Social Justice

Report

The Social Justice programme has a focus on supporting innovative responses to the challenges faced by young people at a time of economic uncertainty and rapid social change. It aims both to help those who are more marginalised and unable to access appropriate support, and to elevate their voices to have more influence over local and national decision-making.

Our funding is not limited to a particular sector, client group or approach, but spans employability, education and training, refugees and migrants, gangs, youth offending, health and disability. It is intended to help people experiencing discrimination, violence, intolerance or limited opportunity.

Focus on innovation

During 2011/12, the combination of economic recession and cuts to services has had a profound and negative impact on young people. Youth unemployment has grown universally but although commentators speak of a ‘lost generation’, the impact and longer-term effects will be felt more deeply in some social groups and geographical areas. The impact on young black men is a particular concern, as are the consequences for the mental health of young people more generally.

Many of the organisations working with these young people have had to scale down operations and staff. Some face closure. Although challenging, one response is to consider innovation – either by changing ways of doing things, or by doing different things entirely. We wish to help with this, and have supported organisations, through our Open Grants and Special Initiatives, to develop new forms of service or business models, or collaborative approaches.

Examples include Voice UK, which is pioneering approaches to supporting very vulnerable young people who have experienced crime or abuse; Interest Link, which has developed a befriending service to help young people with learning disabilities in the Scottish Borders; and 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, which is trialling arts approaches to support integration of young Roma.

Youth participation

Youth participation is a core value for us, and government’s increased emphasis on recognising and developing ‘community assets’ may lead to further recognition of the contribution young people can make. That said, the prevailing public discourse about young people is negative, unfairly depicting them as feckless, criminal, and a threat to society. This view was given new life during the summer riots in England but more thoughtful analyses have concentrated on better supporting young people to escape intergenerational poverty and hopelessness. Listening to and involving young people in solutions to such problems is something we have supported, and will continue to support.

This year we helped Brook – which gives young people free and confidential sexual health information – to take a ‘whole organisation’ approach to embedding youth participation. Revolving Doors, which supports those caught up in crime, drugs and homelessness, has further developed its young service user forum, members of which engage directly with policy-makers.

At a sector level, our further support for the Clore Social Leadership Programme seeks to deepen the impact that leaders committed to youth empowerment have across the UK. We are delighted to be supporting Sam Anderson and Jacqueline Williamson, founders of The Junction in Leith and Kinship Care in Northern Ireland respectively.

Where we think wider impact can be achieved, we will consider helping our grantees with aspects of organisational development – perhaps by supporting development posts, improving evaluation and understanding of impact, or developing and testing new business models. Our grants officers support, challenge, make introductions, and offer opportunities for peer learning or support for grantees. In this way we hope to contribute to the resilience of grantees, helping them weather the challenging funding conditions. ¹

This year, Runnymede Trust and Refugee Youth have both been helped to bring in support to reshape their operations, helping them improve the chances of ongoing impact and sustainability. Dance United and Tender are being helped to build on past success, by developing new business models and income streams that will help them in the long term.

New Special Initiative

This year we launched a Special Initiative designed to provide support for children and young people with irregular immigration status. The Foundation has supported refugee and migrant organisations for many years, but recently we have become more concerned about those young people who come to the UK and – often through no fault of their own – find themselves unable to return to their home countries, yet unable to work, study or even access the most basic services here. We are also concerned about the children of such migrants who are ‘undocumented’ and will face legal and other challenges on reaching majority.

Our Supported Options Initiative is a partnership with Unbound Philanthropy, and develops out of research we commissioned Oxford and City Universities to undertake – ‘No Right to Dream’. ² We will fund innovative advice and information services for young people in this position, including approaches using digital technology. We will also look closely at whether and how charitable foundations and others might contribute to supporting young people who may wish to consider a return to their country of origin. This is politically sensitive, but our view is that we must engage with the challenge of making this ‘option’ for young people viable, appropriate and humane. Throughout this work we aim to bring to the attention of a wider audience the lived experiences of these young people that are so vulnerable to exploitation and criminality, yet whose voices are so rarely heard directly.

