YOLO Evaluation

Northumbria Police (Customer) was recently successful in securing funding to introduce a new early intervention pathway targeting young people (ages 8-14) who have not yet been in the criminal justice system but are displaying behaviours that put them at increased risk of going on to commit serious violent crime in the future. Those identified as being at high risk will be considered for a 1:1 mentoring programme.

The project has two filter points through which cases pass for assessment by a triaging sergeant. The first is a brief yes/no sift to establish which cases may benefit from the mentoring programme. The second is a more fine-grained sift based on an assessment of needs from the Youth Offending Team and/or a multiagency panel. This will be used to make decisions around the most appropriate intervention.

This Customer is seeking a partner to carry out an evaluation of the project. The exact scope of the evaluation is not strictly prescribed; rather part of the successful evaluator's role will be to work with the project leads and internal evaluation team to establish the most effective measures and methodology to evaluate the success of this project.