As one of ten local authorities in England with high rates of serious youth violence (SYV), Haringey has been allocated £1.28m by the DfE over three years to deliver interventions for 10–14-year-olds. The Haringey SAFE Taskforce is leading this work. Most secondary school Heads are members of the Taskforce, which is chaired by the Direct of Children’s Services, and the project will be independently evaluated.
The Board will commission targeted interventions to work with young people – usually in school – to address behaviour, improve attendance, reduce exclusions, and reduce the risk of individuals failing to enter education, employment, or training.
We recently completed a strategic needs analysis and its thoroughness was commended by the Department for Education. A key theme was that serious violence is mostly committed by boys and they are most often the victims. The project will submit its proposals to the DfE on 24 June and the interventions proposed include:
Expanding the primary transition outreach pilot project from the Haringey Learning Partnership to target boys aged 10-11 at risk of exclusion and supporting them to have a successful transition to senior school.
Expanding the secondary outreach project from the Haringey Learning Partnership for young people at risk of exclusion aged 11-14 with a focus on cognitive behavioural approaches which are effective.
Expanding the successful social workers in schools (SWIS) model to schools that do not currently have social workers and have been identified in our strategic needs analysis as having significant number of young people at risk of serious youth violence. The taskforce will also be reviewing options for an additional intervention.
Once our plans have been signed-off we will provide further updates as we gear up towards implementation in September. For all enquires contact John Webster, Project Coordinator. john.webster@haringey.gov.uk