Realising Ambition: Selecting, Supporting and Evaluating Preventive Interventions for Anti-Social and Offending Behaviour

Realising Ambition is a UK-wide initiative that is investing £25million in a portfolio of 25 prevention and early intervention projects aimed at 10-14 year-olds and targeting pathways into offending. Projects receive support over 3-5 years to replicate ‘model’ interventions or to enable ‘promising’ interventions to develop their evidence-base through rigorous evaluation. Collectively, and to some extent individually, the funded interventions target multiple outcomes and risk and protective factors.

The paper will focus on four aspects of Realising Ambition. First, it will summarise the process for selecting projects. Standards of evidence were applied to select 25 projects from nearly 250 applications received. Interventions were assessed according to four components: intervention specificity; evaluation quality; intervention impact; and system readiness. Projects were also graded for organizational health.

Second, the paper will identify common themes in the logic models underpinning the long-list of interventions. Together, the results of the assessment and the analyses of logic models provide a unique picture of practice in the UK in relation to preventing or intervening early with offending among young people.

Third, the paper will examine emerging support needs that projects are presenting with, covering intervention refinement, organisational health, and system readiness. The way in which these factors are assessed and the nature of the support provided to enable replication will be discussed.

Fourth, the paper will explore how Realising Ambition is tracking progress across the 25 projects, focusing on the outcomes framework that has been developed and the dynamic monitoring systems for measuring implementation and outcomes.