‘Kickz’ programme update

Report: 13
Date: 29 March 2007
By: Assistant Commissioner Territorial Policing on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

The Kickz project has gone from an idea on the drawing board to a national and highly recognised youth social inclusion project in less than two years.

There are now 25 professional football clubs delivering the project. It has the full support of the Government and Treasury with the personal endorsement of both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.

Whilst it is too early to claim long term and sustainable success, initial indications are that it is having a positive impact on the lives of the youths involved with it nationally, helping to break down communication barriers and also providing diversion and education activities at the times when they are needed.

The project supports the ethos of Safer Neighbourhood Policing as it provides a mechanism through which the Safer Neighbourhood teams are able to engage with the community and through this build trust and confidence. This is already evident within the 12 London Boroughs in which the project is running.

A. Recommendation

That members are asked to note the contents of this report and continue to support the work currently taking place.

B. Supporting information

The origins and development of The Kickz Project

1. The Kickz Football Project is a national social inclusion and youth diversion program that has been borne out of discussions between the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) and the main football bodies, namely The Premier League (FAPL), The Football Association (FA) and The Football League (FL).

2. These discussions with the football bodies were brought about as a result of the MPA looking into the costs incurred by the MPS in policing football matches in London. It had always been the case that any policing that took place within the confines of the football club were paid for by the club itself, as the MPS were in effect policing private property, but, any policing that took place outside of the ground was paid for by the MPS, given that it was policing of a public place. There are 12 professional clubs in the London area [1] and the actual cost of policing their games each year has been shown to be in the region of £14million. Consideration had been given to the feasibility of recovery of these costs.

3. The football bodies were concerned about this suggested charging, as the financial implications to some football clubs could have been devastating. After three years of talks there was an agreement for the MPS to work with the football world and examine ways that football could be used to deliver sustainable social inclusion and youth diversion projects across London.

4. Learning from existing community football programmes and using the power of football with the appeal of the professional clubs branding, the concept of the ‘Pan London Football Project’, as it was known then, began to take shape. The vision at the time was to target some of the most disadvantaged areas in London in order to create safer, stronger and more respectful communities through the development of young people’s potential.

Aims, objectives and project development

5. With that vision in mind today’s objectives for the Kickz project are:

• To engage young people (aged 12 – 18 yrs) in a range of constructive activities which link to the Every Child Matters (ECM) framework;
• To break down barriers between the police and young people;
• To reduce crime and anti-social behaviour in the targeted neighbourhoods;
• To increase the playing, coaching and officiating opportunities for participants;
• To create routes into education, training and employment;
• To encourage volunteering within projects and throughout the target neighbourhoods; and
• To increase young people’s interest in, and connections with, the professional game.

6. The brand name of ‘Kickz’ was developed through a consultation process involving groups of young people from across London. An event was held at the Wembley Stadium offices of the FA where groups of young people from all sections of society were invited to attend. Through a series of workshops the young people created the name for the project, together with its unique spelling, and logo design. From this consultation the Pan London Football Project became known as The Kickz Project.

7. On the ground the project that is delivered involves club community coaches taking football activity onto estates that have been identified as having high levels of anti-social behaviour and limited opportunities for young people. The sessions are run three times a week, for fifty weeks of the year, at times when the potential for anti-social behaviour is high. This enables young people to gain confidence in the project and for it to have an impact on their lives as opposed to many schemes that have limited sustainability. Partnership attendance allows barriers to be broken down between young people and those seen as the ‘authorities’ as football provides a non-threatening area of conversation.

8. The locations (estates) and sessions times are determined by a local steering group based on local need to achieve the project objectives. The local steering group partners include the Borough Police, Local Housing, Local Youth Service, Local Community Safety Team, Youth Offending Team plus any other local partners deemed appropriate.

9. The three sessions per week are made up of two nights of football (coaching and competition) and one flexible night. This third flexible night is an opportunity to provide the young people with something that is beyond football and can be anything from another sport, such as basketball, cricket etc, to other activities that will include music based sessions and a range of developmental activities e.g. drug awareness, healthy living, volunteering, weapons workshops and other social skills.

10. The project gives young people opportunity. It has already afforded many the opportunities to become local coaches and thereby gain employment as role models within their own communities; it provides opportunity to become involved in sustainable activity, which addresses all of the Every Child Matters outcomes. The clubs provide unique opportunities for young people to meet players, have tours of the stadiums and to watch live games. For many young people involved in the project these experiences would have been beyond their expectations.

11. With 25 projects now fully operational a regional and national competition between projects is being planned that will culminate in the finals being played at the new Wembley Stadium in the summer. This will be a reward for young people who are not necessarily the best players but who have attended on a regular basis and have made a good contribution. This will be an opportunity for the young people to represent their respective clubs and wear their colours. For those able to progress it will be a tremendous achievement for them where they will be representing their community or estate at such a high profile location. This is another example of opportunities that they might not otherwise have had without the project.