We have also been part of a multi-funder collaboration working together to change the hearts and minds of the British public on immigration. Changing Minds is an informal, action-orientated network of foundations. The collaboration emerges from a shared concern about hostile attitudes to newcomers to the UK, and in our case young migrants in particular.

We recognise that collaboration can be a means of achieving greater impact, through pooling resources and ideas. We continue to participate in the Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition, which is concerned about vulnerable women in the criminal justice system. Together with the Ministry of Justice, the Coalition runs the Women’s Diversionary Fund, which has made awards across England to support specialist, holistic, community-based services (Women’s Centres), built infrastructure to help develop those services, and begun work on an evidence base to identify the value of this way of working with vulnerable young women.

With other funders, we are also contributing to new approaches to increasing the financial resources available for effective service delivery. One example is the Social Impact Bond being used to finance interventions with young offenders in Peterborough.

The next 12 months

Over the next year we will begin a series of events to bring grantees together to offer mutual support and the exchange of ideas about practice, organisational development, and achieving impact. We will also spend part of the year taking forward our development work around criminal justice, with the aim of establishing a Special Initiative on girls and young women who are either in, or in danger of entering, the criminal justice system.

Special Initiatives

Supported Options Initiative

Special Initiative for children and young people with irregular immigration status, in partnership with Unbound Philanthropy

£713,852 in 2011/12

The Supported Options Initiative funds innovative approaches to getting trusted, independent advice and support to children and young people who have irregular immigration status.

Young people without regular immigration status may have been refused asylum but are unable to return home, may have overstayed visas, may have no papers, or may have been born here to parents without regular immigration status. Whatever the cause of their situation, they are often marginalised and may be vulnerable to exploitation or harm. A lack of legal status limits their choices and makes them more likely to be denied their rights. They are vulnerable to poverty, poor physical and mental health, exploitation and abuse.

Challenges for these young people vary considerably but include misunderstanding of their legal status and entitlements, a desire to avoid detection by the authorities, lack of appropriate services, mistrust in those that are available, isolation and a lack of social networks and support. They lack the sort of ‘supported options’ that other young people are entitled to and able to access, to help them overcome difficulties such as homelessness, poor physical and mental health, abusive relationships and mistreatment in the workplace.

Most mainstream advice and support organisations have limited knowledge of these young people and are unable to offer much support. Some existing organisations are aware of the vulnerabilities and needs of these groups, but are unable to support them because of a lack of funding and capacity. Publicly funded sources of advice and representation are increasingly scarce (a situation likely to worsen with proposed changes to legal aid) and services express concern that they are unable to meet the complex needs of these young people.

This Special Initiative aims to:

• Enable young people to access quality and holistic advice and support to help them make informed decisions, cope in crises and times of transition, and plan their futures. We hope to support a minimum of 600 young people a year
• Support migrant, youth and advice organisations to better understand, respond to and reach out to young and child migrants
• Capture and share the learning from this work to improve practice and influence policy

The first strand of work in the initiative is to fund a range of projects to deliver support and advice to individual young people over two years. We are delighted to have begun funding a hugely impressive mix of organisations in this pilot work: The Children’s Society; Coram Children’s Legal Centre; Coventry Law Centre; Islington Law Centre; Praxis Community Projects; and the Refugee and Migrant Centre in Wolverhampton.

A second strand of work, also begun in 2011/12, is to commission an inquiry into the options for better use of digital technology in supporting undocumented young people. On Road Media, an organisation that specialises in helping very marginalised groups develop a social media presence, ran an Innovation Camp at our offices in July 2012 to develop new ideas for allowing these young people to access help and support without compromising their own security.

A further strand of work in the initiative will be to develop our understanding of the advice needs of young people facing return (assisted or forced), and commission one or two projects to support young people leaving the UK.

