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PCD 1263 VRU 3 Year Funding Alteration

Key information

Reference code: PCD 1263

Date signed:

Date published:

Decision by: Sophie Linden, Deputy Mayor, Policing and Crime

PCD 1263 VRU 3 Year Funding Alteration

PCD 1263 VRU 3 Year Funding Alteration

This Decision requests the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime allocates funding across several programmes within the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) over a three year period. This also requests the allocation of Mayoral Council Tax Precept, Reserves & budget smoothing reserves to certain programmes to plan for the reduction in Home Office funding to the Violence Reduction Unit in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. This is so that the VRU can continue the level of intervention and support offered to children, young people & communities across London despite this predicted reduction in Home Office funding.  

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime to: 

  • Approve the individual project funding requests stated in Table 1 and Appendix 1 which total to £43,673,238. 

  • Delegate decision making on awarding successful tenders & contracts to the Director of the VRU. 

PART I - NON-CONFIDENTIAL FACTS AND ADVICE TO THE DMPC 

  1. Introduction and background  

  1. The VRU has spent time ensuring that the reduction in Home Office funding in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 does not mean that there will be a reduction in services and programmes for vulnerable children, young people, families & communities. 

  1. This has meant diligent reallocation of certain programmes to Mayoral funding streams. 

  1. Where possible, the VRU has ensured 3-year funding can support longer term programmes into violence reduction. The Perceptions of Violence Research commissioned by the VRU analysed violence at a neighborhood level across London and found that the short-term nature of initiative funding is seen as potentially harmful. Projects often end before significant trust has been built with the communities and young people – meaning communities are less likely to engage with future schemes and services. 

  1. See Table 1 for detail on funding and recommendations against VRU programmes (with more details on programmes themselves not discussed in previous decisions PCD 1147 & 1149 can be found in in Section 2). 

 

Table 1.  

Programme 

Recommendations 

Rationale & Further Detail 

Social Switch 2 

  1. Allocate £1,300,000 to this programme in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 from Mayoral Precept Funding 

  1. Delegate final decision-making regarding allocation to successful provider to the Director of the VRU. 

This was agreed as part of the Mayoral precept project bids earlier in 2022. This merely officially allocates the funding to this project. The programme builds upon research highlighting key areas for activity within the online harms space1 

PCD 1149 allocates funding for this programme to 2022-2023. 

Hospital Based Youth Work 

  1. Increase budget for 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 to £2,125,000 from £2,000,000 coming from the Home Office funding 

  1. Delegate final decision-making regarding allocation to successful provider to the Director of the VRU. 

This programme will now include a capacity building element to draw together learning across different hospital sites and synergise insight & cross-pollination of project development. This will be undergoing a competitive tender process for mobilisation April 2023. The Evidence and Insight team at MOPAC are carrying out an evaluation of the existing programme. £2,000,000 has already been approved for each year from Home Office funding in PCD 1149. 

 

DIVERT 

  1. Allocate £1,054,021 for 2023-2024 from Home Office funding. This is an uplift of £54,021. 

  1. Allocate a further £1,072,714, for 2024-2025 from Home Office funding.  

  1. Delegate final decision making on contract award to the Director of the VRU. 

DIVERT is a flagship VRU programme. This led the way for VRUs nationally who also commission a custody-based diversion service. The VRU will be doing a direct award to BounceBack, current provider for 2022-2023 and aim to explore the roll out of a competitive tender in later funding years. DIVERT was previously evaluated within the College of Policing and is currently undergoing a new evaluation with Evidence and Insight at MOPAC.2 This programme was allocated funding to 2022-2023 as per previous decision PCD 1149. 

