Driving System Change
We know that direct support alone can’t create the scale of impact young Londoners need.
While we work directly with hundreds of children and young people every year, thousands more are affected by harm and exploitation. To create lasting change, we must influence the systems around them.
At Safer London we believe a safeguarding - not criminalisation - approach should be prioritised when working with children, young people and families affected by violence and exploitation.
Too often, systems and services working with young people who’ve experienced harm, violence and exploitation focus on punishment, managing behaviours or criminalisation, rather than understanding the child’s experiences. This approach frequently feeds cycles that perpetuate further harm, instead of offering support that creates safety for the individual child and prevents harm to their peers and wider communities.
By understanding the underlying experiences and vulnerabilities that lead to these behaviours, we can create approaches that provide meaningful support and engagement - benefiting not just the child, but those around them.
We want systems and services to move away from punitive responses and towards approaches that prioritise safeguarding, healing and prevention. Our ambition is to use our voice, guided by our knowledge, expertise and the voices of young Londoners, to shape the policies, practices and attitudes that impact young people’s lives.
This means:
Placing children and young people at the centre of conversations about safeguarding, exploitation and youth violence - making sure the voices of young Londoners are heard where decisions are made.
Advocating for trauma-informed and non-criminalising approaches across services, so professionals respond with understanding and care rather than punishment.
Influencing regional and national policy and sector standards, working with partners to embed best practice and evidence-based models into statutory and voluntary services.
Challenging systemic inequalities that drive harm, including poverty, racism and exclusion, by calling for investment in prevention and long-term support.
Discover how we support young people to influence change
While our roots are in London, our vision goes further.
By sharing learning, building partnerships and amplifying youth voices, we aim to influence systems across the UK, so that what works for children and young people becomes standard practice everywhere.
How we're influencing change
Joint Targeted Area Inspections (JTAI) on Serious Youth Violence
We contributed to the Joint Targeted Area Inspections (JTAI) on serious youth violence by leading Who Cares?, a national consultation with children, young people and parents affected by serious youth violence.
Through our research and facilitation expertise, we gathered insight into how children and families experience multi‑agency support across policing, social care, health and education. This evidence directly informed the findings and recommendations published by Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission, HMICFRS and HM Inspectorate of Probation.
Our Young Researchers helped shape how the consultation was designed and delivered, making sure participation was safe, ethical and grounded in real experiences. By coordinating this work, we ensured that the realities of those affected by violence influenced national understanding and strengthened practice across statutory services.
London Assembly Policing Neighbourhoods Report
We supported the London Assembly’s investigation into neighbourhood policing by sharing insight drawn from our work with young Londoners.
During an evidence gathering session, the Safer London young champion VIPs contributed their lived experiences, helping Assembly Members better understand how policing practices affect young people.
Alongside this, our Director of Practice Carly Adams Elias, provided professional expertise informed by our frontline work. By bringing lived experience together with practice‑based insight, we helped shape the report’s findings and recommendations - enabling more informed scrutiny and supporting approaches that better meet the needs of young Londoners and their communities.
Listen to Learn
Listen to Learn is our open access guide created to support professionals working with young women affected by violence.
Developed from the experiences and insight of young women themselves, it offers clear, practical advice on how to build safe, trusting and effective relationships. The guide sets out what young women say they need from the professionals in their lives and provides straightforward, real‑world guidance that practitioners across sectors -including social care, education, health, youth justice and community services - can use in their day‑to‑day work.
See Beyond
See Beyond is our free, open‑access toolkit designed to help criminal justice system professionals look beyond behaviour and understand the wider contexts shaping young women’s lives.
Grounded in insight gathered from young women and by our team who work alongside them, the toolkit challenges assumptions and highlights the contextual factors that contribute to young women entering the criminal justice system.
Alongside practical tools for frontline workers, it includes recommendations for services and systems, encouraging leaders, commissioners and policy makers to adopt more holistic and effective approaches. To launch the toolkit, we brought together professionals from across the criminal justice, statutory and voluntary sectors, creating space for practitioners to connect, share learning and strengthen their commitment to improving how young women are supported across the system.
Overlooked & Forgotten
Overlooked & Forgotten was a Safer London research project exploring whether current bereavement support meets the needs of everyone affected by youth violence related murder - not only immediate family, but also siblings, extended relatives, friends, classmates, neighbours and wider community members.
In partnership with the UCL Psychoanalysis Unit and Child Bereavement UK, we carried out in‑depth qualitative research with people bereaved by youth violence to understand what support they received, what was missing and what they needed.
The research sets out clear recommendations for what an effective, culturally competent bereavement support model should look like. By publishing this work and sharing its learning, we aim to support organisations, services and commissioners to develop responses that make sure every person affected by youth violence related homicide receives the support they need, when they need it.
Safer London research projects
Our research plays an important role in shaping wider systems change.
By bringing together insight from children, young people and families and combining it with our practice expertise, we generate evidence that helps professionals, services and decision makers understand what needs to change and why.
Through collaborative studies, targeted insight projects and open‑access resources, we share learning that supports stronger practice, more responsive services and better outcomes for those most affected by harm, violence and exploitation.