In April we joined the Ending Youth Violence Lab for their official launch event, where they shared the first charitable research projects they will be funding. Khulisa is delighted to be one of the first winners of their transformative support and evaluation, alongside Barnardos. Our CEO Jodie Wickers spoke about our Face It programme and the research plans with the Lab, including testing the impact of our Face It programme.
The Ending Youth Violence Lab identifies projects addressing youth violence, funds their development and delivery and researches how innovative projects can be improved.
Khulisa’s commitment to ensuring impact
Khulisa is committed to evidence and impact and we consistently test our programmes rigorously. In the last 4 years, we have developed and tested that our Theory of Change targets the right outcomes – a year-long evaluation by the University of Sussex which found nearly 7 in 10 of our participants report increases in their well-being with a paired t-test which was used to indicate that this improvement was statistically significant, meaning the changes did not occur by chance.
To build on these learnings, we recently launched a new multi-year study with evaluation experts in the education sector, ImpactEd. Interim findings show substantial increases across all the three core outcomes we target:
- 63% of participants reported an increase in wellbeing
- 77% of participants reported an increase in resilience
- 62% reported an increase in emotional regulation
In all three cases, young people’s average scores went from below the scale and national averages for each measure to above the average. We also observed promising results in relation to school attendance. At a time when national attendance levels fell by 6.74% due to the pandemic, attendance for Face It participants dropped by just 0.7%. This is significant as our young people are often most at risk of disengagement from school.
The Ending Youth Violence Lab will work with Khulisa and 5 schools across London to fund our flagship programme, Face It. Face It is a 6-8 week social and emotional well-being programme for students in secondary school. In this evaluation, we’ll be looking specifically at those in years 9 and 10. The Lab will be supporting our school-based programme to take the next steps on its evidence journey by conducting a pilot trial.
Conducting a pilot Randomised Control Trial (considered the gold standard in evidencing the impact of an intervention) with the Lab is just the next step for us in the process of evidencing the need to support the social and emotional well-being of young people.
If you are a school interested in joining this evaluation and would like to benefit from our 6-8 week social and emotional wellbeing programme for your students, please get in touch: programmes@khulisa.co.uk