VRU 2021-2022 Funding Programme – Part 2

Key information

Reference code: PCD 1000

Date signed: Tuesday 22 June 2021

Decision by: Sophie Linden, Deputy Mayor, Policing and Crime

Executive summary

The VRU’s budget enables us to fund a range of ambitious and crucial programmes that are designed to improve the environments, relationships, or behaviours that, if unaddressed and unsupported, may otherwise lead to violence. The VRU approach to violence reduction means putting communities, young people and their families at the heart of tackling the issue; and particularly in those parts of London most affected – often taking a place-based approach to violence reduction.

On the 5th February 2021, the Home Office confirmed that they will be funding all 18 VRUs in England and Wales, the same amount (£35m) and using the same allocation formula as they had done for the previous two years. This would include £7m grant allocation for London VRU for 2021-2022, with full delivery in 2021-2022 once a VRU bid was agreed and grant agreements signed.

DMPC Decision PCD 945 set out how 6.5m of the Home Office funding would be allocated as well as confirmation of funding for a range of other programmes for the 2021-22 financial year. Since that Decision, the VRU has been provided with some additional Mayoral precept money and the Home Office funding for 2021-2022 has since been confirmed. This has enabled the VRU to review other available funding for projects within the 2021-22 financial year.

This decision sets out how the final £500,000 Home Office funding and this further funding as above will be allocated.

Recommendation

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to:

Approve decisions against our VRU Mayoral core fund and additional precept funding for 2021-2022:

• Approve direct grant allocation of £1,500,000 across selected Local Authorities not awarded MyEnds funding where there is agreement to receive, to support capacity building for incident response in the community and with local authorities and the MPS to critical incidents. This will be funded via £500,000 Home Office funding and £1,000,000 Mayoral precept, £1,000,000 for spend in 2021-2022 and £500,000 for spend in 2021-2023.

• Approve £500,000 direct grant allocation equally across the 32 Local Authorities where there is an agreement to receive funding, focused on developing parent/carer champion network projects through VCS organisations. This will be funded via Mayoral precept and will be in addition to the £500,000 funded via the Home Office 2021-2022 funding, confirmed in PCD 945. This will be for full spend in 2021-2022.

• Approve direct grant allocation of £100,000 to the London Borough of Islington for continuation of the joint Islington/Camden parent support pilot, funded via VRU Core Budget for full spend in-year.

• Approve direct grant allocation of £380,000 to IRIS for continuation of services until 31 March 2022, funded via VRU reserves unallocated budget for full spend in-year.

• Approve contract allocation of up to £60,000 for evaluation of a Mental Health community led parent/carer Pilot, funded via VRU Core Budget. With delegated authority to the VRU Director for awarding the contract to the successful provider, following a competitive commissioning process.

• Approve contract allocation of up to £100,000 for evaluation of the Community-led After School Fund, funded via VRU Core Budget. With delegated authority to the VRU Director for awarding the contract to the successful provider, following a competitive commissioning process.

• Approve contract allocation of up to £1,100,000 (£550,000 per year delivery) for a Youth Practitioners’ Leadership Programme, funded via VRU Core Budget for an initial 12 months delivery. With the option for the VRU to extend for a further 12 months. With delegated authority to the VRU Director for awarding the contract to the successful provider, following a competitive commissioning process.

• Approve contract allocation of £1,000,000 to support young people impacted by domestic abuse and to inform the recommissioning of the MOPAC CYP victims service, funded via Mayoral precept for full spend over 12 months commencing in 2021-22 ending 2022-23. With delegated authority to the VRU Director for awarding the contract to the successful provider, following a competitive commissioning process.

Non-confidential facts and advice to the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC)

1. Introduction and background

1.1 The VRU’s budget enables us to fund a range of ambitious and crucial programmes that are designed to improve the environments, relationships, or behaviours that, if unaddressed and unsupported, may otherwise lead to violence.

1.2 The VRUs approach to violence reduction means putting communities, young people and their families at the heart of tackling the issue; and particularly in those parts of London most affected – often taking a place-based approach to violence reduction. This includes work programme interventions to support those neighbourhoods which have experienced sustained and high levels of violence. To help us achieve this, we have provided greater clarity on our focus this year and going forward, which we have gained from the publicised Strategic Needs Assessment, Review of Homicide Reviews, our extensive community engagement programme and recent significant global challenges.

1.3 The VRU work programme takes into consideration a consistent review of the challenges we face and how they relate to young people impacted by violence. COVID-19 has had a significant and unprecedented impact on London and London’s communities, families and young people.

1.4 When we think about young people and the community in which they live, they are largely influenced and impacted by the key relationships in their life and the context in which they present themselves; now more than ever as a result of COVID-19. The VRU has therefore focused their priorities on those key relationships and hope to build on the support they may bring as underpinned by a public health approach. Such relationships include: Parents/Carers, Teachers, Peers/Community, Youth Practitioners. Many of the opportunities we hope to fund for 2021/2022 build on these relationships further.