The change from London to National project

12. In the initial stages the project was strategically managed by an Oversight steering group comprising of representatives from the MPS, the MPA, the Youth Justice Board (YJB) and the football world It was agreed to run 3 pilot sites in London with Fulham, Tottenham and Brentford football clubs delivering them in Lambeth, Haringey and Ealing boroughs respectively. These pilot projects were financed with funding from The Premier League, The FA and The Football League. Prior to these three pilots becoming fully established and evaluated there was interest shown in the project by the Government through the Respect Task Force through which further funding followed. This was soon followed by a further financial support from The Treasury for the project to grow nationally. As a result of this Kickz quickly grew from being London based to a National one.

13. With this increased investment there was a need to bring the Football Foundation into the group of strategic partners. The Football Foundation is the charitable arm of the main football bodies and it was decided that the Foundation was best placed to receive and manage the financial side of the project. The MPS has a full time project manager based within the Safer Neighbourhoods Unit and the Foundation likewise recruited a project manager who took up post in July 2006. As the project has grown the Foundation now have 2 project managers working alongside each other. The role of the MPS project manager is to ensure and oversee partnership involvement in local schemes and to ensure that it is delivered in locations and at times that will have an impact on anti social behaviour. The football project manager manages the links with the clubs and the Football Foundation.

14. Further funding has since been provided by the Department for Culture, Media and sport (DCMS), the youth volunteering charity v (£1 Million over 3 years) and the Department of Health.

Governance

15. There are now two tiers of partnership within the Kickz programme. At the strategic level there are the main partners including the MPA, the MPS, the Premier League, the Football Association, the Football League and the Football Foundation. These partners form the main steering group who meet fortnightly. At the borough delivery level there are the local partnerships that form the local steering groups who meet on a regular basis.

16. There are also two bodies that currently sit above the main steering group, namely the Oversight Group and the Football Foundation Board. The Oversight Group, which is chaired by Mr Richard Sumray of the MPA, is effectively the initial steering group detailed above who continue to maintain the strategic overview of the project. Whereas in the early stages the members had a pan London responsibility they now have a national one and its members now include representatives from both the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the Association of Police Authorities (APA). The Football Foundation board is responsible for ensuring that the funding is correctly spent and that the project is delivered in line with its objectives. The Football Foundation have overall project management responsibility and this is the first project to be managed by them in its entirety.

Launch and London projects

17. The Prime Minister officially launched the first of the three pilot projects in April 2006 in Haringey with Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. The Rt. Hon Tessa Jowel MP officially launched the Kickz Strategy Document on the 27 November 2006 at the project being run by West Ham in Newham. This was featured in the national media and on the BBC’s Football Focus programme on Saturday 2 December 2006.

18. There are currently twenty-five projects running nationally with seventeen premier league and 8 football league clubs taking part. These extend from Newcastle in the northeast to Portsmouth on the South coast. There are twelve London based clubs delivering a total of 17 schemes. These clubs are:

• Arsenal in Islington Borough
• Brentford in Ealing Borough
• Charlton in Greenwich Borough
• Chelsea in Wandsworth Borough
• Crystal Palace in Croydon Borough
• Fulham in Lambeth Borough
• Millwall in Lewisham Borough
• Orient in Hackney Borough
• Queens Park Rangers in Brent Borough
• Tottenham in Haringey Borough
• Watford in Harrow Borough
• West Ham in Newham Borough

19. Other than being part of the local steering groups all the local partners have a role to play in supporting the project on the ground. There is an expectation that local partners will use this as an opportunity to visit the projects and seek to engage with the young people. This is particularly so for partners such as the local youth service, outreach workers, youth offending teams, community safety teams, housing agencies etc. The Safer Neighbourhood Teams play a vital role here as this provides them with an excellent opportunity to engage with the young people and break down barriers. There is already good evidence of this happening at the projects in London where youth are now engaging constructively with the local Safer Neighbourhood teams. The visible presence in the area also provides security and reassurance to both the youth and the community in general.

Costs and funding

20. The aim of this project is that it is not a short term intervention but a long term sustained initiative delivering sports based social inclusion activities for young people over a three to five year period and hopefully beyond. Each project costs in the region of £50,000 per year and it is predicted that the cost of running all 25 projects, together with management and other associated costs, will be £1.45 million per year. Systems are currently in place to hopefully secure future funding for at least the next two years and hopefully beyond. The aspiration is that in time each project will become self-sustaining through local funding and Local Area Agreements (LAA).

21. Any further funding achieved beyond the £1.45 million will allow for further growth and development with more projects nationally. There has already been a lot of interest shown by the clubs not currently in the programme and many are actively trying to secure local funding to enable them to join the scheme.

22. Within London there are two boroughs, namely Hackney and Greenwich that have already seen the value of Kickz and have obtained local match funding to enable them to roll out more than just one scheme. Hackney will have three projects running within the borough very soon with Greenwich having four. It is hoped that, using these two boroughs as role models, others will follow suit and seek out additional funding and launch further projects.

