A team led from the College of Social Sciences and Arts has partnered with the Youth Endowment Fund to evaluate a set of projects aimed at stopping children and young people becoming involved in crime.

One of six evaluators in the first round, a team of academics form the Sheffield Institute of Education and CRESR, with support from CeBSaP, will analyse four projects across England and Wales aimed at tackling youth crime by intervening early. The first round of 22 projects has been allocated £16.2 million in funding, with further grants expected to be announced in the coming months.

Teams led by Dr Eleanor Formby, Dr Jo Booth and Bernadette Stiell (SIoE) and Sarah Pearson (CRESR) will be evaluating the projects to understand their approach and effectiveness and to ensure that knowledge of the types of interventions and programmes that are most effective can be shared.

The projects include a school-based drug use prevention programme and a multi-activity personal development programme, teaching effective communication, responsible decision making and resisting social influences.

Professor Mike Coldwell, lead for the Youth Endowment Foundation evaluation programme at Sheffield Hallam, said: "We are really excited to begin working with the Youth Endowment Foundation evaluating this set of projects, which aim - in different ways - to help children and young people gain the skills and knowledge to improve their life chances and avoid becoming engaged in serious criminal activity.

"We've brought together a very experienced, multi-disciplinary team of educational and policy researchers, psychologists, statisticians, sociologists and economists from across the University to deliver these evaluations, demonstrating the breadth of social science research expertise we are fortunate to have here at Sheffield Hallam."

Established with a £200 million endowment fund from the Home Office and led by Impetus, in partnership with the Early Intervention Foundation and Social Investment Business, the Youth Endowment Fund is dedicated to supporting improved outcomes for children and young people.