1.5 These relationships all link to the wider whole family approach and need for keeping young people in education and reducing exclusions, and better equipping and recognising youth practitioners for a consistent approach.

Our work plan is therefore divided into five key priority areas:

1. Youth Work

2. Education, Schools and Settings

3. Early Intervention and Whole Family

4. Neighbourhoods & Local violence Reduction Plans

5. Young People – giving them their voice

1.6 The VRU currently utilise the Mayoral annual £5,000,000 contribution towards staffing and sustainable approaches for violence reduction by enabling programmes to spread their spend over a multi-year delivery plan; in line with a long-term public health approach to violence reduction. Additional funding of £2,500,000 from the Mayoral Precept will allow for further investment to be made where needs have been identified, in order to support our young people and the key relationships they have in their lives.

1.7 The VRU is seeking to fund eight programmes of work utilising the remaining £500,000 Home Office funding, £2,500,000 Mayoral precept, £810,000 of VRU Core Budget, and £380,000 from VRU reserves unallocated budget.

These include:

1. Capacity building for incident response in the community and with local authorities and the MPS to critical incidents.

2. Developing parent/carer champion network projects through VCS organisations, available across all 32 boroughs.

3. Funding to the London Borough of Islington for continuation of the joint Islington/Camden parent support pilot, which began last financial year and will continue for full 2021/22 delivery.

4. Funding to IRIS for the continuation of services at our phase 1 and 2 funded sites to align service end dates until 31 March 2022.

5. Evaluation of a Mental Health community led parent/carer pilot, which will commence within the current financial year.

6. Evaluation of the Community-led After School Fund, which will commence within the current financial year.

7. Delivery of a Youth Practitioners’ Leadership Programme, as a training offer for youth workers in London so they are more skilled, supported and recognised as a professional sector which in turn helps to address their workforce needs. Commencing within this financial year.

8. Commissioning of a programme across London, to support young people impacted by domestic abuse, for delivery over 12 months.

2. Overview of requests & funding

2.1 Table 1 and 2 below provides an overview of recommendations for additional 2021-2022 commissioned activity (in line with MOPAC’s Contract Regulations).

Table 1: Overview of recommendations for 2021-2022 commissioned activity

VRU objective	VRU Key priority	Intervention	Proposed Additional Budget	Recommendation
All/ Enable communities to be strong, safe and resilient	Neighbourhoods	Capacity building for incident response	£1,500,000	New activity, grant agreements with local authorities
All/ Supporting Stronger Families	Early Intervention and Whole Family	Developing parent/carer champion networks	£500,000	Renewed activity. 32 grant agreements
All/ Supporting Stronger Families	Early Intervention and Whole Family	Joint Islington/Camden parent support pilot	£100,000	Continue and uplift. Grant extension
All/ Supporting Stronger Families	Early Intervention and Whole Family	Evaluation of a Mental Health community led parent/carer pilot	£60,000	New Activity, commissioned through contract
All/ Enable communities to be strong, safe and resilient	Neighbourhoods Other	Evaluation of Community-led After Schools Fund	£100,000	New Activity, commissioned through contract
Giving young people every chance to succeed	Youth Work	Youth Practitioners’ Leadership Programme	£550,000	Renewed activity, commissioned through contract
All/ Supporting Stronger Families	Early Intervention and Whole Family	Support young people impacted by domestic abuse	£1,000,000	New activity, commissioned through contract
Supporting Stronger Families	Early Intervention and Whole Family	IRIS	£380,000	Continue and uplift. Grant extension
		TOTAL 21/22 funding	£4,190,000