The Institute of Voluntary Action Research is our evaluation partner in the initiative and will support us and grantees to maximise the learning potential in all this work.

Right Here

Mental health Special Initiative in partnership with the Mental Health Foundation

£231,277 in 2011/12

Right Here is a £6m initiative, developing new approaches to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of 16–25 year olds. It is jointly managed with the Mental Health Foundation and runs until the end of 2013.

The initiative works with four partnerships – in Brighton and Hove, Fermanagh, Sheffield and Newham – to create effective and appropriate support for young people at risk of developing mental health problems. The partnerships also seek to raise awareness of mental health and help tackle the stigma associated with mental illness.

Youth engagement is a core part of each project’s approach. Young people work with professionals to design and deliver new activities, contribute to the management and governance of the projects, and take part in peer research. Our aim is that the most successful approaches developed through Right Here will eventually be taken up more widely so that the mental health needs of 16–25 year olds are finally recognised and addressed in ways that will appeal to and help them.

This year, the second year of the projects’ delivery, saw some promising signs of positive impact, for the young volunteers who have such a stake in the work, and for young people getting involved in Right Here activities. The Tavistock Institute, which is evaluating the initiative, reported that “involvement in youth panels and volunteering was seen as widely beneficial”. Young people are becoming more confident, feel better supported, understand mental health much better, and have learned valuable new skills.

For further details see www.right-here.org.uk

“I do feel more confident. It has given me more understanding about mental health. It’s helped my self-esteem. Knowing more about it and how it affects other young people. About a year ago I wasn’t getting out of bed or leaving the house. Now I feel in a different place.” – Right Here project youth panel member

Special Initiative in development

Girls and young women in the criminal justice system

£10,151 in 2011/12

Over the past year we have been exploring the value of developing a new criminal justice Special Initiative focused on girls and young women.

The findings of our criminal justice review, and our continued membership of the Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition – 21 independent funders working collectively to press for implementation of the recommendations in Baroness Corston’s review of adult women in the criminal justice system – have made us increasingly aware of the challenges facing girls and young women in the youth justice system or at risk of entering it.

While we are beginning to see positive change for women through Corston, the distinct needs of the 45,000 girls and young women in the youth justice system are still being overlooked and misunderstood. This appears to be an area where a focused programme of work could make a real contribution.

Towards the end of 2011 we commissioned an external review of the issues in this field and ran consultation events with academics, policy-makers, practitioners, grantees and former service users. In autumn 2012 we plan to carry out a further consultation to better understand the Scottish context.

Our findings so far have reinforced our view of the need for action in this area, which we anticipate will continue to grow. The youth justice system is undergoing radical change and with cuts in spending and increased economic hardship the expectation is that more girls and young women will become vulnerable to disadvantage and drawn into the justice system. During 2012/13 we will be continuing our engagement with critical partners as we work to develop the possible shape and content of a Special Initiative.

Open grants Scheme

The Social Justice Open Grants scheme aims to help integrate marginalised individuals and communities. We see integration as a two-way process in which society at large and specific communities adapt, understand and benefit.

We want to support younger people up to the age of 30 who are at a time of transition because of their circumstances (such as leaving care or prison or settling into a new community) or changes to the cultural environment in which they live (such as established communities in refugee dispersal areas).

The Open Grants scheme focuses on arts and learning activities that enable marginalised young people to have their voices heard and ensure their fuller participation in society.

If possible, the outcomes of funded activities should also build strong relationships within and between communities, and foster respect for, and understanding of, the differences between communities.

Grant awarded in 2011/12

Changing Tunes

£226,707 over three years

Accompanied by a couple of guitarists, a keyboard player and a drummer, an ex-prisoner cups the microphone and belts out several verses of emotive lyrics to a 300-strong audience. Between songs he declares, “I have a huge debt of gratitude to the guys at Changing Tunes for helping me to get out of the pit I was in. With their support I found something creative inside me rather than something destructive.”

