‘Inspiring Futures’ comprises three strands which use rugby league as a catalyst to engage young people aged 11 to 14 in crime prevention work in the classroom, local community, and with their families. Five Rugby League Foundations will deliver the project within their local authority area, promoting positive, aspirational messages to large groups of young people through to targeted interventions for those identified as high risk of engaging in crime. The projects strands are:
‘Educate’: Trained coaches will deliver a preventative assembly programme to young people in years 7, 8, and 9 in secondary schools. The programme will entail four, skills-based sessions which promote self-esteem, communication, teamwork, and wellbeing and will be presented using media involving profile rugby league players conveying preventive focused messages. Trained coaches will work with schools to offer a community-based twelve-week mentoring programme to identified young people who are demonstrating behavioural issues, entailing two after-school forty-five-minute sessions per week.
‘Aspire’: Trained coaches will work with crime prevention agencies to offer two hours of community-based sports interventions, three evenings per week, targeting anti-social behaviour hotspots utilising community assets such as multi-use game areas. Whilst sports provision will be the engagement vehicle, holistic activity that supports participants wellbeing will be offered, including young leaders’ qualifications which will equip participants with the skills to volunteer within other projects, acting as role models to younger children.
‘Connect’: Recognising the importance of strong family relationships in preventing young people engaging in crime and violence, ‘Connect’ offers a family therapy programme which will involve a multi partnership approach alongside local authorities and schools to refer at-risk children into the programme. Based from stadium settings and delivered by trained coaches, families will engage in twelve, eighty-minute sessions that enable them to develop resilience skills that support their family unit.