LNK Educate: Feasibility and pilot study

About the study

Lives Not Knives (LNK) is a youth-led charity with a mission to prevent knife crime, serious youth violence and school exclusions. As part of achieving these aims, the charity developed LNK Educate, which is a school-based programme that combines a universal workshop approach via a series of lessons with targeted one-to-one mentoring for young people.

Funded by the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) conducted a feasibility study and pilot study of LNK Educate. The feasibility study aimed to assess early programme implementation to support decisions about programme refinement and whether the evaluation should proceed to the pilot stage. Following this, the pilot study investigated the potential of LNK Educate to reduce the risk of youth offending and identify appropriate primary outcome measures for the intervention. Building on this, we present our assessment of the readiness of LNK Educate for a future trial and provide insights into how such a trial could be designed. This report presents the findings of both studies.

Findings

• The training provided to deliver both the universal and targeted components of LNK Educate was deemed to be helpful by teachers and mentors in the feasibility study. Teachers noted some gaps in training content. While core elements were delivered in line with the intended model, implementation of both the universal and targeted elements in the feasibility study was variable.
• In the feasibility study, teachers reflected positively on the workshop session content and typically described young people as engaged during lessons. They also perceived young people to have a good relationship with mentors. COVID-19, and subsequent school closures, was a significant barrier to delivery; other barriers included teachers lacking knowledge in specific areas and a lack of resources for some lessons. Facilitators to delivery included the support provided by LNK Educate and the extended length of mentoring.
• Young people in the feasibility study reported that their mentors were relatable and trustworthy; they also described their mentors as caring, honest and non-judgemental as well as having a sense of humour. LNK staff, teachers and mentors perceived that the programme resulted in a range of positive outcomes for pupils.
• The pilot study found that it was feasible to use the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and the Student Resilience Survey (SRS) as outcome measures for LNK Educate. The measures align with the intervention’s logic model for young people receiving targeted mentoring; however, they are less well aligned with the universal workshop component.
• Recruitment of schools to the pilot study was generally satisfactory. However, two of the six originally sampled schools declined to participate due to the data archiving requirement. To evaluate LNK Educate via a randomised controlled trial, LNK Educate would need to more consistently select young people for the targeted mentoring component and apply a compliance measure for the targeted mentoring group to better understand the extent to which this component is delivered and scale up to a considerably larger number of schools.

Methodology

For the feasibility study, interviews and discussion groups were conducted with four LNK mentors, three members of the LNK management team, seven teachers and 16 pupils. For the pilot study, one hundred and ninety-one young people across five schools participated (112 completing the universal component and a further 79 also completing the targeted intervention). Pupils were invited to complete a pre- and post-programme survey featuring the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a measure of behaviour, and the Student Resilience Survey (SRS).