ACT believes in improving the outcomes for young people, especially those experiencing marginalisation and deprivation. We believe every young person needs access to the right support and safe spaces to develop, so they can be empowered to fully participate in society via education, extra-curricular programmes, training and employment opportunities that will help them to achieve their potential.

Over the last 10 years, we have dedicated ourselves to making the lives of thousands of young people better through our social and emotional development programmes, mentoring, coaching and by providing safe spaces and positive activities.

In 2020 we laid out our audacious 10-year mission to expand the great work we have been delivering by increasing communities capacity to respond to the impact of youth marginalisation, deprivation serious violence, such as knife crime, gangs & child criminal exploitation that is massively impacting young peoples lives by:

Enabling 1000 Organisations and Developing 10,000 Youth & Community Leaders who can engage & empower, create safe spaces and provide the right Support to 100,000 marginalised young people by 2030. We plan to do this by supporting communities with the right knowledge, skills & tools to reach and have an impact on the lives of young people.

This year we have been able to supported over 50 organisations, agencies, social enterprises, alongside local businesses within the community. Through the delivery of staff development, training, organisational mapping, workshops and partnership work. Our main focus has been organisations that are involved in community safety, crime and violence prevention.

We have supported:

• 46 organisations through, staff development, training, mapping, and working in partnerships.
• 17 of those organisation in the Eastern Caribbean 
• 9 Local organisations to share their mission through the Peace ACT 
• Supporting a total of 51 organisations

This year ACT has focused on developing our specialist level 3 qualification in Working with Gangs and Youth Violence into an online course so that we can reach more people in communities impacted by marginalisation and serious violence through our dedicated virtual learning portal. This has enabled us to start delivering the only accredited course in working with young people and communities impacted by gangs, serious violence and child criminal exploitation nationally and internationally. ACT has supported: 

• Trained and Certified 94 people to become specialists in working with Gangs and Youth Violence
  • 62 Juvenile Justice Workers in the Eastern Caribbean
  • 32 People Across the UK

• • Supported 10 adult volunteers & 12 young volunteers to contribute over 600hrs towards our ACT programmes
  • 30 people to deliver mentoring support, facilitate and deliver training.
  •  Developed our Distance learning Programme for the Gangs Course enabling people to study the course anytime from anywhere
  • We became a G-local (Global but Local) Company 

• The Course is now reaching people across the UK and the World.  
• We are teaching people in as far as Australia and delivering the course into 4 countries across the Caribbean including, Dominica, St Lucia, Grenada, St Vincent and Grenadines.  
• We are also proud that our programmes are reaching people across the UK we now have people on our courses in both East & West Midlands, London, Greater Manchester, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire.          

Supporting 100,000.

We haven’t yet found the best way to start measuring the impact of the people we are training and supporting. Our mission is about how we can support communities to have  collectively impact by reaching 100,000 young people by 2030.   This year we have been able to support 370 young people and 119 adults over 1800 hours across 1267 sessions totalling 5000 contact hours with both adults and young people over the last year. Through face to face and virtual mentoring, counselling support for young people struggling with their mental and emotional health. We have also provided critical intervention for young people at immediate risk of serious violence and child criminal exploitation, providing family support, and our social-emotional development programmes: ACT has supported 

• 117 young people and their families through mentoring and family support during COVID19
• 85 young people through our social & emotional development programmes
• 59 young people with their education during the lockdowns 
• 53 young people to improve their safety
• 44 families with basic needs during COVID19
• 32 young people at immediate risk from youth violence
• 14 young people with Employment opportunities.
• 5 young people to undertake apprenticeships

Our small team of staff have worked incredibly hard during this time and with the support from our funders who have been able to adapt and continue to Support, Enable and Develop our most vulnerable families and marginalised young people across the West Midlands.

During this time we have gratefully received support from:

• The National Lottery Fund
• Social Enterprise Fund – Unltd
• West Midlands Police Crime Commissioners
• Voices for Change
• The Violence Reduction Unit
• Birmingham City Council
• Charities Aid
• Children in Need
  

The numbers of young people we have been able to support has decreased over the last year as we seek to get back to some normality after the pandemic and lockdowns, which has had an adverse impact on how we normally carry out our services.  We have not been in the position over the last 12 months to continue our detached youth work sessions or resume our sessions in schools, after making a deliberate decision to focus on developing the training to better equip the workforce with dealing with marginalised young people and families, and our very own community based youth inclusion support project. Offering young people and their families more intensive support over longer durations to ensure they get the right the support they need in these difficult times. We have also been able to extend our offer from just mentoring to also providing counselling sessions for those needing support with their mental health and wellbeing, and also additional education support for disadvantaged young people where the attainment gap has widened between those who are not experiencing disadvantage.

This has also provided us with a great opportunity to support more families, rather than supporting children within just the school environment we turned our attention to providing young people with support in the home, which included parents and families, many who have been struggling to adapt and cope during the pandemic.

• We also supported our local food bank initiatives by distributing food to families struggling to cope financially. 
• We provided educational resources and were able to provide a few families facing issues getting online with smart devices so children could access education and support. 
• During the lockdown, we also recruited tutors to help us provide additional educational support to young people struggling to access education.

Many young people struggled to keep up with their education, due to dealing with more complex issues in the home, such as children caring for their parents with mental health issues, young people who were previously disengaged from education and those who were being criminally exploited meant that schools and other services have lost their control and  influence over them and many drifted deeper into the world of crime and violence. We have also provided outreach service to those families, dropping food supplies, distributing vouchers, and providing essential support, checking in regularly with families, holding important conversations, where we were able to give information, advice and guidance. Helping to reduce isolation, mental health, and improve the safety of young people against the risks of gangs, youth violence and CCE.