Table 2: Rationale for funded activity

Intervention	Rationale for 2021-2022 funded activity
Capacity building for incident response	In some parts of London, we know that violence is very localised and is often concentrated in areas as small as an estate or a cluster of streets and for effective, long term impact to tackle violence, there needs to be strong, local, collaborative work. The funding is for locally designed interventions in neighbourhoods affected by high and sustained levels of violence. Providing additional capacity building to support incident response in the community, through robust partnership approach, and to increase trust and collaboration between local communities, stakeholders, key local institutions, and statutory partners. This funding is to help progress additional community engagement, as well as supporting outreach through organisations coming together, providing training and development of champions as well as supporting strong and sustainable local networks of community members so that they are well placed to respond to local emerging needs and help advance and test new initiatives to tackle serious youth violence. The funding will be allocated directly to Local Authorities, to support 24 boroughs that were not successful in My Ends. This will allow other areas to develop smaller programmes that have similar principles to My Ends in relation to a focussed area of work and collaboration, provide some capacity and test a concept. This will be assessed as we continue to develop the spec and consultation process. A bid from each of the 24 Local Authorities would provide a minimum funding envelop of £62,500, with final amount being confirmed upon assessment of all successful applications. Boroughs can only submit 1 proposal. Through this fund partners will be able to develop a blueprint that they will be able to replicate in other areas locally and establish a best practise framework. Through this funding we are aiming to support outcomes linked to More collaborative responses to tackling violence- more partners involved in shaping responses, who are connected and are collectively leading programmes that are reducing violence. Strong and sustainable local networks of community members that help advance and test new initiatives to tackle serious youth violence. Greater capacity within the community networks and partnerships- Networks/partnerships are better equipped to monitor and adapt to emerging needs and, through them, people know that help is available, how to access it, and it is appropriate.
Developing parent/carer champion networks	An additional £500,000 of Mayoral Precept funding will bring the total allocation to £1m across 32 boroughs over 6 months for the place-based parent/carer networks. This will allow at least just over £31,250 per borough if all 32 were to accept. Local authorities may match fund the programme to allow for an additional 6 months of delivery. Additional funding will empower grassroots parent support organisations to further develop consistent standards, enable scale up and provide a stronger evidence based for peer-to-peer support. The local authorities will also have the opportunity to embed the approach into their Early Help Strategies, develop local and strategic partnerships, and ensure there is a pool of trained and confident parent champions who feel empowered to sustain the networks going forward. The funding will also enable parent champions to embed new virtual/socially distanced ways of working forced by COVID-19, provide vital support to marginalised and minoritised parents and carers across most of London through a mechanism they trust and can access and enable boroughs to explore partnership approaches following introduction and good practice learning event.
Joint Islington/Camden parent support pilot	This pilot has created a VRU Parental Support service contextualising their delivery to reach out to parents and carers across Islington and Camden by developing their skills and sharing their talents as Parent Champions across local communities and professionals. In Year One the project has tested new ways of working with families affected by youth violence, through a community-based peer-to-peer support approach. They have addressed a range of factors including social determinants of health to address adverse community environments to build evidence on these in the context of a public health approach to violence reduction. In 2020-2021 The Parental Support project engaged with 51 families. 13 talented parents/carers signed up to be parent champions. The support team will build on the progress to date to continue to deliver the project objectives and the outcomes for the families. With additional funding of £100k the second year Activity Plan is ambitious and creative including: Caseloads to be reduced from 30 to 20 families for each parental support worker due to the level of complexity and issues of families referred to date. The reduction in caseload will provide an increase in time spent with each family. Parent Champions will be co-producing the group activities with parents from April 2021 and managing a small budget New dates for the social switch programme across the year delivering Social Media Awareness Raising and Training with the target of training 100 parents by the end of the programme IT Support and training for staff and parents peer leads recruited Training parents how to keep their children and young people safe – Diversion and Risk Awareness training Welfare and Benefits webinars across the year Strengthening Community Conferences Mental Health Support – a clinician providing consultation to project staff Mental Health support to families helping families to recover and repair from the harm of the pandemic The team have led the way to ensure that service users can access the best opportunities and services to support the best outcomes they deserve, so they are able to make positive changes for the best interests of their families. For young people on the transitions programme the team have worked to increase access to positive activities and build their resilience so they are able to reach their goals when settling into secondary school with improved confidence, self-esteem and emotional well-being in September 2021. 2021/22 will see the continuation of the partnership with Parent House established in Quarter 3 2020/21. Parent House trained a group of parents to be Knife Crime Ambassadors. The project has been privy to other community projects within both boroughs such as Camden Against Violence, Wellness Action Alliance Group, and the British Somali Group. Ongoing stronger links will be developed over the next few months which will help with the process of sign posting parents/carers to be aware of where to go for different levels of support within their local community.
IRIS extension	This variation is seeking to extend both phase one and two sites of delivery until 31 March 2022. Currently phase 1 sites are due to cease service provision August and September with phase 2 sites due to end service provision November 2022. The additional funding (PCD 787) would allow for additional service delivery across London, as well as allow further time for the provision evaluation to include a comprehensive survivor consultation stages to feed into the final evaluation. As well as more time for IRIS and the VRU to work with local funders and commissioners to build the case for local funding and sustainability of IRIS programmes in each site. Staff retention will also be more likely if the service continues until March 2022 as there is less chance in service/delivery gaps as the provision should know about a continuation of funding opportunities towards the end of 2021. This is largely beneficial for victims and survivors across the sites whereby a reduction in risk of service gap; whereby ceasing in November would almost certainly have resulted in service gap between November 2021 – April 2022.
