NSO programme has demonstrated a clear, measurable impact in improving safety within York’s evening and night time economy. This funding will allow York BID to extend and strengthen the programme by maintaining a consistent two officer deployment during peak hours and expanding support on high risk dates such as bank holidays. Evidence from the previous year shows that additional shifts were required to meet demand, with York BID covering overspend to ensure continuity of service. Continued funding will ensure this level of responsiveness is sustained.  The programme also delivers significant partnership value. Businesses, door staff and emergency services have described the NSOs as an asset and a trusted secondary support system that helps deter escalation and improve perceptions of safety. Renewed funding will build on this strong foundation, enabling York BID to continue delivering a proven, high impact safety intervention that directly supports the city’s community safety priorities.

North Yorkshire Sport and North Yorkshire Youth have identified a significant gap in community readiness across York and North Yorkshire to support some of our most vulnerable young people. Together, we will strengthen community provision, upskill the workforce and ensure young people are meaningfully included in positive opportunities across sport, physical activity and youth settings.  North Yorkshire Sport will support sports clubs to understand the Youth Endowment Fund Toolkit for sports interventions and help them open their provision, or increase capacity, for young people. Through the Youth in Community Network, we will identify three target clubs to receive further support from North Yorkshire Sport, North Yorkshire Youth and the wider team to deliver direct sport interventions for young people. Alongside this we will bring the Unity Gym principles; a research backed set of principles demonstrating a shared commitment and way of working to support young people and their families living in contexts of socioeconomic disadvantage, into our local settings.

Once organisations, partners and venues have been identified, we will assess knowledge gaps and North Yorkshire Youth will provide a training schedule to strengthen capability.  North Yorkshire Youth will also deploy a development worker, based in York, to help young people access these settings and activities. As York does not currently have as strong a network of youth settings, North Yorkshire Youth will deliver pop-up youth clubs for young people at risk of serious violence.  The sport intervention and workforce development will use a trauma-informed approach, recognising that many young people referred to the programme may have experienced adversity, instability, exclusion, violence, loss or other trauma that can affect behaviour, trust, emotional regulation and engagement. Delivery will prioritise physical and emotional safety, consistency, choice, collaboration and trusted relationships. Young people will be supported through predictable routines, clear boundaries, calm communication and strengths-based mentoring. The approach will focus on building trust over time, helping young people manage emotions, develop resilience, improve confidence, build positive peer relationships and feel more connected to their school and community. This approach will reduce risk, strengthen protective factors and create safe opportunities for young people to experience success, belonging and positive relationships with trusted adults. The interventions main target is to increase the number of opportunities for young people to take part in positive community activity. The Intervention will see young people joining existing groups and settings so groups sizes will vary. Young people will be embedded in their local community provision and it is hoped this will create long term behaviour changed and embedding these behaviours throughout childhood.  Where young people need further support, identified through a referral for specialist support or through the work with the mentor we will signpost on to experts to assist alongside this project.

Stepping Up is a model developed over time and is an early intervention and prevention tool supporting young people at risk of crime. This intervention will focus on young people vulnerable to the involvement in serious violence. Stepping up will use the power of sport, delivering a sports and mentoring based intervention aligned to the Youth Endowment Fund. It will work with children and young people aged 7-14 who are vulnerable to the involvement in violence, including siblings and associates of those already involved in crime. Regular, organised sport and physical activity will be used as a positive ‘hook’ into structured mentoring, group activity and wider support. Stepping Up will compliment the Change Direction intervention North Yorkshire Youth currently deliver by focussing on a lower age range and ensuring a joined up approach to referrals ensuring they are supported by the right model.

The project will adopt a trauma-informed approach by recognising that many young people referred into the intervention may have experienced adversity, instability, exclusion, violence, loss, or other forms of trauma which can affect behaviour, trust, emotional regulation and engagement. Delivery will therefore prioritise physical and emotional safety, consistency, choice, collaboration and trusted relationships. The intervention will be a direct prevention strategy diverting young people away from the environment and networks that support the engagement in crime and provide safe spaces, trusted adults and a positive peer network. It will develop social skills, essential life skills, motivation, resilience and improve overall mental and physical wellbeing. Staff in out community settings will become a mentor to these young people providing sustainability and longevity to the long standing community impact the project can have. The intervention will be tailored to the young people. The direct intervention with an Athlete mentor will end however the mentor will have worked to ensure the young person has positive community connections where volunteers, staff and peers will continue this mentoring role. Where young people need further support, identified through a referral for specialist support or through the work with the mentor we will signpost on to experts to assist alongside this project.