Engage 

  1. Allocate £1,900,000 for 2023-2024 from Home Office funding. 

  1. Allocate a further £1,900,000 for 2024-2025 from Home Office funding. 

  1. Delegate final decision making on contract award to the Director of the VRU. 

Since the pilot in 2019 we have rolled-out to a further 3 sites and held stakeholder sessions with all Directors of Children Services across London. We have identified that there is an urgent need to support those young people aged between 10-17 years old who are being arrested and brought into the Custody suites, where there is currently no other provision of support for them. This financial year we will be expanding from three sites to a further 4 sites, however in 23/24 and 24/25 we aim to roll-out to all 12 sites across London, providing a full coverage of Engage across London. Engage is currently undergoing an evaluation with Evidence and Insight at MOPAC. This programme was allocated funding in PCD 1149. 

Borough Capacity Building 

  1. Allocate £550,463 for 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 from Council Tax Precept instead of Home Office Funding. 

  1. Allocate an additional £22,265 from Council Tax Precept for this financial year 2022-2023, taking the total for this financial year to £1,054,546. 

PCD 1149 allocated funding to this project from Home Office Funding. The VRU is supporting the 22 boroughs that are not My Ends areas, through funding for 12 months delivery to support progress of additional partnership work, focussing on hyper local areas with high levels of violence. These projects include areas such as community engagement, supporting outreach through organisations coming together, providing training & supporting contextual safeguarding approaches through development of community champions, as well as supporting strong and sustainable local networks of community members so that they are well placed to respond to local emerging needs and help advance and test new initiatives to tackle violence.  

Violence Reduction Plans 

  1. Totalling £4,515,000, allocate £1,186,491 to this fund from the Home Office for 2023-2024. The remainder will be from LCPF (£1,600,000) and the Budget Smoothing reserve (£1,728,509). 

  1. Totalling £4,515,000, allocate £1,465,845 to this fund from the Home Office for 2024-2025. The remainder will be from LCPF (£1,600,000), VRU unallocated Reserve (£1,360,000) and Budget Smoothing Reserve (£89,155). 

To maintain the same level of funding for boroughs, we will be allocating funding from a range of funds within our portfolio, including Home Office, London Crime Prevention Fund & our unallocated budget smoothing reserve. This fund supports local strategic and operational delivery of the Violence and Vulnerability Reduction Action Plans, soon to support with local discharge of elements of the Serious Violence Duty. Direct grant allocation of £4,500,000 for all 32 Local Authorities for the VRU Local Crime Prevention Fund was  

approved in PCD 1147 & 1149. 

 

Parent Support Pilot  

 

  1. Allocate £154,000 for both financial years 2023-2024, and 2024-2025 from budget smoothing reserve & Council Tax Precept, respectively. 

  1. Delegate any awards of delivery of evaluation contracts and grants to the Director of the VRU. 

Camden and Islington Parent Support Pilot following the evaluation of the project has identified three key areas to develop going forward.  They will establish a new training course for parent carers of children through a Transitions Project where parent/carer’s will be empowered to deliver peer to peer support and co-production. The training Programme will include Social Switch training; County Lines; Diversion Workshops; MH Awareness; Anti-Racism Training covering issues including Adultification and disproportionality; Transition to secondary school project and knife harm preventions schools' programme.  The Transitions worker will work with children and their families in the community and provide group work in schools and activities to encourage parent engagement.  Focus on supporting parents with children around SEND issues to ensure early identification and securing support packages so that the children can thrive and achieve.  PCD 1147 allocates funding to this project for 2022-2023.  

Community based parent/carer mental health support pilot 

  1. Allocate £170,000 for financial year 2023-2024 from Mayoral Core Funding 

 

 

Currently delivered by Groundwork London & Midaye, the evaluation contract has just been awarded, therefore the VRU proposes an extension up to 31st December 2023 to obtain best data for evaluation. Interim analysis shows outcomes after the first 6 months and are potentially having an impact on children at risk of exclusion. The providers have high numbers of uptake of parents engaging. Groundwork is also developing an alumni scheme which will have ongoing legacy beyond the time period of the programme. 