Evaluation of a Mental Health community led parent/carer pilot	The VRU allocated £255k for the piloting of a place-based community mental health and emotional wellbeing project for parents/carers from marginalised and/or minoritised backgrounds for delivery of up to 24 months to year ending March 2023 (PCD853). The pilot will provide support to parent, carers and responsible adults in CYP’s lives, build capacity and aim to develop clear practices that develop trust between PCR’s and services who provide mental health and emotional well-being services. An additional fund has been allocated for an evaluation of the pilot. The evaluation will be delivered in two parts, a review at the end of the first year's delivery with recommendations to be fed into year two providing refreshed targets in response to lessons learned and, a full evaluation to be submitted in June 2023 following the end of the pilot. The pilot is about increasing equity across partnerships, community networks and systems and aims to empower the voluntary community sector, so they are well placed to respond to local emerging needs and strengthen connections and feelings of belonging to improve mental and emotional wellbeing of marginalised and minoritised communities. The Unit is seeking to commission an external evaluation partner in order to undertake the evaluation of the pilot. The evaluation partner will be required to work in close collaboration with the appointed provider, in order to develop a suitable evaluation framework for this programme. A contract up to the value of £60,000 will be awarded on completion of a competitive tendering process.
Youth Practitioners’ Leadership Programme	DMPC decision PCD 673 & PCD 759 allocated £550,000 to develop a pilot ‘Youth Practitioners Leadership Programme’. This programme aimed to develop an evidenced-based training and leadership programme for the youth sector who work in communities affected by violence by drawing on specific professional learning. The intention of the pilot programme and expected benefits included: Improving the knowledge and skill base of youth practitioners. Embedding the principles of a trauma-informed practice in the youth sector workforce. Empowering the youth sector with added capacity and accessibility to high quality training and development. Creating youth sector leaders of the future. Ensure a partnership response to encourage co-production within London’s youth sector. The existing pilot commenced in September 2020 and concludes in August 2021. Building on the practice of pilot programme, the Unit is seeking to contract a consortium partnership to deliver a renewed leadership programme commencing in this financial year. The purpose is to continue our investment in the youth sector, increasing the opportunities for frontline youth practitioners to lead change. A commissioning programme is aimed to commence in June 2021, with the aim of appointing a Provider to progress the delivery of learning and benefit from the current contract. The route of procurement will be compliant Open Procurement process to engage a wide range of providers in submitting tenders for the delivery of a new service. We intend to strengthen the programme to include: A sharper focus on community drivers of violence. Sharing local models/interventions in responding to and preventing violence. Strengthening our partnerships with grassroots organisations working with young people affected by violence. Increasing the inclusion of BAME-led organisations. Working closely with the My Ends consortiums to complement the Unit’s place-based approach with expert staff development. Embedding peer led interaction: Youth practitioners leading aspects of training. Developing optional accredited qualifications course add-ons. Further, the leadership programme will fund the creation of a Youth Practitioners Advisory Board to support learning from frontline youth practitioners. The Youth Practitioner Advisory Board will provide consultation to help to ensure the London Violence Reduction Unit is listening and learning to emerging trends by taking a collegiate approach, whilst incorporating additional learning and career development opportunities for board members, inclusive of keynote speaking, bursaries for learning and development, executive mentorship and strategic stakeholder work placements. Their purpose will be to inform, support and influence the VRU about the key programmes and best practice that are in existence already and explore other environments and opportunities that can be developed and shared, with a commitment of time pledged to contribute to VRU key priorities.
Evaluation of Community-led After School Fund	Building on the insight gained and learnings from previous funds, the VRU is investing £1.38 million for a one-year fund (PCD 821) for community-led groups to support those young Londoners most in-need, providing them with skills, opportunities and support in the hours after-school, which evidence suggest is a high-risk period of becoming involved in or being a victim of violence. The Community-led After School Fund aims to improve educational outcomes, employability prospects and mental health and wellbeing for young people between 10-24 who may be at risk of/have experienced serious violence, exploitation and/or grooming. This fund will also aim to support the development of small organisations and to build a sustainable programme of activity to benefit young people across London. The fund offers capacity building support to guide organisations in project development and delivery process, as well as wider organisational support. To support this programme the Unit is seeking to commission an external evaluation partner in order to undertake an evaluation of the programme’s outcomes, as well as an impact evaluation of the individual interventions delivered. The evaluation partner will be required to work in close collaboration with the appointed Grant Management Team, Rocket Science and BTEG, in order to develop a suitable evaluation framework for this programme. A contract up to the value of £100,000 will be awarded on completion of a competitive tendering process. The evaluation will be completed by September 2022.
Support Young People impacted by Domestic Abuse	The VRU funding for CYP Impacted by Domestic Abuse (DA) seeks to identify a single provider who will develop a service that supports children and young people who have been impacted by domestic abuse. The provider will need to consider the funding pot of £1,000,0000 and how it will be shared across boroughs with the highest incidence of domestic abuse and reports of children who have witnessed a parent experiencing DA in the home. The lead provider will decide how to share the funding i.e., to a lead consortia borough who funds the voluntary sector or directly to the voluntary sector. A commissioning programme is aimed to commence September 2021, with the aim of appointing a provider to progress the contract. The route of procurement will be compliant Open Procurement process to engage a wide range of providers and consortiums, submitting tenders for the delivery of this new service. This service will interface with the wider MOPAC commissioned CYP victim service, and as an innovation programme will inform the upcoming recommissioning of the umbrella service. Through our experience of running the pan-London Children & Young People Service (CYP Service) we recognise that children experiencing DA want opportunities to talk. They want to be listened to and to be taken seriously – fears that they will not be and concerns about confidentiality inhibit disclosure and help-seeking. This project will allow us to expand our reach and will enable us to sensitively address children’s needs and concerns, once they have been identified through the work the IDVAs are doing with their mothers. Aims of the Service are to: Provide safe spaces for children to share experience, be delivered by a culturally diverse and competent organisation and Work with Schools/Colleges and Crime Diversion Teams. Projected Outcomes for CYP Improved mental health Increased self-confidence Ambition Expectations in Life Self-worth Preventative Outcomes Breaking generational cycle of violence To develop CYP’s Trust, Respect and Confidentiality Creating safe spaces to talk The project group includes representatives from the YPAG who will offer their input into the development of the Service Specification (and the ITT) alongside MOPAC VAWG team and Victim Support managers. Consultation will involve voluntary sector organisations and local authority leads, such as the VAWG sector, Woman’s Trust, West London Action for Children, Children’s Services within local authorities and representatives from Children’s Homes.

