The SAFE (Support, Attend, Fulfil, Exceed) taskforce programme is a 3-year initiative, continuing until summer 2025, funded by the Department for Education.
It focuses on providing targeted support to young people aged 10 to 14 in mainstream schools who may be at risk of:
- disengagement from education
- becoming involved in serious youth violence
The taskforce's aim is to deliver interventions to support young people with challenging behaviour, enabling them to attend school regularly. This is to ensure they can fulfil their potential and prevent costly poor life outcomes by inspiring them to exceed their expectations.
In Haringey we set up a Haringey SAFE Taskforce Board composed of multi-agency partners including:
- local school headteachers
- representatives from the council
- health and other partners to lead on this work
Haringey has been allocated £1.28 million for the duration of the programme to deliver interventions. The SAFE Taskforce Board agreed that these interventions should focus on:
- transitions support (from year 6 to year 7)
- secondary outreach (from year 7 to year 9)
- cognitive behavioural approaches
- mentoring
- social skills
The target number of children to receive interventions is a minimum of 200 each year. Children will be identified by schools and will be accessing the support through schools. The programme will be independently evaluated.