Phase 2 of Turning corners
We are excited to say that phase 2 of the Turning Corners project is well underway and that they have just hosted their first celebration event. If you wish to find out more about phase 2 and the celebration event continue reading…
Turning Corners is a project to reduce the risk of young people in Devon becoming involved in violence, anti-social behaviour (ASB) and crime through early intervention and prevention. This approach is done with a multi-agency partnership. We have recently completed phase 1 and are now moving onto phase 2. Phase 2 is being built off of what we have learnt and documented in the initial Turning corners phase 1 project. This project was funded as a Home Office pilot around adverse childhood experiences (ACE’s), early intervention, maintaining trusted relationships and strengthening knowledge and understanding across multi-agency partnerships.
This project has been funded through a grant from the Police & Crime Commissioner, which will support us to cover Teignbridge and South Hams Districts from January 2021 to December 2024. The guidance is through a subgroup of the Safer Devon Partnership Youth Crime Prevention Partnership. The Implementation group is led by the South Devon & Dartmoor CSP (SD&D CSP) Chair and reports back to the SDP and the Serious Violence Prevention Programme, as well as feeding into the Devon Adolescent Safety Framework.
On the 2nd November 2022 we held our first Turning Corners Celebration Event, in which the Police and Crime Commissioner of Devon and Cornwall, Chief Superintendent and the High Sheriff of Devon attended. At this event we invited young people and parents from the projects and we gave them the opportunity to talk about their experiences of being involved with the project and how much it has impacted them. The young people were then all given certificates to celebrate their involvement. Everyone was very pleased with the results of the project, highlighting the educational level of the event.
The Individual Projects:
The Turning Corners project has three individual projects which include Parent Support Groups, Moving Up Together and Youth Outreach. These are all identified below and briefly outlined as to what they are and how the project will come together at the end.
Parent support groups:
Parent support groups are to help identify the most at risk young people in the community and to engage with their parent(s). By engaging with parents through parent support groups we are able to reduce the risk that their child will be excluded from school and/ or then engage in any offending or anti-social behaviour.
Moving Up Together:
Moving up together is to help support vulnerable young people to have a positive experience in the transition from primary to secondary school. By doing this we can reduce the risk of potential offending behaviour and also help reduce the number of young people who may be permanently excluded from school.
Youth Outreach:
Youth Outreach is designed to engage with young people in a community at risk of ASB and criminality. This is done by increasing multi-agency work across youth services, the youth offending service, and the police. By doing this we are then able to better understand their needs.
The Turning Corners project will not only outline what interventions have been undertaken but also show the differences that these have made to the young people. Our evaluation from this project will be made as a partnership between the young people and families that have been involved in the project. The evaluation will be presented with a collection of data which shows the engagement, learning, behavioural and attitude changes and impact. To help us meet the project outcome we are expecting we have had a Theory of Change and measurement strategy in place. This strategy was created by the South West Academic Health Science Network, with the input of the Implementation group members.