Intervention

Rationale for 2021-2022 funded activity

Capacity building for incident response

In some parts of London, we know that violence is very localised and is often concentrated in areas as small as an estate or a cluster of streets and for effective, long term impact to tackle violence, there needs to be strong, local, collaborative work.

The funding is for locally designed interventions in neighbourhoods affected by high and sustained levels of violence. Providing additional capacity building to support incident response in the community, through robust partnership approach, and to increase trust and collaboration between local communities, stakeholders, key local institutions, and statutory partners.

This funding is to help progress additional community engagement, as well as supporting outreach through organisations coming together, providing training and development of champions as well as supporting strong and sustainable local networks of community members so that they are well placed to respond to local emerging needs and help advance and test new initiatives to tackle serious youth violence.

The funding will be allocated directly to Local Authorities, to support 24 boroughs that were not successful in My Ends. This will allow other areas to develop smaller programmes that have similar principles to My Ends in relation to a focussed area of work and collaboration, provide some capacity and test a concept. This will be assessed as we continue to develop the spec and consultation process.

A bid from each of the 24 Local Authorities would provide a minimum funding envelop of £62,500, with final amount being confirmed upon assessment of all successful applications. Boroughs can only submit 1 proposal. Through this fund partners will be able to develop a blueprint that they will be able to replicate in other areas locally and establish a best practise framework.

Through this funding we are aiming to support outcomes linked to

More collaborative responses to tackling violence- more partners involved in shaping responses, who are connected and are collectively leading programmes that are reducing violence.
Strong and sustainable local networks of community members that help advance and test new initiatives to tackle serious youth violence.
Greater capacity within the community networks and partnerships- Networks/partnerships are better equipped to monitor and adapt to emerging needs and, through them, people know that help is available, how to access it, and it is appropriate.

Developing parent/carer champion networks

An additional £500,000 of Mayoral Precept funding will bring the total allocation to £1m across 32 boroughs over 6 months for the place-based parent/carer networks. This will allow at least just over £31,250 per borough if all 32 were to accept. Local authorities may match fund the programme to allow for an additional 6 months of delivery.

Additional funding will empower grassroots parent support organisations to further develop consistent standards, enable scale up and provide a stronger evidence based for peer-to-peer support. The local authorities will also have the opportunity to embed the approach into their Early Help Strategies, develop local and strategic partnerships, and ensure there is a pool of trained and confident parent champions who feel empowered to sustain the networks going forward.

The funding will also enable parent champions to embed new virtual/socially distanced ways of working forced by COVID-19, provide vital support to marginalised and minoritised parents and carers across most of London through a mechanism they trust and can access and enable boroughs to explore partnership approaches following introduction and good practice learning event.

Joint Islington/Camden parent support pilot

This pilot has created a VRU Parental Support service contextualising their delivery to reach out to parents and carers across Islington and Camden by developing their skills and sharing their talents as Parent Champions across local communities and professionals. In Year One the project has tested new ways of working with families affected by youth violence, through a community-based peer-to-peer support approach. They have addressed a range of factors including social determinants of health to address adverse community environments to build evidence on these in the context of a public health approach to violence reduction.

In 2020-2021 The Parental Support project engaged with 51 families. 13 talented parents/carers signed up to be parent champions. The support team will build on the progress to date to continue to deliver the project objectives and the outcomes for the families.

