1100+ Hours Volunteered

45 Youth Commission Members

35 Partners

38 Meetings Attended With Partners

30 Events, Workshops and Presentations

82 Social Media Posts

 

With the support of our partners, this year we have:

• Represented young people’s views at HIPS Exploitation meetings and
  VAWG Task Boards
• Given feedback to the Children's Society Exploitation Strategy and the HIPS Exploitation partnership strategy
• Presented to the HCC EARA groups on Hate & Hostility
• Facilitated table discussions at the Integrated Care Partnership strategy meeting
• Been involved in creating the outcomes for the priority badges for Southampton Child Friendly City
• On the Steering group for Basingstoke's Stop & Search Advocacy Project
• Created custody video with the CCP team for young people entering custody
• Had our views heard by the OPCC Scrutiny manager on his Knife Crime Scrutiny of the constabulary
• Attended the Peer Action Collective Conference at Westminster to hear views from young people across the country on serious violence
• Created over 80 Social media posts to promote all our priorities and signpost young people to support services
• Attended and participated in a CPS Mock Trial
• Attended and supported the Winchester Court open day
• Learning about Trauma informed practices
• Delivered 17 Awareness and Big Conversation sessions with Colleges and University's

1,000+ hours volunteered

29 Youth Commission members

44 Partners

35+ Meetings attended with partners

18 Events

20 Workshops with young people

 

We have:

• Contributed to the Children’s Society exploitation principles for professionals
• Collaborated with Hampshire County Councils Children’s Services on an adolescents toolkit and new online directory of all services and support available to children and young people in Hampshire, and one for the IOW, on emotional wellbeing and mental health
• Worked with Southampton City Council on their Child Friendly City plans
• Supported the Independent Office for Police Complaints (IOPC) survey on young people and the police
• Joined Hampshire Constabulary police standards transparency board
• Attended a participatory budgeting project planning meeting to reduce anti-social behaviour in Old Portsmouth

 

Members also:

• Interviewed the independent chair of the pan-Hampshire Children’s Safeguarding Partnership
• worked with a wider set of criminal justice partners including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)
• submit a question to the Commissioner at the COPS session with the Chief Constable
• fed back their thoughts on youth diversion grants to the OPCC Commissioning and Partnerships team

 

 

Spotlight – Mentoring Youth Councils in Albania

 

Reconnecting Albanian Youth & Society (RAYS) is a UK Home Office funded project through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) funding arrangements. This aims to build a whole-of-government approach to find creative solutions to meet the most complex national security challenges and promote international peace and stability.

 

Sustainable Criminal Justice Solutions (SCJS) has responsibility for one of the three project objectives, namely to enhance partnership working and support a preventative approach to divert young people away from a life in organised crime.

 

SCJS contacted the Youth Commission as an exemplar of good practice in youth participation and briefed Youth Commission members on the project, which includes mentoring members of three local Youth Councils in Albania.

 

To begin, Youth Commission members fed back about the Youth Councils Manual of Guidance.

 

Members then met members of the Albanian Youth Councils virtually.

 

Following the first two virtual sessions the Albanian Youth Councils have decided to introduce three elements from the Youth Commission:

 

1) Running an annual conference to share their work

2) Implementing a code of conduct for members

3) Introducing a Big Conversation style survey in their communities

 

The second phase of the project brought Albanian officials to Hampshire, where members presented the Youth Commission model. Officials were highly impressed pledging to ensure that Albanian Youth Council members can join their meetings, not only at a local, but a national level too.

 

We are looking forward to developing the relationship over the coming years.

Basingstoke Peace Project

A member of our youth commission who was impacted by knife crime came up with this project, which used art to create a talking point between young people about Knife Crime. The sculpture contains clay tiles, which will build and grow as more young people take part and create tiles to be attached to the multi-layer sculpture.

The aim of the sculpture was to provide young people with education resources, Inform young people about activities/options available to them such as programmes by the YMCA and Princes Trust, youth organisations and college courses and educate them about the consequences of knife crime and serious violence. As well as showing the community that young people are against violence.

This sculpture was showcased all around Hampshire.

We have contributed to the Children’s Society Good Childhood Report 2020 and worked with a wider set of criminal justice partners including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Independent Office for Police Complaints (IOPC).

The pandemic provided us with an opportunity to be the voice of young people in other ways.

 

Pandemic messaging

In May 2020 Hampshire County Council contacted us for our advice on the coronavirus social media animations targeted at teenagers.

Members also shared photos of what they were doing during lockdown to encourage others to stay at home, as well as inspirational quotes and signposting to mental health support.