The long term plan for Kickz in London

23. At the present time whilst all of the London football clubs except Barnet are involved in delivering Kickz, there are still 20 boroughs without funding for a scheme. With the project now being a national one it will be more difficult to secure funding for these additional boroughs, from any growth funding made available nationally, when there are still 67 football clubs outside of London all keen to become involved. A number of MPS boroughs are presently working on local funding ventures to support Kickz projects locally.

24. The MPS are keen to see Kickz in every London borough and we are also actively seeking additional funding streams to support this aspiration. It will cost £1 million per year to involve the additional 20 boroughs.

Monitoring and evaluation

25. The monitoring and evaluation of the project is being done through a company called ‘Substance’ who have been involved in similar social inclusion projects previously. They have created a web based evaluation system that allows the various clubs around the country to input data locally with evidence of both the progress of their project and also on the progress of individual youths. From their growing database they are able to provide both statistical data on attendance rates and evidential data on the progress of individuals. Through ‘Substance’ we are also able to capture data on volunteering among the young people, which will help secure future funding through organisations such as v and The Princes Trust.

26. One of the positive attributes of the project is that it meets all the government’s outcomes under its Every Child Matters agenda and is key ‘to the well-being of children and young people up to the age of 19’. Through the delivery of both the sport and other non-sport social inclusion activities there are aspects within it that enable and support every young person to:

• Be healthy;
• Be safe;
• Enjoy and achieve;
• Make a positive contribution; and
• Achieve economic well-being.

The monitoring and evaluation framework that is in place for every project provides a mechanism through which this evidence is captured.

27. The steering group have recently conducted an interim evaluation on the national projects for both the Treasury and the Football Foundation Trustees. This has included a fuller crime analysis on the three pilot projects and the one managed by Manchester City on the Moss Side Ward in Manchester. Some of the positive outcomes to date include:

• Of the three pilot projects 25 young people have achieved an FA Level one coaching certificate and the club within the project now employs two of these.
• It is anticipated that over 100 young people will achieve their coaching certificate nationally this year.
• West Ham have had 20 under 16 year olds participate in the Junior Football Organisers award.
• Manchester City has had 22 young people achieve accredited qualifications including First Aid and Child Protection Certificates.
• Differing levels of volunteering examples among the projects ranging from helping to organise equipment to actually leading sessions.

28. Work is continuing in developing analysis and understanding the impact that this project is having on crime patterns in the areas where this initiative is targeted. Whilst initial results are promising it is too early to claim success in this regard and the project is working closely with the Safer Neighbourhoods analysts that are now in place on each borough.

29. Looking to the future it is proposed to conduct a full evaluation of all national projects in September 2007, a year after the roll out of the phase two projects. Within London this will include a full crime and anti-social behaviour evaluation for each project area. There are also plans to include the Kickz project on future Safer Neighbourhood Ward surveys that are conducted within the affected wards to gauge the response from the community.

Abbreviations

ACPO

Association of Chief Police Officers

APA

Association of Police Authorities

ECM

Every Child Matters

FA

Football Association

FAPL

Football Association Premier League

FL

Football League

LAA

Local Area Agreements

MPA

Metropolitan Police Authority

MPS

Metropolitan Police Service

YJB

Youth Justice Board

C. Race and equality impact

1. This project is aimed at targeting some of the more difficult and hard to reach communities and areas nationally. In doing so the project will naturally reach out to some of the more deprived and often forgotten groups within our society. It is recognised that many young people will not venture out of their immediate environment and as a result lose out on what is available to them. By taking these projects right into the heart of these communities it is envisaged that we will overcome these issues.

2. This project provides an excellent opportunity to break down barriers with the young people. This is not just about between the young people and police but also between diverse youth groups. This has already been demonstrated within some of the projects where rival ‘gangs’ of youths have become involved within the same project and are now playing alongside each other rather than being confrontational.

3. The projects are not looking to exclude anyone but rather provide an environment to build and develop bridges between groups and individuals. Projects leaders are encouraged to look at ways to include those with disabilities within the scheme and to help them integrate. Again, this is best described as work in progress as the project develops with best practice being shared. This is part of the evaluation process.

4. Consultation has been a key part of the project from its inception. It is essential that the young people are involved in the local development of their projects and the club coaches are encouraged to consult with them at all stages.

5. Equality impact has been considered throughout at every stage of the programme and is subject to continual review through the steering groups. Now that the phase 2 projects are almost all operational each will now be subjected to a formal Equality Impact Assessment to ensure that they are reaching out to all communities and that no communities or individuals are being disadvantaged or excluded.

D. Financial implications

1. There are clearly financial implications for any project of this size. The project requires £1.45million each year for sustainability on a national basis without any growth factored in. Within London there is a need to secure a further £1million to make it a true pan London project and operational in every borough.

2. If the funding is identified to roll this out London wide then there will be an added implication for staffing within the MPS. At the present time there is one project manager, at Inspector level, responsible for the 12 projects. The work involved in setting up 20 further steering groups and projects would be immense.

E. Background papers

• Kickz Strategy Document

F. Contact details

Report author: Inspector Marc Davis, Safer Neighbourhoods, TPHQ, MPS.

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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