The Sideline Project – delivered by Athletic Elite: A first-year process and outcome evaluation.

The Sideline Project is a six-week, community-based programme specifically designed to target at-risk youth aged 7-19-years-old in some of the most vulnerable areas of Northamptonshire, including Northampton Central, Wellingborough, Kettering, and Corby. The aim of the programme is to equip young people with the tools they need to develop emotional resilience, improve mental health, and foster a strong sense of community. The Project has multiple strands to provide a universal offer and targeted intervention through a range of free-to-access and paid services. The Sideline Project is brand new and therefore, the staff have began engaging schools to raise awareness of their services by offering a free day of activities including assembly, basketball workshop, positive psychology (primary school) and crime prevention (secondary school) workshops. This universal offer then leads to schools identifying young people for free access to 1) a six-week mentoring programme and 2) a free scholarship to Athletic Elite evening sessions and camps (for those who show an interest in basketball). Reach In the funding cycle (which was condensed due to delays in the release of funds from the Home Office): • 9 schools had a visit from Athletic Elite (with four more scheduled) • 1,172 children and young people attended assemblies • 1,095 attended a positive psychology or crime prevention workshop • 19 primary school children are receiving mentoring, 0 uptake from secondary schools • 9 children and young people are on Athletic Elite scholarships School leads were very positive about their experience day with Athletic Elite, while also noting longer-term improvements in the children and young peoples’ behaviours and outlook on life because of the mentoring. Effectiveness Interviews and focus groups with scholars and mentees, respectively, identified the positive immediate outcomes of the programme. It was evident that scholars were developing ambitions and value for basketball. This was formed from the safe professional athlete environment that the scholars got to experience, which taught them translatable life skills, such as gratitude, respect, and resilience, with a recognition that they needed to make the right decisions in life, so they maintained access to the programme. These outcomes were also resonated in the mentee’s feedback, as well as the school staff supporting the focus groups commenting on the value of their children having a positive male role model through the mentoring. Adoption Athletic Elite were very grateful to the support offered by the NSVPP throughout this project. Whenever they identified an issue, the NSVPP were quick to respond with solutions. This was evident during the early difficulty of getting responses from schools. After a couple of months of this challenge, Athletic Elite raised the concern with the NSVPP, who got them an agenda slot on a local network meeting. The NSVPP could work on a more strategic approach to connecting delivery partners with schools as a lot of the connections made appeared to be based on existing relationships that the staff had with schools. Implementation Athletic Elite have commissioned alternative education and positive psychology professionals to develop evidence-based resources for the programme’s services; workshops and mentoring. The mentoring was originally planned to be online, but early feedback from schools caused the mentoring to change to in-person, which was seen as much more impactful for the mentees. Maintenance The commissioned professionals have developed resources and training to upskill the Athletic Elite staff in Mental Health First Aid, mentoring, and safeguarding so they can confidently provide a structured evidence-informed approach to supporting children and young people. As a business, Athletic Elite also have sustainable offers as they can transfer the free awareness raising offers, support through the NSVPP funding, into their paid services, as well as making use of sponsorship. Furthermore, the staff have a strong awareness of the early intervention prevention approach and the multiple health priorities they can address through their programme, which may open multiple funding streams to help sustain their local offer. IPSCJs Recommended Next Steps • The NSVPP should on-board delivery partners at the confirmation of funding to connect them into existing networks, so engagements are strategically based on needs identified in the strategic needs assessment. • Athletic Elite are provided with further reading at the end of this report to help them refine their offer, such as mentoring best practice resources from the Youth Endowment Fund: https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/toolkit/mentoring-2/ • For evaluation, we recommend Athletic Elite continue to monitor the reach and demographic characteristics of those receiving each phase of Project Sideline and establish a young person’s committee to ensure the voice of their members informs their decision-making. Furthermore, the NSVPP should support monitoring to ensure delivery partners’ data can be pooled to determine the overall reach and impact of the Serious Violence Duty Strategy.