The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) has published Cordis Bright’s evaluation of the STEER mentoring programme, delivered by Salford Foundation and funded by YEF.

The study represents one of the largest and most rigorous UK evaluations of a mentoring programme aimed at preventing children’s involvement in violence.

Our work combined:

• A randomised controlled trial (RCT)
• An implementation and process evaluation (IPE)
• A cost assessment

The findings provide important insights into how mentoring programmes for children at risk of serious youth violence can be delivered and strengthened.

Addressing a key evidence gap

Mentoring programmes are widely used to support children at risk of violence. However, there is still limited robust UK evidence about their impact on offending behaviour.

The STEER programme provides a six-month trauma-informed mentoring and family support intervention for children aged 10–17 identified as being at risk of serious youth violence or criminal exploitation.

Across six Greater Manchester boroughs, a total of 689 children were randomly allocated either to receive STEER (337) or to a signposting control group (352).

What the trial found

The trial found a small negative impact on children’s self-reported offending behaviour. This means children who received STEER were slightly more likely to report offending than those in the control group according to the main primary outcome measure. However, there is uncertainty around this estimate and it should be interpreted with caution.

The results have a moderate security rating in line with YEF’s magnifying glass ratings.

The study also found:

• Moderate improvement in emotional symptoms
• Small improvements in peer difficulties and pro-social behaviour
• A small negative impact on conduct problems

These secondary outcomes are statistically uncertain and should be interpreted cautiously.

Insights from the implementation and process evaluation

Children reported strong, trusting relationships with their mentors, and many described feeling supported and better able to reflect on risks and regulate their emotions. The quality of these relationships was closely linked to the number of mentoring sessions children received.

However, the evaluation also found that STEER may not have been delivered at the intended intensity. On average, children received 14 mentoring sessions rather than the planned 24, and only around half of families engaged with the family support offer. Reduced programme dosage may therefore have limited the programme’s ability to generate measurable behavioural change within the six-month follow-up period.

Lessons for mentoring programmes

The evaluation highlights several lessons for organisations delivering mentoring programmes for children at risk of violence.

1. Relationships matter. Children consistently described trusted relationships with mentors as the most valuable part of the programme.

2. Intensity and engagement are critical. Sustained mentoring contact may be necessary to achieve behavioural change, but maintaining this intensity can be challenging when working with children facing complex life circumstances.

3. Family engagement can be difficult. Mentoring programmes often operate alongside multiple other services. This can make it harder for families to engage consistently with additional support.

4. Implementation matters. Understanding how programmes are delivered in practice, including dosage, engagement and local system factors, is essential for interpreting trial results and improving interventions.

Building the evidence on preventing youth violence

Even when programmes do not demonstrate clear impacts, high-quality trials play a critical role in strengthening the evidence base.

The evaluation on STEER contributes important learning by:

Providing one of the most rigorous UK tests of a mentoring programme aimed at preventing serious youth violence

• Generating insight into how mentoring relationships and programme delivery operate in practice
• Highlighting the challenges of delivering intensive mentoring programmes at scale

This evidence helps practitioners, funders, commissioners and policymakers better understand how mentoring programmes might be refined and implemented in the future.

We are currently working on a number of YEF funded efficacy studies exploring how different mentoring approaches may impact on children's involvement in serious violence and offending. These include: Future Men’s Boys Development Programme, Media Academy Cymru’s Cerridwen Programme, Audio Active’s SHIFT programme and United Borders’ B.U.S. programme. Together, these studies form a major programme of experimental evaluation exploring how mentoring approaches may reduce youth violence and offending.