RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS
Sport is increasingly viewed as a positive referral opportunity by statutory and non-statutory agencies. This document provides guidance on how to put in place a referral pathway for sport interventions for young people at risk of or already involved in offending behaviour which includes serious youth violence. This guidance has been based on academic insight and theory from the fields of youth and criminal justice, youth and family work and community sport as well as learning from a series of research and programme evaluation programmes undertaken by Loughborough University (Loughborough campus) in partnership with StreetGames since 2015.
This guidance includes knowledge and insight, best practice and tools such as checklists that can be used by Locally Trusted Organisations (LTOs)1 and ‘sport referral co-ordinators’ to help to put new referral systems into place as well as to improve existing referral systems. (Please see the separate file for a pdf version of the checklists which can be downloaded, adapted and used) It is hoped that this guidance can be used to speed up the process of putting referral systems into place, making the process more straightforward and helping to avoid pitfalls. A similar guidance document has been produced for referral agencies which has similar content to ensure that there are shared areas of knowledge and understanding for a consistent approach towards referral systems, supporting partnerships and collaboration.
