A new report assesses progress made to date and the future prospects for the Mayor’s programmes to tackle serious youth violence. 

The report by the Assembly’s Time for Action Panel found uneven progress on the delivery of the Mayor’s five core intervention programmes . While some projects are operational others have been slow to get going and have yet to fully prove their worth. 

The report focuses on three particular areas where the Mayor has intervened and significant GLA resources have been expended: to support offender rehabilitation, to support looked after children and to support mentoring of young black boys.

While the Panel supports the Mayor’s strategy of focusing support on critical moments in young people’s lives, it concluded that in developing the programmes it is important to better understand the causes and drivers of serious youth violence and there is more the Mayor can do to commission and publish research which would support his interventions.

Joanne McCartney AM, Chair of the Time For Action Panel, said:

“While the Mayor is enthusiastic about action to tackle serious youth violence, delivering verifiable results has been slow in several areas. The panel is particularly concerned at the lack of progress in meeting targets for the Mayor’s mentoring programme. It couldn’t hurt if the Mayor’s Mentoring Champion Ray Lewis knew what his role is, as he admits he doesn’t really know.

Some good work has been done by the Time For Action programmes, but patchy delivery and an incomplete understanding of the underlying causes of serious youth violence have held back the positive outcomes we all want to see. Any commitment of further funding to Time For Action programmes must be based on evidence of success rather than enthusiasm for it.”

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