Changing Tunes is a relationship-based charity that uses music to build self-esteem among prisoners and ex-prisoners. Specially trained musicians work with small groups in 13 prisons in South West England, teaching all musical genres. Re-offending rates have dropped from a national average of 61 per cent to 15 per cent amongst those who participate in the project both pre- and post-release.

The charity is one of very few organisations that work ‘through the gate’ with prisoners – the same staff working with them both before and after release. “We continue our relationships and introduce ex-prisoners to a local music scene,” says director Tim Snowdon. “Playing in front of a receptive audience, maybe in a church, builds self-esteem enormously. They feel accepted into a local community and so are more likely to follow its rules.”

An earlier PHF grant helped Changing Tunes to develop its innovative project, and now a follow-on grant will fund expansion into 70 per cent of UK prisons. “We’ve had a genuine working relationship with Paul Hamlyn Foundation,” says Tim. “Not everything goes well all the time and when part of our programme was delayed, PHF advised and supported us to adapt our approach. With this sort of constructive dialogue with our funder we have now managed to surpass our original target of beneficiaries.”

The charity will expand into six regions through self-contained franchises that will manage themselves and fundraise autonomously. “We didn’t want to grow into a big charity with all the associated overheads,” says Tim. “By taking the franchise route we can stay lean and keep the entrepreneurial spirit that has served us well. Prisoners are constantly moving around the system, and could be released anywhere in the country. Having musicians in more prisons will mean we can maintain our contact and, more importantly, have local musicians who can continue our post-release work.”

New and ongoing grants

Scottish Refugee Council

£150,000 over 30 months

Legal Services Agency

£181,100 over three years

The Scottish Government has been keen to support the increasing numbers of children seeking asylum without parents or legal guardians. Frightened teenagers – as young as 14 and some the victims of trafficking – arrive from countries such as Afghanistan, Nigeria and Iran, not knowing who they can trust. Local authorities have a duty of care but sometimes have neither the expertise nor resources to meet the needs of these vulnerable newcomers.

Receptive to Scottish Refugee Council’s (SRC) calls for action, politicians agreed to back the creation of the Scottish Guardianship Service after hearing of the issues first-hand.

“We organised a group of young people to talk directly to the Government about the problems they face not just around immigration but with all aspects of their integration,” says SRC’s Clare Tudor.

The pilot Scottish Guardianship Service – also supported by PHF and the Big Lottery Fund – was set up by SRC in September 2010 to run for 30 months. In partnership with the children’s charity, Aberlour, the service allocates all unaccompanied asylum-seekers with a guardian who supports them through the immigration process and offers advice on welfare and wellbeing issues.

One child, quoted in the first annual assessment of the pilot, said: “I am shy and really scared. We don’t know nobody because it is first time. She [the guardian] explained to me her job and after a couple of meetings I began to understand how she help me.”

“We make this very complicated, legalistic process as smooth and as child-friendly as possible,” says Clare. “If the agencies need to be challenged over their provision, then the guardians will do that. The young people actively partake, at their own pace, and always know what is happening.”

A parallel PHF grant has been awarded to the Glasgow- based Legal Services Agency (LSA), which is supporting the Guardianship Service.

“We had already set up a women and children’s section within the agency which primarily deals with issues around gender-based violence,” says LSA solicitor, Kirsty Thomson. “But the Guardianship Service identified a gap in the provision of legal advice addressing the more complex needs of the children it was assisting, and some serious concerns that we couldn’t ignore.”

The LSA has taken on specific cases that test existing law and challenge statutory agencies dealing with unaccompanied children. “We took on a complicated case involving the age assessment of two boys as a piece of strategic litigation,” says Kirsty. “It highlighted our need for external help and funding – we just didn’t have the capacity to work in such depth on issues specifically affecting migrant young people within the existing department. Our PHF grant has now allowed us to set up a new project specifically giving legal advice to migrant young people, which dovetails perfectly with the Guardianship Service.”

