The effects of arts interventions for children and young people at-risk of offending, or who have offended on behavioural, psychosocial, cognitive and offending outcomes

Mansfield et al., (2024)

Campbell Collaboration - n/a

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Evidence Categories

• Care setting: Community setting
• Care setting: Custodial or detention settings
• Care setting: Educational Setting
• Care setting: Residential care setting (children)
• Population group: Young adults (18-25)
• Population group: Primary school age (5-11)
• Population group: Secondary school/college age (11-18)
• Population group: At risk Children & Young People
• Intervention: Art interventions
• Outcome: Social, emotional and mental wellbeing outcomes
• Outcome: School-related and academic outcomes
• Outcome: Other outcomes: unintended consequences/economic
• Outcome: Acceptability of interventions
• Outcome: Barriers / facilitators

Type of Evidence

Systematic Review

Aims

The authors state:

"1. To evaluate evidence on the effectiveness and impact of arts interventions on keeping children and young people safe from involvement in violence and crime.

2. To explore factors impacting the implementation of arts interventions, and barriers and facilitators to participation and achievement of intended outcomes.

3. To develop a logic model of the processes by which arts interventions might work in preventing offending behaviours."

Findings

The authors state:
"We found insufficient evidence from quantitative studies to support or refute the effectiveness of arts interventions for CYP at‐risk of or who have offended for any outcome. Qualitative evidence suggested that arts interventions may lead to positive emotions, the development of a sense of self, successful engagement in creative practices, and development of positive personal relationships. Arts interventions may need accessible and flexible delivery and are likely to be engaging if they have support from staff, family and community members, are delivered by professional artists, involve culturally relevant activity, a youth focus, regularity and a sustainable strategy. We found limited evidence that a lack of advocacy, low funding, insufficient wider support from key personnel in adjacent services could act as barriers to success. Methodological limitations resulted in a judgement of very low confidence in these findings."
 

Conclusions

The authors state:

"We found insufficient evidence from quantitative studies to support or refute the effectiveness of arts interventions for CYP at‐risk of offending or who have offended for any outcome. We report very low confidence about the evidence for understanding the processes influencing the successful design and delivery of arts interventions in this population of CYP and their impact on behavioural, psychosocial, cognitive and offending outcomes."