 

Policing the Pandemic

Between May and June 2020 we joined with other Youth Commissions and youth organisations from across England and Wales to provide a snapshot of young people’s views and experiences of policing during lockdown. The project gathered views from 3,491 young people.

 

The report can be found at www.leaders-unlocked.org/policing-the-pandemic

 

Safer Together Apart

Throughout July 2020, we joined the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioners’ Safer Together Apart event, a virtual event that provided crime prevention advice and signposting to vital support services.

 

In the first week, a summary video of our work, and content that we’d made for each of our priorities was shared. Week 2 saw safety information from our Cyber Ambassadors and our fractured film raising awareness of coercion and control in unhealthy relationships was launched in week 3. Finally in week 4, our hate crime mentors went on Unity 101 radio to talk to Kelly and players from Unity 101 FC, as well as celebrating various members of the community through a series of posts on Instagram.

 

Members also:

• worked with Hampshire CAMHS to devise questions for their Boys Survey and give their views on the loneliness project, as well as a mental health triage leaflet
• facilitated community workshops for Mutual Gain
• sat on the Hampshire Adolescent strategy group
• took part in a focus group for the Hampshire Children and Young People’s plan refresh

Embedding the work of the Youth Commission with the Commissioner and their office.

 

The Youth Commission are a valued part of the OPCC and as such work closely together. Members regularly take part in focus groups, including giving feedback on stop and search materials, feeding back to the Commissioning and Partnerships team on youth diversion grants, and working with Performance and Information on business crime by speaking with young people at a pupil referral unit in Eastleigh to hear their views on how relations between business and young people could improve.

 

The Commissioner regularly joins members at their catch ups to hear and share in celebrating the progress that is being made.

67 Events

35 Youth Commission members

820 hours volunteered

37 partners

 

Being young people’s voice

The Youth Commission’s aim is to be the ‘go to’ body for young people’s voices, informing other demographics, cultures and communities, influencing locally, regionally and nationally. This year we have added two measures in the Hampshire County Council children and young people’s plan.

Stop and Search project

We supported Hampshire Constabulary with their new approach to stop and search, by giving our views and experiences. We’re keen to promote and support the project roll out.

 

“The ‘Your View’ project has an overarching objective of building relationships and understanding between the police and young people regarding stop and search. The Youth Commission kindly allowed me to demonstrate my project to them. This involved education about stop and search, voting on live stop and search ‘reasonable grounds’ and measuring trust. The rich diversity of opinion and passion of the Youth Commission was invaluable to my work. Their feedback was instrumental in helping to shape my delivery, in particular the use of online voting platforms as an engagement tool. I was able act on the feedback and took this forward into live sessions which meant my engagement with young people felt natural and valued. Thank you to Lynne and the Youth Commission”. PS Joe Clarke.

Influencing regional policy

“The Hampshire Youth Commission inspired our youth-led project to improve housing and education, training and employment policies for young people in the Hampshire area. The Youth Commission team are highly effective in encouraging young people to participate. We were so impressed by the diversity and skills of the young people, who provide valuable insights into policy that could not be gathered any other way”. Anna Killick, lead researcher on Southern Policy Centre report ‘Help us to move on!’ funded by the Blagrave Trust.

Shape The Children’s Society campaign

“In March we consulted with the Young Commission as part of our campaign to strengthen the safety net for families in financial crisis.  We wanted to find out from young people what a good crisis support service should be like. The group considered different options including online and face to face services and the different ways young people like to receive and find out information.  The consultations conducted in Winchester, as well as other parts of the country have informed 10 criteria that crisis support services should consider in order to be child/young person friendly.” Jacq McNee, The Children’s Society

Photo of Children’s Society visit, and HCSB?

 

Embedding the work of the Youth Commission with the Commissioner and their office

 

The Youth Commission are a valued part of the OPCC and as such work closely together. Mentor Marcia had a fantastic day shadowing the PCC, which included visiting the new Police Investigation Centre and signing a decision notice.

We’ve worked closely at public events such as the ‘Safer Together’ event, police families’ day, Gosport Policing and Crime event and Fareham 999 day and have valued the opportunity to have a joint presence.

Members have also received trauma informed training from the Commissioning team and regularly give evidence to the Police and Crime panel.

Draw a line through stigma campaign 2018- Postcard competition following the recommendation on mental health – young people wanted to eliminate the stigma. So they designed this competition, where they would go into schools, talk about mental health and encourage young people to complete a postcard competition. The submitted cards entered a competition with the winning card being created into a poster and placed into spaces of young people’s choosing – schools, youth clubs etc.