West Ham United Foundation is to lead a consortium of local partners and networks to deliver interventions across Barking and Dagenham in order to prevent and tackle violence.
This comes as the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has today announced he is investing a further record £14.5 million in a major expansion of his Violence Reduction Unit’s (VRU) flagship prevention programme to tackle violence. New funding will be used to expand the VRU’s MyEnds programme and its neighbourhood-focused approach to every borough in London, for the first time ever.
Having completed a rigorous application process, the ‘Winning Harts’ consortium, led by the Foundation delivered in Barking & Dagenham's Harts Lane Estate, was successful and has secured £800,000 investment from the VRU to lead its community-focused approach locally.
Consisting of the Foundation, Lifeline Projects, Youth League UK, Be Heard as One and Box Up Crime - backed by the Leader of Barking and Dagenham, Councillor Darren Rodwell - the consortium is working in collaboration with the VRU, statutory services and the local community to support young people and prevent violence.
Commenting on the consortium's funding, West Ham United Foundation CEO Joseph Lyons said: “We’re grateful for the support from the Mayor of London, VRU and our local networks. The issues involved in violence are multi-faceted and so to be able to establish a collaborative consortium that will be united and agile in unpicking those complexities is extremely valuable.
“Together we’re well positioned to harness our community connection, local insight, grassroots initiatives, skills and experience, to deliver bespoke interventions for local need.”
The Mayor’s increased investment will ensure the successful programme continues and expands into a community-led approach in eleven of the top neighbourhoods affected by violence. From June 2024, groups of local youth leaders, grassroots organisations, young people, and parents and carers, will begin delivering youth work, positive activities and targeted interventions, to support young people and to drive down and prevent violence.
The VRU’s successful award-winning MyEnds programme brings networks of local people together to deliver meaningful change. Evidence shows that a community-led approach, delivered by those who know their area and its challenges best, is the most effective way to prevent violence.
MyEnds provides communities with the tools and resources to deliver their own prevention measures, including support networks for parents and carers, after-school activities, youth work in neighbourhoods and youth clubs, as well as sport, music, arts and drama activities. It provides a real focus on tackling violence at a hyper-local, neighbourhood level, with local people and communities driving prevention and diversionary work in areas they live and know best.
Over the next two years, targeted investment from the consortium will support the Barking and Dagenham focused partnership to deliver:
- Positive youth activities
- Targeted one-to-one mentoring for young people who need it most
- Outreach youth work
- Family support incident response
- Stronger networks across the community
- Grants programme for grass-roots community organisations
This funding announcement builds on the work of the MyEnds programme which has operated in eight neighbourhoods over the last three years. Since it was set up in April 2021, MyEnds has:
- Supported more than 50,000 young people and community members
- Delivered targeted interventions and activities to more than 48,000 young people
- Held nearly 600 community events each year
- Provided small pots of funding for almost 70 grassroots organisations to carry out youth work and prevention measures this year alone
The Barking and Dagenham consortium will work alongside others in Brent, Croydon, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark and Tower Hamlets. Funding will also help two existing consortiums, in Newham and Hackney, to continue their community-led approach. Every other Borough will receive a share of a £6.7m funding pot for their own local preventative activities.
This community-led approach has contributed to tackling risk factors associated with violence and exploitation, including improved mental health and wellbeing of young people, better engagement with support services and improved behaviour and engagement in education.
Since the Mayor set up the VRU, the first of its kind in the country, in 2019, it has invested in 350,000 interventions, opportunities and diversionary activities for young people most affected by violence.
A top priority of his re-election campaign, London Mayor Sadiq Khan hopes the funding will help address the complex causes of youth violence.
“I said on my re-election as Mayor, that the next generation of Londoners would be the focus of my third term as Mayor, and my first major announcement in my first week is about providing a step change in the support we provide young Londoners who need it the most.
"I have always been clear that we will never be able to arrest our way out of violence, which is driven by poverty, deprivation and lack of opportunity.
“This major City Hall funding boost will help my Violence Reduction Unit expand its MyEnds programme across London and help communities to target interventions through youth work, mentoring and after-school activities, in the neighbourhoods in greatest need of support.”
Director of London’s Violence Reduction Unit Lib Peck concluded by emphasising the importance of a community-led approach in tackling the multi-faceted issue that is youth violence.
“Violence knows no boundary and it doesn’t affect entire boroughs or wards. It’s often concentrated in neighbourhoods and small pockets of roads, in areas of greatest deprivation and poverty.
“MyEnds puts communities at the heart of solutions to tackling violence and providing opportunity for local people.
“The Mayor’s funding will help us not only invest in new networks in key neighbourhoods affected by violence, but will also allow us to take and expand our community-led approach to every borough in the city.”
