Healthy Relationships in Schools: VAWG Prevention

Violence Against Women and Girls Prevention Programme (up to £20,000) Promoting Healthy and Respectful Relationships in Secondary Schools. Finding out what works to prevent violence against young women and girls (VAWG) is a key part of delivering on YEF’s mission to prevent children and young people from becoming involved in violence. This funding round forms part of a wider YEF programme of funding, evaluation and research over the next three years on what works to prevent and respond to VAWG.

Objective 1: Promoting Healthy and Respectful Relationships in Secondary Schools

We know that supporting children and young people to develop the skills and understanding they need to build healthy and respectful relationships is an important early step to preventing the emergence of harmful behaviours in relationships—including physical, emotional and sexual abuse in relationships, coercive or controlling behaviour, harassment and exploitation, including online and technology‑facilitated abuse. This is why the Department for Education and the Home Office have partnered with YEF to launch this funding round. We are seeking to fund interventions and generate robust evidence on how secondary schools can best be supported to deliver healthy relationships content, improve young people’s knowledge and attitudes towards healthy relationships and harmful behaviours, and ultimately reduce violence against women and girls. This aligns with both Pillar 1: Prevention and early intervention in cross‑government strategy on VAWG, and the Department of Education’s roll‑out of revised statutory Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) curriculum in September 2026.

What we’re looking to fund

We are inviting applications across two strands:

• Strand 1: Build school capacity internally on healthy relationships delivery - Projects that strengthen the confidence, skills and capacity of secondary school staff to deliver universal, high‑quality content around healthy and respectful relationships as part of the new Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) curriculum. We would expect these interventions to primarily focus on providing training and support for teachers dealing with sensitive topics in some or all of the areas of Respectful Relationships, Online Safety and Awareness, Being Safe and Intimate and Romantic Relationships in the RSHE curriculum. We will consider interventions that cover the above but also include wider school approaches designed to strengthen school culture, leadership and systems around healthy relationships.
• Strand 2: Delivery of healthy relationships content of RSHE by external providers - Projects by experienced, external specialist providers to deliver universal healthy relationships content in the new RSHE curriculum directly to young people in secondary schools. Applicants should have some prior experience in delivering the proposed project model. Projects must be delivered in England, and work with young people aged 11–16 in secondary school settings.

Please note that we are planning a further funding round in the summer that will focus on supporting schools with targeted interventions for young people to respond to inappropriate and problematic behaviours around teenage relationships.

Scale of the evaluation

We will be seeking to fund and evaluate each project selected. We’ll be prioritising projects and organisations that are able to reach enough participants and schools to support a robust impact evaluation.

Eligibility and requirements

• Location: your intervention must be delivered in England.
• Your organisation: your organisation must be a registered charity, company, statutory body or CIC.
• Activities: interventions must fit within one of the strands listed within this guidance.
• Target schools and children: interventions must support outcomes for children and young people aged 11–16, in state secondary schools.
• Outcomes: we’re primarily interested in interventions that are focused on reducing violence against women and girls and harmful behaviours in teenage relationships over the long term.
• Scale: you must be able to reach enough schools to support a robust and meaningful evaluation.

Timeline: This delivery in schools is likely to start in September 2027 and must be finished by December 2028 at the latest.

Willingness to engage in an independent evaluation: YEF exists to better understand what works to prevent children and young people from becoming involved in violence. To help us achieve this, you will need to work with an evaluation partner throughout your intervention.

Track record: We will assess organisations’ capacity to support children and young people at the kind of scales mentioned above. Your organisations should also have experience of delivering your proposed intervention model (at least a year).