The Mayor of London created the Young Londoners Fund (YLF) to help give young people the support they need to build a better future and avoid getting caught up in crime. The fund will see £30m made available for projects in local communities. The remaining £15m will be invested to expand existing projects funded by City Hall that support young Londoners.

A new YLF Local Network for Bexley and Bromley offers a unique opportunity to develop a model, informed by best practice whilst being bespoke and relevant to both young people and stakeholders in our localities. For instance, both our Forums are inclusive of key VCSE agencies which lead on service delivery to young people and are connected to statutory agencies (Council and CCG) through their commissioning. The voice and views of young people will therefore be embedded in the Forum and its plans.

Events

First event

As part of the Young Londoners Fund, the Bromley and Bexley Local CYP network hosted an interactive online event on 1 December 2020 to focus on the engagement and participation of young people in organisations and activities. The event was a great success with over 60 people participating throughout the morning in our various workshops. We are pleased to be able to share with you all the presentations and feed back that came out from those sessions.

Second event

Following the success of the December event on engaging with young people we held a second event on 28 April on “Better Working Together in a Post Covid World”. The online event was well attended with over 40 people engaged from nearly 30 voluntary and statutory organisations including speakers from the Bromley Council and the GLA.

Workshops focused on the impacts of Covid on their working relationships, what has worked well and should be retained and built on. Another session focused on the positive partnership between the Bromley Children and Families Forum and the Council in a new programme on Peer support established during the pandemic.

Third event

On 11 November, as part of the Young Londoners Fund programme, the Bexley and Bromley Local Network held its final event of the curent funding round. "Strengthening the Local Voluntary Sector (CYP) Workshop" attracted 30 attendees from across the boroughs. The event brought together the learning from the first two sessions and looked towards future working. See Resources below for a summary of the workshop.

Resources

• Demonstrating that you are engaging with young people presentation (.pdf, Dec 2020)
• Ensuring young people’s voices are heard presentation (.pdf, not seen on the day, Dec 2020)
• Positive Futures Fund (.pdf courtesy London Borough of Southwark, Dec 2020)
• Mentimeter survey feedback (.pdf, Dec 2020)
• Feedback from themed discussion groups (.pdf, Dec 2020)
• Event report: 'Working Together Better in a Post Covid World', including presentation slides (.pdf, Apr 2021)
• Padlet collecting information on those wanting to raise awareness of their role or that they were seeking to work with other organisations or groups (Apr 2021)
• Report: Strengthening the Local Voluntary Sector (CYP) workshop (.pdf, November 2021)

Young Londoners Fund News

YLF exceeding targets

Over 300 projects have delivered education, sport, cultural and other activities for young Londoners across the capital as part of the Young Londoners Fund. Since the programme’s commencement in October 2018, over 59,000 young people have started a YLF Round 1 or 2 project, accessing diversionary activities or support to help them fulfil their potential. The number of young people accessing your services is particularly impressive given the challenges of working during the Covid-19 pandemic, and is well over the round 1 and 2 target to date of 51,700 young people.

In addition, 22,000 young peoplehave accessed City Hall-led projects scaled-up with YLF funding, bringing the total number of young people supported on the entire programme to nearly 82,000. This is an incredible achievement, which exceeds the YLF target to date and is well on the way to the 110,000 anticipated to have supported by December 2022. YLF projects are reaching the young people who need it most, at a particularly difficult time for them.