Our Participation and engagement offer has continued to ensure we engage young people operationally and strategically. This includes better support for our increased number of Youth Directors (from 2 to 4), continued provision of quarterly borough-wide youth forums, an increased number of local youth forums and the continuation of our mystery shopping scheme.

The borough-wide forums were included input from partners and focused on learning and discussing topics affecting young people in Lewisham including sessions on mental health and knife crime. Young people from the forum have also led on social action projects, looked at social issues such as teenage pregnancy and sexual heath through the facilitation of a Youth “Baby shower” and put on a Mental health awareness event. The latter two were funded by London youth through the Young leaders program.

Fully engaging young people at a board level has however been challenging and we are committed to seek creative ways to support and manage this moving forward including ensuring that this continues into any change to a charity.