Preventing youth violence
Introduction
Every day, community groups across the country provide vital support to children and young people. Many promote strong foundations, like good mental wellbeing, resilience, and stable, supportive relationships. Others work with children who have experienced trauma, helping them build positive pathways to adulthood. Some help young people to understand the causes and consequences of conflict, while others support former gang members to move forward by offering positive alternatives.
They play a wide range of roles, reflecting the diverse experiences and needs of children and young people. Here, we share insights and experiences from their work, highlighting what they are learning about preventing and reducing youth violence.
We recommend reading these insights alongside the Violence Prevention Toolkit, which summarises the research evidence on approaches to preventing children and young people's involvement in violence.
Why this matters
The latest statistics from the Youth Endownment Foundation (YEF) show that serious violence affecting children and young people is falling across England and Wales.
Across their 3 core measures of violence, all show an improving picture compared with the previous year. The statistics show:
the number of 16–24 year old homicide victims fell by 41%
hospital admissions for knife assault among 0–17-year-olds fell by 20%
cautions and convictions of children for violent offences fell by 3%
This is a positive direction of travel, although every case is one too many: youth violence has devastating consequences not only for young people themselves, but also for their families, victims, and wider communities.
And although these statistics show a positive movement, data from the YEF show that there are more children being arrested for sexual offences than at any point in the past decade. Violence against young women and girls is a serious and underreported issue.
What we've learned
Building strong foundations
Early experiences can have a lasting impact on a young person's life. For that reason we believe in working together to support families and communities to give children the best start in life. Based on what we've learned, the following help children and young people build strong foundations.
Adopting a whole-community approach
Preventing violence requires coordinated action that supports not only young people, but also the families, schools, services, and communities around them.
Funding priorities
Prioritising investment in early action. This shift is essential, but not always easy to achieve. In practical terms, many of the groups we fund find it difficult to focus on prevention when their limited resources go into supporting large numbers of young people who are already involved in violence.
Public health approach
Taking a public health approach to violence prevention. This means recognising the links between violence, trauma, poor mental health, and social exclusion, and addressing the factors that increase risk.
Resilience
Building young people’s resilience, helping them develop the confidence, skills, and support networks they need to cope with challenges and setbacks. Many community groups contribute to this work by supporting families through difficult times, working with schools on targeted resilience building programmes, and helping children build the social and emotional skills that enable them to form positive relationships and navigate life's challenges.
Trauma and sustainability
Taking a long-term view. We should not underestimate the impact of trauma and instability in many young people's lives, or the time needed to support recovery and change. Sustainable improvements require long-term commitment rather than short-term fixes.
Early intervention and collaboration
Identifying young people at risk as early as possible. This requires effective collaboration between statutory agencies, schools, police, and community organisations, and extend from collecting data, to sharing and using it to identify and support at-risk youth at the earliest possibility.
Awareness
Equipping professionals and communities to recognise risk factors. Teachers, youth workers, police, coaches, and other trusted adults should be supported to understand the causes of challenging behaviour and respond constructively.
Trust and connection
Valuing the expertise of voluntary and community organisations. These groups often have trusted relationships with young people affected by violence and bring valuable insight through lived experience and co-production.
"What would have taken me on a different path from violence and crime? If I’d had the love that I needed. If I’d had the care that I needed. If I’d had the attention I needed."
Young man attending a homeless support centre in Deptford
Early intervention approaches
Early intervention can play a vital role in preventing and reducing youth violence. It’s about supporting children and young people at the earliest opportunity, before problems escalate and become more complex and difficult to resolve.
Our grant holders have developed a wide range of approaches. Here, we share the strategies they have found most helpful.
Taking support to where young people are
Outreach work in places such as streets, estates, shopping centres, gyms, music studios, and youth clubs can help reach young people who may not engage with traditional services. This is particularly important for those who rarely leave their local area, including gang-affiliated youth.
Providing trusted mentors and youth workers
Strong, supportive relationships can be transformative, but they take time to develop. Short-term programmes and arbitrary time limits can undermine their impact.