With additional funding of £100k the second year Activity Plan is ambitious and creative including:

Caseloads to be reduced from 30 to 20 families for each parental support worker due to the level of complexity and issues of families referred to date. The reduction in caseload will provide an increase in time spent with each family.
Parent Champions will be co-producing the group activities with parents from April 2021 and managing a small budget
New dates for the social switch programme across the year delivering Social Media Awareness Raising and Training with the target of training 100 parents by the end of the programme
IT Support and training for staff and parents peer leads recruited
Training parents how to keep their children and young people safe – Diversion and Risk Awareness training
Welfare and Benefits webinars across the year
Strengthening Community Conferences
Mental Health Support – a clinician providing consultation to project staff
Mental Health support to families helping families to recover and repair from the harm of the pandemic

The team have led the way to ensure that service users can access the best opportunities and services to support the best outcomes they deserve, so they are able to make positive changes for the best interests of their families. For young people on the transitions programme the team have worked to increase access to positive activities and build their resilience so they are able to reach their goals when settling into secondary school with improved confidence, self-esteem and emotional well-being in September 2021.

2021/22 will see the continuation of the partnership with Parent House established in Quarter 3 2020/21. Parent House trained a group of parents to be Knife Crime Ambassadors.

The project has been privy to other community projects within both boroughs such as Camden Against Violence, Wellness Action Alliance Group, and the British Somali Group. Ongoing stronger links will be developed over the next few months which will help with the process of sign posting parents/carers to be aware of where to go for different levels of support within their local community.

IRIS extension

This variation is seeking to extend both phase one and two sites of delivery until 31 March 2022. Currently phase 1 sites are due to cease service provision August and September with phase 2 sites due to end service provision November 2022.

The additional funding (PCD 787) would allow for additional service delivery across London, as well as allow further time for the provision evaluation to include a comprehensive survivor consultation stages to feed into the final evaluation. As well as more time for IRIS and the VRU to work with local funders and commissioners to build the case for local funding and sustainability of IRIS programmes in each site.

Staff retention will also be more likely if the service continues until March 2022 as there is less chance in service/delivery gaps as the provision should know about a continuation of funding opportunities towards the end of 2021. This is largely beneficial for victims and survivors across the sites whereby a reduction in risk of service gap; whereby ceasing in November would almost certainly have resulted in service gap between November 2021 – April 2022.

Evaluation of a Mental Health community led parent/carer pilot

The VRU allocated £255k for the piloting of a place-based community mental health and emotional wellbeing project for parents/carers from marginalised and/or minoritised backgrounds for delivery of up to 24 months to year ending March 2023 (PCD853). The pilot will provide support to parent, carers and responsible adults in CYP’s lives, build capacity and aim to develop clear practices that develop trust between PCR’s and services who provide mental health and emotional well-being services.

An additional fund has been allocated for an evaluation of the pilot. The evaluation will be delivered in two parts, a review at the end of the first year's delivery with recommendations to be fed into year two providing refreshed targets in response to lessons learned and, a full evaluation to be submitted in June 2023 following the end of the pilot. The pilot is about increasing equity across partnerships, community networks and systems and aims to empower the voluntary community sector, so they are well placed to respond to local emerging needs and strengthen connections and feelings of belonging to improve mental and emotional wellbeing of marginalised and minoritised communities.

The Unit is seeking to commission an external evaluation partner in order to undertake the evaluation of the pilot. The evaluation partner will be required to work in close collaboration with the appointed provider, in order to develop a suitable evaluation framework for this programme. A contract up to the value of £60,000 will be awarded on completion of a competitive tendering process.

Youth Practitioners’ Leadership Programme

DMPC decision PCD 673 & PCD 759 allocated £550,000 to develop a pilot ‘Youth Practitioners Leadership Programme’. This programme aimed to develop an evidenced-based training and leadership programme for the youth sector who work in communities affected by violence by drawing on specific professional learning. The intention of the pilot programme and expected benefits included:

Improving the knowledge and skill base of youth practitioners.
Embedding the principles of a trauma-informed practice in the youth sector workforce.
Empowering the youth sector with added capacity and accessibility to high quality training and development.
Creating youth sector leaders of the future.
Ensure a partnership response to encourage co-production within London’s youth sector.

The existing pilot commenced in September 2020 and concludes in August 2021. Building on the practice of pilot programme, the Unit is seeking to contract a consortium partnership to deliver a renewed leadership programme commencing in this financial year. The purpose is to continue our investment in the youth sector, increasing the opportunities for frontline youth practitioners to lead change. A commissioning programme is aimed to commence in June 2021, with the aim of appointing a Provider to progress the delivery of learning and benefit from the current contract. The route of procurement will be compliant Open Procurement process to engage a wide range of providers in submitting tenders for the delivery of a new service.

We intend to strengthen the programme to include:

A sharper focus on community drivers of violence. Sharing local models/interventions in responding to and preventing violence.
Strengthening our partnerships with grassroots organisations working with young people affected by violence.
Increasing the inclusion of BAME-led organisations.
Working closely with the My Ends consortiums to complement the Unit’s place-based approach with expert staff development.

Embedding peer led interaction: Youth practitioners leading aspects of training.
Developing optional accredited qualifications course add-ons.

Further, the leadership programme will fund the creation of a Youth Practitioners Advisory Board to support learning from frontline youth practitioners. The Youth Practitioner Advisory Board will provide consultation to help to ensure the London Violence Reduction Unit is listening and learning to emerging trends by taking a collegiate approach, whilst incorporating additional learning and career development opportunities for board members, inclusive of keynote speaking, bursaries for learning and development, executive mentorship and strategic stakeholder work placements.