Parenting / Carer Network Developments 

  1. Allocate £1,000,000 to the Parent Carer Programme for 2023-2024 from Mayoral Council Tax Precept Funding. 

  1. Delegate any awards of delivery of evaluation contracts and grants to the Director of the VRU. 

This fund previously was a Home Office fund but will now be allocated from Mayoral Council Tax Precept. PCD 1147 allocates funding to this project for 2022-2023. 

Rise Up Youth Leadership Programme 

  1. Allocate £590,000 in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 from Council Tax Precept. 

  1. Delegate any awards of delivery of evaluation contracts and grants to the Director of the VRU. 

This is a top of previous allocation due to both a development of a practitioner’s advisory board (of which the responsibility sits with the provider of the Rise Up Youth Leadership Programme) and the previous budget allocation in PCD 1147 was under the programme need for 2023-2025.  

IRIS 

  1. Allocate £850,000 to IRIS funding for year 2024-2025 from the VRU Core Reserves. 

  1. Delegate any awards of delivery of evaluation contracts and grants to the Director of the VRU. 

The VRU is confident that by extending the pilot for the 4 boroughs and IRIS ADViSE from 12 months to 24 months we will be able to demonstrate a much better return on the VRU’s investment. This will also enable IRISi more time to embed these Programmes in these brand-new areas and generate more referrals from clinicians, enabling more survivors of abuse to access support. There is a need to ensure this service is continued although ongoing discussions with health colleagues are exploring possibilities for enhanced match funding. Evaluation and funding allocation has been approved and reported previously in PCD 10963 

Peer Review 

  1. Reduce the allocated funding amount from the Home Office funding for 2022-2023 from £600,000 to £150,000 

  1. Allocate a further £150,000 for financial years 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 from Council Tax Precept 

  1. This funding will be allocated to staffing as discussed in Section 2 below. 

The VRU is delivering a peer review programme as part of our work to analyse local activity reported as part of the Violence and Vulnerability Action Plan benchmarking process. The VRU is mobilising a service and the lead within the VRU began work recently. Due to the late start of the programme, we will reduce this fund to ensure limited underspend or variance within budgets and repurpose elsewhere to contribute to shortfall management and support of programmes facing funding pressures. 

Evaluation 

  1. Allocate £980,047 to evaluation from Home Office funding in 2022-2023. 

  1. Allocate £ 807,279 to evaluation from Home Office spend in 2023-2024. 

  1. Allocate £798,779 to evaluation from Home Office spend in 2024-2025 

  1. Remove any budget from Mayoral Core from 2022-2025. 

  1. Delegate any awards of delivery of evaluation contracts and grants to the Director of the VRU. 

The Home Office grant agreement requires that at least 10% of project funding to be spent on evaluations. The VRU already has a large raft of evaluation activity and had already allocated funding in previous decisions. However, now we intend to use the Home Office spend to fund this area & have an exact amount which relates to 10% of the project spend of the funding gift from the Home Office from 2022-2025. The planned spend from Mayoral Core as per Decision PCD 1147 will now be repurposed elsewhere to support project pressures. 

 

  

  1. Issues for consideration  

The VRU have increased its staffing spend to the Home Office from 10% to 15%. This is after analysis of approaches by other VRUs in terms of recouping staffing costs from the Home Office. This has then impacted on budgets for evalution and programmes form within the Home Office budget. However. This means that projects can now be funded from Mayoral Core & Precept funding. This then allows for longer programmes as the Mayor offers permanent funding and the Home Office offers only in-year spending for three years. Furthermore, this frees Mayoral Funding for allocation to projects.  

Longer term programmes have been empirically proven to enhance support to communities, as shorter term programmes can damage trust in communities and have limited impact. This was outlined in previous Decisions PCD 1147 and 1149 as the basis for the VRU allocating multi-year funding. Furthermore, the VRU’s monitoring and impact framework aligns crime and child protection data against programme outcomes to measure impact and the longer term programmes have more potential to show impact aligned to longer term metrics such as crime or child protection data from borough or community-level. 

