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County Lines and the power of the badge: the LFC Foundation’s approach to youth intervention

Francis Hargreaves (Liverpool Football Club Foundation, Liverpool, UK)
Paula Carroll (Liverpool Football Club Foundation, Liverpool, UK)
Grace Robinson (Black Box Research and Consultancy Ltd, Liverpool, UK)
Sean Creaney (School of Law, Criminology and Policing, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK)
Andrew O’Connor (Merseyside Police, Liverpool, UK)

Safer Communities

ISSN: 1757-8043

Article publication date: 1 February 2023

Issue publication date: 27 March 2023

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the purpose and outline the key features of Liverpool Football Club Foundation’s County Lines (CL) programme and how principles of collaboration and co-production can be implemented to educate children at risk of entering the youth justice system.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper reviews the findings from a 12-week CL intervention programme in 14 secondary schools in the Liverpool City Region between 2021 and 2022. The programme was designed in collaboration with funders, partners and participants and aimed to improve knowledge of, and change attitudes towards CL and its associated harms, including knife crime and child exploitation.

Findings

Knowledge and attitude changes were measured across 12 indicators, with positive changes recorded for each indicator. Perhaps of most interest to those working in the sector was the recorded success in obtaining consistent attendance from beginning to end with very little erosion of engagement. This suggests that the content and method of delivery was successful in engaging harder to reach young people to make positive change.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to examine how collaboration and co-production (two of the five principles of the Serious Violence Strategy 2018) can be implemented by a football charity and its partners to educate children in a local community on the harms of CL.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr Nicholas Longpré for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper and the anonymous peer reviewers, appointed by Dr Anne-Marie Day, for providing constructive feedback on versions of the manuscript.

Funding: The project is fully funded by Project Medusa which is Merseyside Police’s initiative to tackle County Lines and Child Exploitation.

Citation

Hargreaves, F., Carroll, P., Robinson, G., Creaney, S. and O’Connor, A. (2023), "County Lines and the power of the badge: the LFC Foundation’s approach to youth intervention", Safer Communities, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 91-105. https://doi.org/10.1108/SC-09-2022-0041

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

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