Their purpose will be to inform, support and influence the VRU about the key programmes and best practice that are in existence already and explore other environments and opportunities that can be developed and shared, with a commitment of time pledged to contribute to VRU key priorities.

Evaluation of Community-led After School Fund

Building on the insight gained and learnings from previous funds, the VRU is investing £1.38 million for a one-year fund (PCD 821) for community-led groups to support those young Londoners most in-need, providing them with skills, opportunities and support in the hours after-school, which evidence suggest is a high-risk period of becoming involved in or being a victim of violence.

The Community-led After School Fund aims to improve educational outcomes, employability prospects and mental health and wellbeing for young people between 10-24 who may be at risk of/have experienced serious violence, exploitation and/or grooming. This fund will also aim to support the development of small organisations and to build a sustainable programme of activity to benefit young people across London. The fund offers capacity building support to guide organisations in project development and delivery process, as well as wider organisational support.

To support this programme the Unit is seeking to commission an external evaluation partner in order to undertake an evaluation of the programme’s outcomes, as well as an impact evaluation of the individual interventions delivered. The evaluation partner will be required to work in close collaboration with the appointed Grant Management Team, Rocket Science and BTEG, in order to develop a suitable evaluation framework for this programme. A contract up to the value of £100,000 will be awarded on completion of a competitive tendering process. The evaluation will be completed by September 2022.

Support Young People impacted by Domestic Abuse

The VRU funding for CYP Impacted by Domestic Abuse (DA) seeks to identify a single provider who will develop a service that supports children and young people who have been impacted by domestic abuse. The provider will need to consider the funding pot of £1,000,0000 and how it will be shared across boroughs with the highest incidence of domestic abuse and reports of children who have witnessed a parent experiencing DA in the home. The lead provider will decide how to share the funding i.e., to a lead consortia borough who funds the voluntary sector or directly to the voluntary sector.

A commissioning programme is aimed to commence September 2021, with the aim of appointing a provider to progress the contract. The route of procurement will be compliant Open Procurement process to engage a wide range of providers and consortiums, submitting tenders for the delivery of this new service.

This service will interface with the wider MOPAC commissioned CYP victim service, and as an innovation programme will inform the upcoming recommissioning of the umbrella service.

Through our experience of running the pan-London Children & Young People Service (CYP Service) we recognise that children experiencing DA want opportunities to talk. They want to be listened to and to be taken seriously – fears that they will not be and concerns about confidentiality inhibit disclosure and help-seeking. This project will allow us to expand our reach and will enable us to sensitively address children’s needs and concerns, once they have been identified through the work the IDVAs are doing with their mothers. Aims of the Service are to: Provide safe spaces for children to share experience, be delivered by a culturally diverse and competent organisation and Work with Schools/Colleges and Crime Diversion Teams.

Projected Outcomes for CYP

Improved mental health
Increased self-confidence
Ambition
Expectations in Life
Self-worth
Preventative Outcomes
Breaking generational cycle of violence
To develop CYP’s Trust, Respect and Confidentiality
Creating safe spaces to talk

The project group includes representatives from the YPAG who will offer their input into the development of the Service Specification (and the ITT) alongside MOPAC VAWG team and Victim Support managers. Consultation will involve voluntary sector organisations and local authority leads, such as the VAWG sector, Woman’s Trust, West London Action for Children, Children’s Services within local authorities and representatives from Children’s Homes.

3. Issues for consideration

3.1 On the 5th February 2021 the Home Office confirmed the same allocation of funding to all 18 VRUs as the previous two years, using the same allocation formula. This would equate to £7m available for the London VRU to bid for. The VRU have worked hard to review current programmes of work, assessing, establishing and rationalising gaps in delivery against our objectives and priorities where apparent and evidence via research and analysis; and discuss feedback and thoughts with community groups, VCS and public sector partners and stakeholders.

3.2 PCD 945 set out how £6,500,000 of the Home Office funding would be spent. This proposal sets out how the remaining £500,000 will be spent, as well as an additional £2,500,000 allocated to the VRU through Mayoral precept, plus £810,000 of the VRU’s core budget and £380,000 from VRU unallocated reserves fund. The VRU will therefore work as fast as possible with partners to enable programme delivery rapidly, to allow full delivery to commence within 2021-2022 and also full spend where that is set out in the recommendations. This would also allow for ongoing support to young people and Londoners who benefit from London VRU funded interventions.

4. Financial Comments

4.1 Table 1 above lists the projects proposed to be funded through this decision. Table 3 below shows the funding source for each project which makes up the 2021/22 and 2022/23 budget.

Table 3 (See PDF file)

The funding source totals as shown in Table 3 are included within the VRU’s approved 2021/22 budget with the exception of the carry forward 2020/21 funding and the VRU Reserves funding, approval of both funding sources are subject to a pending separate DMPC decision. Any project overspends will be contained within the VRU’s core budget.

