Issue details

In recognition of the positive impact that sport can have on young people’s experiences, and its essential role in helping many young people to avoid negative situations, peer contacts, and routines and help to prevent involvement in youth offending, the VRU would like to build on our previous investments in this area, by allocating £600,000 of funding across three years (in 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25).

In line with the Strategic Needs Assessment findings, this would enable the VRU Community Sport Lead to continue to explore opportunities to embed the work already developed in partnership with Street Games and their community sport analysis tool, as an evidence-based approach to delivering the VRU’s vision for the role of community sport;
• ‘more sport in more places,
• more workforce with more competencies, and
• more vulnerable young people referred and engaged in community sport’.

As part of the contract, Street Grams will be expected to

• Support existing commissioned activity and grant programmes originating from the GMCA/VRU/LAs and influence existing arrangements to adopt a uniform set of academically supported core deliverables, principles and outcomes.
• Support communities and stakeholders to better understand the approach taken when funding and commissioning into sport and physical activity-based interventions, which include
o Diversional Activity, taking an evidence-based approach to addressing the drivers of youth violence and how sport and physical activity provision can deter those young people from further engagement in youth violence
o Place-Based Pilot programmes, including
? Stabilising the delivery of sport-based, early intervention and prevention approaches across targeted place-based communities, building capacity in local providers to enable a uniformed, evidence-based approach to addressing the needs of local communities.
? Connecting hyper local, place-based organisations that deliver evidence-based sport-interventions to the criminal justice system, using consistent, quality assured implementation standards, and robust referral pathways to address secondary and tertiary needs.
? Evaluate the impact of evidence-based practice on the development of pro-social and protective factors of beneficiaries.
? Further develop a strategic analysis tool to identify opportunities and shortcomings, which can be presented to, and addressed locally through multi-agency partnership boards.
• Manage and deliver a number of Communities of Learning & Practice / Network Events to align professionals, practitioners and providers to enable further collaboration, to share learning, understand new research, insight and trends, and further develop and embed sport and physical activities as a vehicle for positive behaviour change and the reduction of youth violence.
• Lead a cross-sector and multi-agency workforce and organisational development programme that enhances sport-based providers’ capacity & capabilities and their impact to deliver in line with the VRU’s primary, secondary and tertiary prevention agendas.
o This will ensure high quality, evidence lead and trauma informed practices are established across the VRU, placing ‘prevention’ at the heart of the delivery and ensuring necessary safeguarding protocols and risk management strategies are in place to manage the heightened risk and behaviours seen by working in the secondary and tertiary prevention spheres.
o The Provider will need to work with partner organisations to commission directly or refer the young people they are engaged with into more targeted services such as mentoring or counselling, where appropriate to enhance the support to the young person and ultimately reduce the young person’s involvement in risky behaviours that can lead to criminality and violence.
• Develop and embed a clear policy cycle for the delivery of primary, secondary and tertiary sport and physical activity interventions.
• Work with local strategic and delivery partners to develop a longer-term sustainable delivery offer for sport and physical activity interventions supporting the aims of the GM VRU
• Work with evaluation partners to evaluate the impact of commissioned and non-commissioned sport and physical activity interventions.
• Service and further embed the regional Greater Manchester Early Intervention Sport and Youth Justice (GMEISYJ) Board, and place-based boards where appropriate, to explore and develop proposals across the region, embedding community-based sport and physical activity as a viable and effective option to bring about an improvement in individual, community and social outcomes