Executive Summary
In April 2022, Cleveland was informed that it was to receive Home Office funding over 3 years for a Violence Reduction Unit. Titled the Cleveland Unit for the Reduction of Violence (CURV), the funding enabled a partnership to be developed that sought to reduce serious violence across the whole of Cleveland through a more collaborative approach and in accordance with set objectives as outlined in its published Response Strategy.
Activities or interventions funded from CURV’s core budget are to align with the Youth Endowment Fund Toolkit, especially those deemed ‘high impact’ in order to contribute to the continued development of the local, regional and national evidence base that demonstrates ‘what works’ when addressing serious violence.
CURV commissioned a Strategic Needs Assessment (SNA) that provided an in-depth analysis of the causes and drivers of crime across Cleveland, which allowed CURV’s partners to refine the cohorts and localities it wished to prioritise to ensure.
- Reductions in Serious Violence Offences
- Reductions in hospital admissions for assaults with a sharp object
- Reductions in Homicides
Stipulated within the funding agreement from the Home Office, is a requirement for CURV to adopt a Public Health Approach in tackling serious violence, which means addressing the underlying causes of violence, of which there is an identified link between school exclusions and young people being more likely to enter the criminal justice system or become involved in serious violence. This aligns naturally to a pilot intervention being led by PROCLAIM.
Programme Summary
Providing Rich Opportunities for Children who are Looked After In Middlesbrough (PROCLAIM)
The PROCLAIM programme is an initiative and key cross sector project designed to address the needs of children and young people in the locality of Middlesbrough, which is the fifth most deprived Local Authority area in England, with increasing levels of deprivation.
Children in care and those with a social worker are disproportionately likely to have undergone traumatic experiences and/or have had difficulty building positive relationships with adults. The PROCLAIM project is developed to support systematic school-wide practice designed to improve these circumstances and support positive life outcomes.
PROCLAIM wishes to support all children in Middlesbrough to feel safe, seen and heard, by ensuring relationships are at the heart of practice when supporting children who have experienced trauma, the project aims to drive down exclusion and increase school attendance to ensure all of children achieve their full potential.
PROCLAIM are working to introduce a universal language of attachment and trauma across the town, providing training and support in schools to drive excellent outcomes for all young people with the goal of supporting all schools in Middlesbrough to be ‘attachment and trauma informed’ by 2025 so everyone can enjoy, achieve, and thrive in school.
PROCLAIM is currently supporting 30 settings to ensure children and young person’s needs are met, across the community in Middlesbrough.
The funding provided will be used to facilitate a PROCLAIM family communications officer that will support several joint aims of both CURV and PROCLAIM. The PROCLAIM family communications officer will contribute to the broader public communication and engagement by supporting families to understand attachment and trauma in a holistic way, and upskill schools to support the wider family.
CURV’s contribution to PROCLAIM has been agreed at £15,000 for this financial year (2023/2024) and a further £30,000 for the next financial year (2024/2025). This was further approved and ratified by the Executive Assurance Group (EAG) at a meeting held on 9th November 2023, including partners from, Cleveland police, Probation, NHS, and the Local Authorities.
Measuring Success
PROCLAIM will measure, analyse, and communicate the impact of the programme via Key Performance Indicator’s that are proven to support good outcomes including; school attendance, suspensions, exclusions and pupil perceptions.:
Middlesbrough Local Authority / education is the lead partner for PROCLAIM and CURV will contribute to this pilot by granting funds to the Council. The conditions for funding and expected performance frameworks will be outlined in a formal grant agreement.
Decision 2023/24 – 0032: PROCLAIM School's Interventions (application, 213kB)