The Brighton and Hove Albion Foundation runs programmes that aim to prevent young people entering a life of crime.

Reboot supports young people aged ten to 17 who are at risk of being affected by serious violence and knife crime across Sussex.

Mentors work one to one with young people who are referred by Sussex Police over a 12 week period to help them to be healthier, happier, more independent and support them to make a positive change or new start.

Targeted Kicks is part of national programme Premier League Kicks and provides free football specifically for young people aged eight to 12 who are involved with, or at risk of being involved with, serious youth violence.

At the sessions, children take part in fun football activities alongside community support officers from Sussex Police and receive one-to-one mentoring from foundation coaches.

Martin Schooley, inclusion lead at the Brighton and Hove Foundation, who heads Reboot and Kicks, said: “Reboot is a mentoring programme, which sees referrals from the police of young people that have just come to notice or about to enter the criminal justice system as such.

“We support them with a behaviour change programme that’s more about developing their emotional intelligence.

“It’s about them understanding their emotions so they’re not so emotionally driven, so they’ll think about situations instead of just reacting and come up with a better solution.

“It’s to improve their decision making.

“With Kicks we provide safe supervised space for young people to do positive activities.

This article is part of our Cut Knife Crime campaign.

Our mission is to reduce knife crime and the number of people being injured and killed in stabbings through:

  • Increasing the use of knife amnesty bins.
  • Educating young people about knife crime and making them aware of the effects it has on not just the victim, but those around them
  • Having more bleed control kits in pubs, shops and businesses

“They can make friends and burn off energy.

“We do a loose mentoring programme around the five ways of wellbeing which are be active, learn, take notice, give and connect. We build on those skills.

“The young people have to do workshops to gain an award and that’s where we work closely with the police, they do workshops, they come along to tournaments and they’ll do talking demos.

 “We’ve also had the VR headsets. The headsets are a powerful tool.

The Argus:

“The young people can watch and see the consequences of knife crime because there are no winners in these situations.”

The foundation has recently launched Targeted Kicks in Crawley.

“It’s a referral project which is a fuse between Reboot and Kicks,” said Mr Schooley. “We get referred Kicks kids and then engage them in football and we work with them.

“For us it’s an alternative for kids to understand their emotions and really think.

“Just having young children choosing a role model really helps.”

If you can host a bleed control pack in your business or support our campaign in any way contact campaigns@theargus.co.uk.