Further information on programmes and projects not already outlined in previous decisions PCD 1147 & 1149: 

  1. Community based mental health support for parents and carers supports the emotional well-being of parents/carers and families through a range of therapies and support networks. We aim to develop strong, local, and collaborative partnerships with the voluntary sector. This programme is required to be delivered as a centre based localised community support where parents/carers and families work, live and feel supported. The Community-Based Mental Health and Emotional Well-Being Support pilot seeks to channel that energy and effort into community-led solutions, delivering:  

  1. Support to parents/carers and those with significant caring responsibilities with Low to medium mental health and emotional wellbeing needs  

  1. Developing engagement strategies to support parents to access services that are available to them 

  1. Understanding the impact of community- based delivery  

  1. Exploring the gap analysis and expanding the evidence base – understanding why some groups have difficulty accessing support and identifying solutions. Sharing findings following evaluation of the community/sector. 

  1. Additional and intensified support to key boroughs  

The MPS analysis of the record teenage homicide figures in 2021 highlighted three boroughs that presented a higher risk. These were Haringey, Greenwich, and Croydon. Newham was further identified by VRU assessment of teenage homicides over the past three years. The funding is for locally designed interventions in the borough with a focus on areas where there are high and sustained levels of violence. The aim of the funding is to provide additional support to those effected and impacted by violence, through a robust partnership approach, including collaboration between statutory partners, local communities, young people, stakeholders and key local institutions. This funding is to help support and enhance additional partnership work and could include areas such as supporting and increasing detached youth outreach, through organisations coming together, development of community champions, providing training to communities and young people on the impact of violence, as well as supporting strong and sustainable local networks of community members so that they are well placed to respond to local emerging needs and help advance and test new initiatives to tackle serious youth violence. 

  1. Financial Comments  

  1. This paper is seeking approval to award funds totalling £43.67M over the 3 year period 2022/23 – 2024/25. A detailed breakdown of projects, their costs and their funding source is provided at Appendix 1. 

  1. The proposals include use of £1.9M Budget Smoothing Reserve across 2023/24 and 2024/25. This funding is part of the £6.65M funding the VRU requested in the 2022/23 Q1 Budget Monitoring Report to be carried forward from 2022/23 into future years, to continue funding of specific projects and to offset the reduction of Home Office grant funding. The £6.67M carry forward is subject to DMPC approval.  

  1. Legal Comments 

  1. The Mayor's Office for Policing Crime is a contracting authority as defined in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 ("the Regulations").  All awards of public contracts for goods and/or services valued at £181,302 or above will be procured in accordance with the Regulations.  

  1. Paragraph 4.13 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve all requests to go out to tender for contracts of £500,000 or above.   

  1. Paragraph 4.13 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve all contract exemptions for £100,000 or above. 

  1. Commercial Issues  

  1. Route to market for each programme differs. There are examples of funding going straight to boroughs. The VRU supports the boroughs to then procure local organisations to deliver the programmatic activity in line with the grant. 

  1. Social Switch 2, Hospital Based Youth Work, Rise Up Youth Leadership & any evaluations will undergo a competitive tender process 

  1. DIVERT, IRIS, Community based mental health support will be extensions of current contracts or grants with direct award to those delivering contracts already 

  1. All other programmes award grant funding directly to local London boroughs, many of which with an expectation to award grants local organisations delivering initiatives to reduce violence. 

  1. Public Health Approach 

This piece of work has been informed by discussions and feedback from the Violence Reduction Unit wider staff team.  

  1. GDPR and Data Privacy  

  1. MOPAC will adhere to the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 and ensure that any organisations who are commissioned to do work with or on behalf of MOPAC are fully compliant with the policy and understand their GDPR responsibilities.  

  1. Equality Comments  

  2. MOPAC is required to comply with the public sector equality duty set out in section 149(1) of the Equality Act 2010. This requires MOPAC to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations by reference to people with protected characteristics. The protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. 

Appendix 1: Project Detailed Funding 

 

 

 

 


Signed decision document

PCD 1263 VRU 3 Year Funding Alteration

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