Fundamentals that underpin SFSC
Tackling serious youth violence necessitates a holistic approach to address root causes and promote community engagement, education, and support systems for vulnerable young people, including parents. Everything we do as part of the Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities (SFSC) parent programme promotes families developing and maintaining a violence free healthy lifestyle where parents and families are integral to a community-based approach in addressing violence along with law enforcement, education, health, and other services.
Background to youth violence prevention
Keeping up to date with developments in what is happening in wider society is important. A recent report in England and Wales, revealed alarming statistics on youth violence. The report found that in the previous year, half of all teenagers either witnessed or were victims of violence. This large-scale survey of young people highlighted shocking and unacceptable levels of youth violence, with 358,000 teenagers suffering physical injuries. The issue of violence extends beyond immediate harm, affecting education as one in five teenagers admitted missing school due to feeling unsafe. Further insights from the survey indicated that almost half of teenagers (47%) felt the impact of violence or fear in their daily lives, leading to sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and difficulty concentrating at school.
Role of social media
The study also shed light on the role of social media in encouraging violence, with four in 10 teenagers believing technology encouraged such behaviour. When questioned about their actions, more than half of offenders cited feeling baited, while bullying and retaliation emerged as prominent motivations. These findings underscore the urgency of adopting a public health approach to prevent youth violence by investing in programmes like SFSC.
Changes to SFSC to meet new demands
Youth violence is a serious problem that can have lasting harmful effects on offenders, victims, their family, friends, and communities. SFSC recognises that family and community violence are inextricably linked but not inevitable. The programme seeks to address risk and protective factors to violence at the individual, relational, community, and societal levels and has seen more UK families benefit from the model for over 20 years. Through our 13-week evidence-based curriculum with groups of parents, we use the following strategies to help support families to address youth violence:
- Support parents and carers to consider the roots of their parenting decisions
- Promote strong parent-child relationships
- Adopt a process of discipline that focuses on appropriate behaviour
- Engage with community resources
- Develop childhood characteristics in the form of positive self-esteem, self-discipline and social competence
Testing our theories
The Youth Endowment Fund has provided an opportunity for the Race Equality Foundation to review and test various aspects of the SFSC programme and to supplement areas to better address serious youth violence. We are currently running a pilot to gain greater understanding of what works with groups of parents of children aged 10-18 who are at risk of becoming involved or affected by serious youth violence, a term broadly referred to as ‘harm inflicted on young people by other young people, resulting in serious injury or death’ (Liberty, 2023).
The pilot is being delivered in two London boroughs by SFSC practitioners trained to adapt the existing curriculum to better meet the needs of parents and young people impacted by serious youth violence. A focus group of practitioners, including experienced SFSC facilitators, parents, young people, youth services and other representatives from social care and targeted community organisations were used to direct the adaptations of the core programme.
New technology
The role of technology and social media was one of two key areas the focus group agreed should be addressed across the curriculum to support teenager’s healthy engagement with this medium. Building on standard SFSC core competences, new guidance on the risks and productive use of tech and social media has been provided for parents to support their teenagers’, personal, spiritual, physical, mental, cultural, historical, emotional, economic, social, and political rite of passage to adulthood. For example, the importance of maintaining a positive online reputation including discussions on responsible posting, respectful communication and how online behaviour can impact future opportunities.
The teenage brain
The second area we have addressed following direction from the focus group provides additional information on the curriculum’s ‘Child Thinking Stages’ regarding teenage brain development. This addition enables parents and their teenagers to better understand the physiological changes taking place during the teenage years and what may cause them to act irrationally in relation to managing their emotions, being solution focused or interpreting rules regarding risky situations and behaviours.
Building effective approaches
This pilot will determine if a large-scale impact evaluation of SFSC can be conducted to build evidence on effective approaches to prevent children from becoming involved in serious youth violence. We believe that supporting families is critical in helping to keep children safe from violence. This feasibility study is an important step in building robust UK evidence on how parenting programmes like SFSC can strengthen families and reduce risks for children. We aim to improve on what we are already delivering to parents with our additions to the training materials that focus on social media, technology, and the teenage brain. Life is always evolving and so too our parenting programme evolves to meet the needs of modern parenting. We aim to have the first draft of this resource available in autumn 2024.