5. Legal Comments

5.1. Paragraph 4.8 (8) and 4.13 (1), (2) of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to:

• Approve bids for grant funding made and all offers made of grant funding; and/or where appropriate a strategy for grant giving.

• Approve the strategy for the award of individual grants and/ or the award of all individual grants whether to secure or contribute to securing crime reduction in London or for other purposes.

• The procurement strategy for all revenue and capital contracts of a total value of £500,000 or above, such determination to include decisions on the criteria and methodology to be adopted in the tendering process, any exemptions from procurement requirements, and any necessary contract extensions.

• All requests to go out to tender for contracts of £500,000 or above, or where there is a particular public interest.

5.2 MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Chief Executive has delegated authority for;

• As per Paragraph 5.5, the approval of: Business cases for revenue or capital expenditure for MOPAC expenditure of £50,000 to £499,999

• As per Paragraph 5.12, The approval of: The procurement strategy for all MOPAC revenue and capital contracts of a total value of between £50,000 and £499,999.

6. Commercial Issues

6.1. Paragraph 4.13 (5) of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve all unforeseen variations and extensions to contracts with an original value of £500,000 or above, when the variation or extension is greater than 10% of the original value and/or is for a period of more than 12 months.

6.2. Whilst there are two grant variations (Islington Council and IRIS), this is in line with the above detailed in 6.1, as well as contract exemption options available to us according to the MOPAC Contract Regulations section 3.1 in conjunction with section 8.22 - (See section 4) and in the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation (See Annex 1).

6.3. The evidence provided to support these awards have been provided in Table 2 and is satisfactory to justify the decisions.

6.4 The Capacity Building services to support the delivery of Incident Response across 24 Boroughs services will be delivered through grant awards to all boroughs not awarded the MyEnds funding, teasing out critical local issues through a compliant grant award process. The Parent/Carer champions network funding will also be delivered through grant awards as an opportunity for all 32 boroughs.

6.5 The VRU intends to conduct an Open competitive tendering process to award a contract or identify a contractual delivery partner to deliver the services in line with the objectives of the VRU on the Rise Up contract (similar service currently delivered through a Pilot Scheme), CYP impacted by Domestic Abuse award, Evaluation of a Mental Health community led parent/carer pilot, and the Evaluation of Community-led After School Fund Contracts.

6.6 The standard MOPAC tendering evaluation criteria of Quality 70% and Price 30% will be adopted. The process will comply with the Public Contract and Regulations 2015 (PCR 2015), with award selections to include, Responsible Procurement requirements; payment of London Living Wage to all staff delivering to the contract, awareness of Modern Day Slavery, delivery of Social Value and all aspects of ethical procurement delivery.

6.7 The award of contract to deliver Rise Up is aimed for up to 2 years at an annual value of £550,000 and a total value of £1,100,000. Subsequent continuity of delivery will be subject to continued relevance of service and approval of the DPMC. While the 2 Evaluation Contracts will also run over 2 years in support of the services to be evaluated.

7. Public Health Approach

7.1 London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) is taking a public health approach to violence reduction, that is contextual; looking at the context and influences that impact on individuals at significant points in their life. 

7.2 Evidence-based practice is fundamental to the implementation of a public health approach to reducing violence. Therefore, more research including the delivery and gather of good practice and ‘what works’ is required to deepen and broaden the evidence base around violence reduction, diversion and prevention in London. The delivery to date for these programmes still require further support to address the ‘what works’ question and support ongoing good practise.

7.3 The key areas which are being focussed on as part of this approach are: 

1. Youth Work

2. Education, Schools and Settings

3. Early Intervention and Whole Family

4. Neighbourhoods & Local violence Reduction Plans

5. Young People – giving them their voice

8.1 MOPAC will adhere to the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 and ensure that any organisations who are commissioned to do work with or on behalf of MOPAC are fully compliant with the policy and understand their GDPR responsibilities

9. Equality Comments

9.1 MOPAC is required to comply with the public sector equality duty set out in section 149(1) of the Equality Act 2010. This requires MOPAC to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations by reference to people with protected characteristics. The protected characteristics are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

9.2 All programmes being extended have had initial screening around equality impact and it was established that a full EQIA was not required. Initial screening for new programmes will be undertaken to establish if a full EQIA is required.

9.3 The VRU, along with MOPAC, have commissioned EDI consultants to work with the teams to develop training, awareness and recommendations for future work programme and action plan developments to ensure the VRU are developing their equality, diversity and inclusion work practices as much as possible going forward. For both the team and stakeholders, as well as for the Londoners we serve.

10. Background/supporting papers

N/A

Signed decision document

PCD 1000 VRU 21-22 FUNDING PROGRAMME PART 2 - 374.22 KB

PCD 1000 VRU 21-22 Funding Programme Part 2