The Young Foundation was commissioned by Harrow Metropolitan Police to develop and pilot an emotional resilience programme targeting 14 -19 year olds who are offending or at risk of offending.

Building on our successful training and delivery of the UK Resiliency Project in 24 secondary schools across three local authorities - Manchester, Hertfordshire, South Tyneside - we have developed a programme specifically for working with 'gangs'. This was delivered by a range of professionals working with young people and we have developed new materials with Dr Ilona Boniwell, one of Europe's leading positive psychologists.

The Young Foundation team carried out a scoping exercise with a range of key agencies including local voluntary organisations, majority group and opposition councillors in Harrow, Harrow's Young People's services, the Anti-social Behaviour Unit, Safer Neighbourhoods Team and the Wealdstone Anti-social Behaviour Partnership.

Stakeholders were interviewed to understand the local context, past experiences of similar initiatives, perceptions of what success would look like, and risk factors associated with the project. We also explored perceptions of ‘gang culture' in the target area, and built an understanding of the range of provision and facilities for young people in the area.

Multi-disciplinary teams of frontline professionals who are based in Harrow and who regularly come into contact with these young people have been trained to deliver the course materials.

We will be publishing an evaluation of the Harrow work soon and we are actively looking for other places to test this approach.

Watch the accompanying video outlining the activities the young people participated in.

Read Nina Mguni's blog entry on persuading young men in Harrow to sign up to emotional reslience courses