Skills and confidence
Building young people's skills and confidence to manage conflict, resist peer pressure, communicate effectively, and cope with difficult situations. Many don’t learn these skills at home so charities and community groups create opportunities for young people to practise these skills in real-life settings. Leap Confronting Conflict delivers 5 day courses that address topics such as territories, status and reputation, enemies and revenge, and sexual abuse. Developed with young people, they use interactive methods like role play, drama, games, and discussions to make it educational but engaging.
Education and prevention
Challenging harmful attitudes and myths and de-glamorising the realities of crime, gangs, weapons, and prisons.
Working with friendship groups rather than just individuals
This approach acknowledges the need for social networks and recognises the power of peer group relationships to change thinking.
Valuing lived experience
Mentors who share similar backgrounds or experiences with the young people they support can build trust, engagement, and credibility. Careful recruitment and training are essential. St Giles Trust works with carefully selected, professionally trained individuals who come from similar backgrounds as the young people they are supporting, offering real understanding of the situations their beneficiaries face.
Using sport and the arts as a route into engagement
These activities can help young people develop confidence, positive values and relationships, and a sense of belonging, while providing positive alternatives. Fight for Peace starts the engagement process at a gym, using boxing and martial arts to steer young people away from violence, gangs and crime. These sports help instil discipline and respect and build self-confidence, while enabling participants to channel their aggression.
Ensuring access to mental health support
Many young people involved in violence have experienced trauma and need specialist support. Gang-affiliated youth face additional barriers, including fear of a criminal past being exposed, losing position within the gang, and entering rival territories. Family-based support, walk-and-talk counselling, and services delivered in community and youth settings, can help overcome barriers to engagement.
Barriers and transitional support
Improving access to employment, training, and education by tackling both personal and structural barriers. And ensuring additional support is available for young people going through transitions, like moving from primary to secondary school, moving from one care setting to another, and changing between youth and adult prison.
Personal circumstances
Ensuring that services take into consideration the specific circumstances, needs and wishes of young men and women.
Recent insights from community groups
Here are some insights our grant holders have shared with us recently.
Flexible and responsive
It’s important to be flexible and responsive, adapting to the current conversation to find teachable moments. The drama series Adolescence has been a springboard for a lot of community youth work around masculinity.
Exlcusion
In some cases it can help to not be too punitive – our grant holders have found success by engaging proactively and constructively. Some young people are already traumatised by rejection and exclusion, and in some cases further exclusion can just make it worse and lead to further isolation.
Engagement
As young people spend more time online, it has become harder for groups working with at risk youth to keep them engaged and spot warning signs.
Young people
Young people may be both perpetrators and victims – and involved in 2 different systems as a result.
Tackling specific myths
It’s necessary to continue with efforts to tackle specific myths around violent lifestyles, which have been amplified by social media. For example, our grant holders are working in their communities to address the idea that carrying a knife will keep you safe. Peer mentor approaches that build on lived experience continue to work well in this context.
Youth violence and mental health
Youth violence reaches beyond those directly involved. Some young people have become socially isolated through fear, even refusing to leave the house. This exacerbates mental health issues.
Safe spaces
Providing safe physical spaces for young people is becoming increasingly expensive. Rising utility costs have put significant pressure on services that provide a vital space for young people to feel safe.
Additional challenges
Some demographics face additional challenges and need specialist support. For example, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, both from past trauma and due to isolation, racism, and discrimination they may face in the UK.
"Risks during infancy increase the chances of anti-social behaviour during childhood, which in turn amplifies the likelihood of convictions during adolescence…"
Chief Medical Officer
Key messages
Preventing youth violence requires a long-term, whole-community response. It should bring together authorities and statutory services, communities, and families to address the root causes and help affected young people make positive changes.
Community groups add significant value, not least because they often have the trust, relationships, and local knowledge needed to reach young people who are disengaged from other services and involved in violent lifestyles. They also focus on building strengths, creating trusted relationships, and providing the right support at the right time.
Building young people's confidence and resilience to cope with life’s ups and downs is important, as is providing opportunities for them to develop the skills needed to manage conflict. It’s helpful to offer the support in settings that young people know, trust, and feel comfortable in.
Find out more
We carried out this research in 2019 and provided some updates in 2025.
You can find the full report in our Evidence Library.
You can search our Evidence Library for other National Lottery funded studies on youth violence.