One issue that both Kirsty and Clare pick up on is the fact that the Guardianship Service identified several young people who were under the radar and outside of the major Scottish cities. Several of these cases involved young people who had been detained despite potentially being the victims of trafficking. Whilst the guardians could offer advocacy support, they were aware that the young people required high-quality specialist legal advice and were able to refer the young people on to the Legal Services Agency’s dedicated project.

Now working more closely together, SRC and LSA both benefit from this joint approach. “We feel that together we are a formidable team, strongly advocating for the rights of separated children and for a greater understanding of their needs,” says Clare.

Ongoing grants

SignHealth

£120,000 over 33 months

Statistics show that one in four women and one in seven men are victims of domestic abuse at some time in their lives. Although there is no data amongst the deaf community there is anecdotal evidence that suggests abuse here is much more prevalent – some say possibly as high as 50 per cent.

“The high incidence is due to a number of factors,” says Rachael Williams, project worker at SignHealth, the national charity campaigning for health and wellbeing equality for the deaf community. “There are barriers to reporting abuse, and a lack of suitable information,” she explains. “Some in our community are actually unaware that what they are experiencing is wrong, a criminal offence.”

She continues: “In one deaf school, while working with 34 pupils over just a six-week period, we had eight pupils disclose incidents of abuse or victimisation, which indicates the scale of the problem.”

Agencies such as the police and social care have shown a lack of understanding of this issue. “For example,” says Rachael, “the police have a text equivalent to the 999 call but you have to register before you can use it, which is inappropriate in many critical domestic incidents.”

A PHF grant funds SignHealth’s new Young Deaf Hope project to support and inform young deaf people who, in almost all of the UK, have no access to skilled, specialist social care. “Our aim is to visit schools and youth groups, and provide information in the visual language that young deaf people can understand,” says Rachael. Post-16 young deaf people are more difficult to engage effectively. SignHealth is using its existing networks to promote workshops for 18–30 year olds in deaf clubs, and is taking its message to colleges and universities.

“Throughout the project we’ll also be lobbying government,” says Rachael. “Its own website has some fantastic resources – three online videos, in particular – but they are neither subtitled nor signed and so are totally inaccessible.”

In a sector which has found fundraising challenging, PHF’s grant will allow the project team to collect data across a pilot area of London and the South East, and provide evidence to other funding bodies of the importance of this intervention.

Llamau

£150,000 over three years

Already known for its support for over-16s at risk of homelessness, the South Wales charity Llamau wanted to do more to help younger children. It understood that problems can start at an early age and that timely intervention with vulnerable young people and their families can avert a crisis.

“The idea behind the Emphasis initiative was to set up an assertive outreach project with 14–19 year olds to try and prevent them becoming homeless in the first place,” explains team leader Sam Deere. Three caseworkers work intensively with hard-to-reach young people who do not readily engage with statutory services.

“Most agencies will stop support if their clients fail to keep appointments or if they refuse to cooperate,” says Sam. “If we were going to be effective we had to be assertive in our approach, which means we meet the young people wherever they want and will do whatever is required to build up a relationship with them and their families.”

Once on board, the Emphasis team devises a 12-week plan, which can include access to some of Llamau’s other services such as family mediation and educational provision. They might help the young person access support from statutory services such as mental health or addiction treatment.

Llamau’s latest annual report highlights a 15 year old girl who was adamant she would leave home at 16. Her mother was having addiction treatment from a mental health charity and had been a victim of domestic abuse. The daughter, who was not attending school, looked as if she would follow a similar path, smoking cannabis and involved with an abusive boyfriend. The Emphasis team intervened, counselled mother and daughter, secured appointments with a local substance misuse service, a domestic abuse counsellor and careers advisor. The young woman is now on a training course, keen to continue into further education, and is settled at home with a renewed relationship with her mum.

PHF’s funding for the Emphasis programme includes helping Llamau to measure its effectiveness. “At the moment we offer this service for free,” says Sam. “But for the project to continue, we need to be able to demonstrate the cost-saving benefit of our early warning scheme and encourage the statutory agencies to invest in it.”