Change Direction is a diversionary mentoring programme for young people aged 10–17 who are at risk of entering the criminal justice system or engaging in anti-social behaviour (ASB). Using a trauma-informed approach, the programme addresses the underlying causes of offending behaviour, helping young people understand the consequences of their actions, make positive choices, and develop safer, more constructive pathways.  Funding will enable NYY to expand the existing programme and support an additional 20 young people over a six-month period, with a particular focus on those at risk of involvement in serious violence. Referrals will come primarily from North Yorkshire Police, alongside schools, Early Help, Social Care, and other North Yorkshire Council services.  The project will provide one-to-one therapeutic mentoring and trauma-informed talk therapy, tailored to the needs of each young person. Many participants will have experienced adversity, exclusion, bereavement, family instability, violence, or other traumatic experiences that impact their behaviour and wellbeing.

Support will focus on building trusted relationships, improving emotional regulation, increasing resilience and confidence, strengthening positive peer relationships, and encouraging engagement with education, training, and community activities. Young people will also be supported to access diversionary opportunities that channel their energy into positive pursuits.  In addition, pop-up youth clubs will provide accessible diversionary activities and informal opportunities for young people to engage with professionals. Boys’ and girls’ groups will offer targeted interventions for those requiring more intensive support.

Where safeguarding, mental health, or wider support needs are identified, mentors will work closely with families, schools, police, and specialist agencies to ensure appropriate support is in place. This coordinated approach aims to reduce ASB and offending, prevent escalation into serious violence, strengthen protective factors, and improve outcomes for vulnerable young people and their communities.

It Does Matter

North Yorkshire Police £12,500 (CS funding) – Countywide

North Yorkshire Police is developing a proactive initiative to tackle Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) through the early identification of potential sexual offenders and targeted intervention to prevent escalation. NYP recognise that low-contact and non-contact sexual offences are significantly underreported, with many victims believing their experiences are not serious enough to report or fearing they will not be believed. The It Does Matter campaign will encourage reporting, build trust and confidence in policing, and ensure every report is taken seriously. By identifying emerging patterns of harmful behaviour. NYP will work with schools, colleges, and Youth Justice Services to promote healthy relationships, consent, and behavioural change. Activity can be targeted using local data and evidence to areas of greatest need across the county, ensuring resources are focused where they will have the greatest impact. The project aims to increase awareness that all forms of sexual offending are unacceptable and will be treated seriously, while challenging attitudes and behaviours that contribute to a culture of sexism, misogyny, and violence against women and girls. It will encourage victims to come forward by reinforcing the message that they will be listened to, believed, supported, and taken seriously. Funding will enable North Yorkshire Police to maximise the reach of the campaign across York and North Yorkshire, including rural and hard-to-reach communities. It will support the use of proven digital engagement platforms, alongside the purchase and distribution of campaign materials across educational settings, public transport networks, community venues, and the night-time economy. Delivery will be informed by local intelligence and evidence, allowing resources to be targeted towards communities, locations, and emerging trends presenting the greatest risk. Data gathered throughout the campaign will improve understanding of harm and support future VAWG prevention activity across North Yorkshire through effective partnership working and early intervention.

Just ‘B’ Emotional Wellbeing Support for young people at alternative provision secondary schools, to help prevent them from becoming involved in or victims of serious violence.

North Yorkshire Hospice Just B £29,966.22 (SVD funding) – Harrogate

For the past year, dedicated Support Workers have been working in two schools to support young people in alternate provision who are either victims of, or are at risk of engaging in, violent behaviour. This project will allow the service to expand, upping provision to 2x Support Workers for 2x days p/w, providing early intervention to more young people to target the root causes of violent behaviour. The support is delivered flexibly, meeting the needs of the students to maximise engagement and includes one-to-one sessions, group work, informal contact e.g. being available at break or through supporting teaching staff in their interactions with students. The outcomes for the students will be:

• an understanding of what triggers their violent outbursts. Building techniques to better manage these triggers and gain an understanding of the potential consequences.
• Knowledge about when to ask for help and who they can turn to, avoiding crisis situations
• Understand how their choice of language can be inappropriate and may cause offence (leading to violent situations).
• Learn how to remove themselves (or seek help) from potentially violent situations, so that they can avoid becoming a perpetrator or victim.
• Understand how drug misuse negatively impacts behaviour and mental wellbeing and learn alternative ways of coping as opposed to misusing drugs and/or alcohol.

The overall aim of the project is to create a comprehensive support system that helps young people in all aspects of their life, but especially in how to prevent being involved with or victims of violence.