Embedding mentors with lived experience in schools to reduce violent offending amongst young people: randomised controlled efficacy trial of the SOS+ programme.
Creators: name: Upadhyay, Nandita
name: Ng-Knight, Terry
name: Stoilova, Ekaterina
name: Magić, Jasna
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: crime
subject: offending

description: St Giles' SOS+ Embedded Mentoring Model is an early intervention, prevention, and aspiration support programme delivered in schools. This programme provides targeted support to students involved in crime, youth violence or exploitation, delivered in schools by mentors with lived experience of the criminal justice system. Given data gaps on early interventions delivered to pupils to prevent crime and violence, and on the effectiveness of mentors with lived experiences, this impact, process, and cost evaluation of the SOS+ programme will make significant contributions to our evidence base on preventing gang involvement and youth violence.
SOS+ was initially set up in 2015 to deliver preventative awareness-raising school assemblies. However, pupils were disclosing information indicating they were already involved in gangs, violence, and exploitation. At the same time, schools were overwhelmed and lacked the expertise and time to effectively support these pupils. As a result, the SOS+ Embedded Mentoring Model was set up in 2018. SOS+ is now delivered in (often deprived) areas across England where there is an increasing issue with gangs and violence, including evidence of increasing severe youth violence and crime. 
The SOS+ programme targets CYP of secondary school age who are known to be involved in incidents related to criminal activity, youth violence or exploitation. The majority of CYP mentored are expected to be between the ages 11 and 16. To be referred into the programme CYP will have to meet at least one of the following four eligibility criteria:
1. Known involvement with the police. This includes any involvement that the school are aware of including truancy warning; anti-social order; arrest; caution.
2. Multiagency involvement. Due to involvement in criminal activity, youth violence or exploitation. Professional targeted support and/or intervention with the young person that could include: Team Around the Child; Multi-Agency Gangs Panel (MAGPAN); local safeguarding board; health professionals.
3. Have a linked statutory worker. Due to involvement in criminal activity, youth violence or exploitation. Social worker; YOS worker; probation worker; family support worker; outreach support worker.
4. Self-reported involvement in criminal activity, youth violence or exploitation. Young person has expressed involvement to another professional parent or carer. 

Evaluation design
This evaluation will have three components: Impact Evaluation (IE), Implementation and Process Evaluation (IPE) and Cost Evaluation (CE).
Impact evaluation. For the IE, NatCen will carry out a two-armed individual-level Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT), stratified by school setting. The control condition will be pastoral care as usual (PCAU). Randomisation will be at the individual level, as this provides greater statistical power for the sample size achievable for delivery of the SOS+ programme (960 children and young people drawn from 20 education settings, 480 receiving SOS+ mentoring and 480 receiving PCAU). As a primary research question, the IE will investigate the impact of SOS+ mentoring on self-reported offending of children and young people, compared to PCAU. Secondary outcomes investigated include the impact of SOS+ mentoring on conduct problems, prosocial behaviour, education setting attendance and exclusions. 
Implementation and process evaluation. The IPE will assess whether the programme is being delivered as intended, exploring facilitators and barriers to effective implementation and fidelity, and contextualise findings from the impact evaluation. To achieve the main objectives and answer the main research questions, the IPE will draw on 90 in-depth interviews across 4 key stakeholder groups: 1) SOS+ mentors (10 in-person interviews); 2) linked statutory workers e.g., social worker or youth offending worker (20 online interviews); 3) school referrers (20 online interviews); and mentees (40 in-person interviews).
Cost Evaluation. We will collect and analyse cost data. Costs will be estimated based on the delivery costs of the intervention; this will not include evaluation costs. We plan to administer a survey/pro forma (i.e., excel spreadsheet) to collect information on the costs of programme delivery from St Giles and any other organisations involved in the delivery of the intervention.
Ethics
This research was approved by NatCen’s Research Ethics Committee (REC) in November 2023. NatCen’s ethics procedure meets the requirements of the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK Government Social Research (GSR) Professional Guidance.
For more details, please refer to the study protocol here: https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/St-Giles-Evaluation-Protocol-Mar-24.pdf