Making Services Work for Young Londoners
For Power of Youth Day, we asked Nabeela, Service Delivery Lead at Safer London, to share her perspective on where young Londoners’ power makes the biggest impact within our work, and how we are making sure their voices are not only heard but truly shape the services we provide.
Where do you see young Londoner’s power making the biggest impact in Safer London’s work?
Well, young Londoners should essentially be the creators of their own journeys, so for me, that translates into them having the biggest input and impact in Safer London services and how we deliver them. These services are for them, so should be co-produced and collaborated with them. They know what works best for them and we want to make our services as appealing and as accessible as possible.
Young Londoners have had continued input in our developments in processes, practice and policies and are also provided with opportunities to be involved in areas that might interest them, such as with the comms team or learning from caseworkers. All this essentially allows young Londoners to engage more with our services and produce the most impactful outcomes for casework.
Safer London is about continued development and improvements and the voice of young Londoners is what can help us in stretching our reach as well as delivering the most impactful services. Young Londoners are also the most valuable in speaking to funders when it comes to vouching for the work we do and the support we provide. We want to be able to see youth voice throughout our work and show the impact that their input has had in shaping our services.
What is Safer London doing to make sure young Londoners are not just heard and seen, but also supported to use their power in meaningful ways?
Safer London is continuously providing numerous opportunities to empower young Londoners, making sure they are seen and heard and this is about to be even more impactful with our new VIP Coordinator in post. Her primary aim is to seek ample opportunities of where young Londoners can have input and even use their power and experience to encourage other young Londoners.
The young Londoners love being part of our VIP group, where they can be their authentic selves but also see how valuable they are. Their voice, insights and thoughts are invaluable and we encourage them to understand how powerful their voice is in positively making a contribution to Safer London as well as wider society.
We want them to know how important they are and to know there is opportunity and prospective for them, so we include their input in all areas of Safer London, from creating our outcome scores, redeveloping the self-referral form, shaping how they want the VIP sessions to go and what they want to include, having input in the strategy and supporting on interview panels to name but a few opportunities!
Where possible, we want to empower young Londoners to have a voice and are continuously looking at opportunities for them such as including them in either creating or supporting to present training.
Our end goal is to make sure they can thrive, gain confidence and take the skills they have learnt and acquired in order to succeed.
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