London's Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) is committed to a Child First approach, centred on putting children and young people at the heart of everything we do.
The VRU's approach has been to embed the voice of young people in its work to tackle violence and to provide and support access to opportunities for young people, families and communities.
This guide has been created to support organisations of any shape and size to meaningfully work alongside young Londoners.
The VRU's commitment to fostering genuine participation means that young people are not consulted with in order to tick a box, but instead are involved in decision-making and their voice, their views, are front and centre of our approach. It means young people are given an opportunity to lead change in areas of society they are most passionate about, and do so through their own social action work.
A passion and determination to embed young people in all aspects of work, led to the development of the Young People's Action Group (YPAG).
The YPAG is a team of young people aged 16-24 with divers,e range of experience, including lived experience of school exclusion, exploitation or violence. The YPAG model is unique as the team are paid members of staff who co-design, co-develop and co-deliver on policies and programmes as part of the VRU's Child First approach.
The YPAG scrutinises the VRU's investments, programmes and its focus to ensure maximum impact for young people.
The VRU's unique balance of high-quality mentoring and direct collaboration with young people echoes our call to put young people at the forefront of our initiatives.
The YPAG's motto is: Nothing About Us Without Us. It's clear, it's simple and it speaks to exactly what we've set out to achieve by building a platform to ensure young people are not only part of the discussion around violence affecting young people, but they're part of the solution to addressing some of the root causes.
As well as co-designing and co-producing programmes invested in by the VRU, part of the approach is also giving young people skills and training and using our connections to open up pathways to achieve progress through education or employment when they leave the team.
Over the last three years, our team of young people have orgIanised and led major events such as the London Hope Hack and Youth Takeover Day, spoken about youth participation with Ofsted and the Department for Education, and used research to lobby the Met police to change its policy on positing images of seized knives on social media.
Through this model of true youth-led participation, we're seeking to inspire other organisations to adopt the principles of this model by putting children and young people at the heart of their work and giving them the opportunity to create and deliver change
