Choices

Choices is a £4 million programme for 2011-12 funded by the Home Office. It is aimed at the voluntary and community sector to help them prevent and reduce substance misuse and related offending by vulnerable groups of young people aged 10-19 years.

The programme is targeting vulnerable groups of young people who are most likely to be at risk of, or already starting to become involved in, substance misuse or related offending.

The funding was made available to national voluntary and community organisations to support local organisations to deliver targeted prevention and early intervention programmes as well as transferring skills, expertise and knowledge. The application process was run over the summer and is now closed.

The programme was designed in partnership with a number of national voluntary and community organisations. There was tremendous interest in the programme and the Home Office received over 125 applications for funding from voluntary and community organisations.

All the applications were assessed and a cross sector decision making panel, comprising representatives from various Government departments and agencies met to agree which applications should be funded. Home Office Ministers have now agreed funding for a number of organisations.

The successful applications cover a wide geographical area and aim to work with around 160 local voluntary and community organisations and engage with over 10,000 young people.

The successful national voluntary organisations who are now delivering Choices are:

The Prince’s Trust

• Locations - Hackney, Kennington, Bath, Merseyside, Newcastle, Kent and Teesside.
• Intensive support and interventions for 152 vulnerable young people aged 13-19. 
• Providing bespoke training and resources to 24 staff from 8 local voluntary sector organisations to develop their skills and abilities to work with vulnerable young people.

Action for Children

• Location - Rotherham.
• Focus on children of drug misusing parents. Two groups of 10 young people 10-13 and 14-16 using issue based sessions and diversionary activity and one-to-one support.
• Creating two e-learning modules to be available to 320 paid staff and 450 volunteers through the Voluntary Sector Consortium’s e-learning platform on substance misuse and offending.

Compass – Services to Tackle Problem Drug Use

• Locations - Enfield, Harrow, Coventry, Lambeth and Hull.
• Direct 200 young people who are misusing substances or are at risk of into positive and sustainable diversionary activities. 
• Providing support from a peer mentor and one-to-one brief interventions tackling self-esteem, offending behaviour and substance misuse.

Catch22

• Locations - Waltham Forest, Haringey, Hackney, Lambeth, Southwark, Islington and Lewisham.
• Focus on supporting high harm violent young people (10-19) involved in gangs across London as identified by the Metropolitan Police through Operation Connect.
• Training will also be provided to local voluntary organisations and statutory partners in drug awareness and local screening tools to ensure they can identify signs of substance misuse and make appropriate referrals to substance misuse agencies.

Barnardos

• Location - Bradford. 
• Establishing a multi agency panel in order to identify and monitor progress of two key cohorts (10 young people and their families) that are on 'the edge' of statutory intervention in relation to substance misuse and related offending behaviours

Active Communities Network

• Locations - London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Sheffield, Nottingham, Brighton, Southend, Birmingham, Hull, Portsmouth, Southampton Coventry   Sunderland and Newcastle.
• Consortia approach led by Active Communities Network, the Metropolitan Police and the Premier League. 
• Engaging around 5,000 young people through arts, media, youth work and sports based activities to enhance protective factors and their resilience to avoid substance misuse.      
• The project will also deliver issue based workshops and accredited and non-accredited training (for participants, parents and carers).

DrugScope

• Location – Birmingham.
• Intensive preventative interventions to young people affected by parental substance misuse. 
• 500 young people will be provided with alcohol and drugs awareness sessions and one-to-one support.

Developing Initiatives for Support in the Community (DISC)

• Location - Leeds.
• Targeted work with young people whose parents are already involved with adult substance misuse services to address the impact of intergenerational substance misuse and criminal behaviour. 

Mentor

• Locations - Central Lancashire, Halton, Cornwall, Brent and Bournemouth.
• Project Street Talk will embed measurable brief interventions into the work of 20 local voluntary and community sector organisations engaging with around 3,000 young people.

Youth at Risk

• Locations - Sunderland, Southend and Plymouth.
• Intensive support for 75 young people at risk of or already engaged in substance misuse and offending. 
• Training 60 staff from the voluntary and statutory sector and 75 volunteers from local communities to equip them with the skills to be able to work with the identified young people.

Groundwork

• Locations – Bridgend, Corby, Nottingham, Leicester, Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool, Leeds, Bradford, Tees Valley, and Essex.
• Testing a range of local approaches and interventions among young people delivering of a number of local projects aimed at reducing substance misuse and offending.  Groundwork will be providing support and expertise to local networks.

Contact

For further information on Choices please email our Integrated Offender Management Team.