Winners 2022

Talking Transitions aims to improve children’s speech, language, and communication skills ready for their transition into school, as well as improving the transition process for children and families. Groups of providers identify speech, language, and communication issues in their own area, share and build on good practice, and create community-focused events that bridge the six-week summer holiday learning gap. Judge John Drew praised the project’s “city wide” approach and its “strong supporting evidence from a range of outcomes”.

Different Planet Arts enriches the lives of people with learning difficulties and complex additional needs through accessible theatre and play activities. For example, the theatre show Wildheart takes place within an immersive multi-sensory multimedia space, themed on magical wild woods, with the audience joining performers and characters in an adventure. In the last year, Different Planet Arts also provided play opportunities for 900 children and young people through week-long residences at schools.

Blackpool’s Better Start partnership worked with the For Baby’s Sake Trust to break the cycle of domestic abuse and support families to develop skills for resilience. For Baby’s Sake works with expectant co-parents with abuse in their relationship. Therapeutic support for each family member is offered alongside practical help to build life skills. Parents have seen improvements in their mental and emotional health, domestic abuse-related incidents have fallen, and the babies born to participants are achieving improved outcomes.

The Learning Award

Winner: Aurora Hanley School, Feel Good Friday

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Aurora Hanley School supports pupils with autism and social communication difficulties, many of whom experience anxiety. Its Feel Good Friday project prepares pupils for success by raising aspirations, confidence, resilience and promoting positive mental health. On Friday afternoons, pupils choose from a range of leisure activities to participate in. These have included helping at an animal rescue farm project, film making with Staffordshire University, and a drama project with the New Vic theatre.

The Youth Work Award

Winner: Edmonton Community Partnership – Dream, Believe, Succeed Project

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Local organisations in Edmonton have joined together to provide children and young people at risk of becoming involved in serious violence with inspirational experiences that lead to changes in their behaviour. Artists, musicians, and film-makers have delivered sessions, while three youth mentors conducted one-to-one and group sessions with young people. “An engaging and creative arts programme which has supported many young people because it is shaped around their concerns, interests and ambitions,” said judge Lib Peck.

Immediate Theatre’s programme uses drama and creative activities to support children and young people in Hackney to develop vital life skills. Youth theatre sessions, which run weekly and during school holidays, encourage team-working, communication, positive self-esteem, and resilience. During 2021/22, the programme engaged 102 regular participants plus 80 more in school holiday projects. Asked to rate their quality of life, participants showed an average increase from 4 out of 10 at the beginning, to 7 out of 10 at the end.

Brightside’s collaborative online mentoring scheme Bright Carers aimed to support young carers to raise their aspirations, consider a higher education degree and build confidence, hope and self-esteem. In partnership with others, Brightside paired young carers with trained mentors, matching 53 pupils in years 10 to 13 with professionals and higher education students. All young carers taking part said they got on well with their mentor, and 82 per cent said Bright Carers helped them decide what to do next.

No Limits delivers a youth work-led mental health model for children and young people who don’t meet the criteria for support from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services or who are on the waiting list. No Limits delivers preventative support at school drop-ins and from a city center youth hub. In the last year, three quarters of the 4,000 young people supported felt better about themselves, had found new coping strategies and were more positive about the future.

Safer London worked with a group of young black men to dismantle barriers to improving emotional wellbeing through a community-based peer education project. Trained peer educators provided practical support strategies, critical thinking skills and effective signposting, as part of a five-week intervention. Within four months, a third of the group were offered paid employment within an established charity, and they are now developing as potential practitioners. “This is a truly inspiring piece of work,” said judge Mark Russell.

Volunteer Peer Navigators and Peer Representatives are often the first people a young person coming to OTR interacts with. Their purpose is to start conversations around mental health and wellbeing at the organisation’s drop-in hubs, talk young people through the support available, and help them sign up to services. The volunteers are more relatable to young people and less clinical in their approach, reducing any potential power imbalance.

The Children in Care Award

Winner: Isle of Anglesey Council ,Cartrefi Clyd

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Each Cartrefi Clyd - or ‘Cosy Home’ - provides for no more than two children in care and is staffed by a small team of care workers. Children are supported to develop their talents and interests, build trusting relationships, participate in decisions related to life, learn to take responsibility for their possessions and to take pride in looking after their home. “The amount of assistance this project gives to those under its responsibility is huge and will help them grow into successful young adults,” said young judge Ivar Morganti.

The Risk of Online Sexual Abuse (Rosa) project aims to reduce online sexual harm between children and young people in the Glasgow area. Rosa worked with young people to redesign educational material to make it relevant to their online and offline lives, and with parents and carers to understand more about online harm. Over three years, the project worked directly with 68 young people who had used the internet to engage in behaviour that could be harmful to themselves or others.

Restitute supports the parents, carers, children, partners and loved ones of anyone who has survived sexual abuse, domestic abuse, or other serious violence. Restitute offers a one-to-one support worker assigned to each family, practical support and therapeutic support for parents and siblings. Carers are helped to articulate their own needs and those of their family, and to work better with the professionals supporting their loved one. All of Restitute’s clients reported improved health and wellbeing, and financial security after receiving support.

The Breakthrough Programme supports care-experienced young people in their personal and professional development with tailored one-to-one advocacy and employability support. Young people get access to jobs and career paths - which helps them to become independent, both financially and personally - and to connect with each other to learn about their rights. Most young people taking part have remained in education, employment, or training, and nearly half have successfully engaged in a paid part-time job.

Childline’s website offers advice and guidance for children and young people, including interactive self-help tools, audio-visual content, games, and peer support. There is tailored content for young people in the LGBTQ+ community, while the ‘Report Remove’ tool helps children have sexualised images of themselves removed from the internet. The Childline website receives two million visits a year… the LGBTQ+ content received nearly 5,000 views in its first month… and in May 2022, the message board pages on sexuality were the site’s most visited.

When the pandemic forced a pause in face-to-face activities, Team Oasis delivered sports equipment, arts and craft packs, games, clothes, and books to support the wellbeing of children and young people in a disadvantaged area of Liverpool. It also distributed free food through its centre and launched online resources focusing on dance, drama, film-making, football, and games. Judge Ivar Morganti praised Team Oasis’s “passion to help those in the community”.

The Youth Justice Award

Winner: Youth Ink, Peer Support Navigator Network

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The Peer Support Navigator Network aims to include young people who have offended in the design and delivery of services that affect them, enabling them to deliver support services to their peers. Youth Ink’s work is led by people with lived experience of the criminal justice system and 80 per cent of its delivery team are young people with an offending past. Young people taking part have reported a rise in self-confidence, and improvements in leadership skills, physical and emotional wellbeing, and relationships.

The Workforce Development Award

Winner: London Borough of Hackney, Anti-Racist Practice

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Hackney Council set out to embed proactive anti-racist practice across the department as well as to influence wider partnerships. It developed anti-racist practice standards and action learning sets, ran an anti-racist podcast series and holds a monthly “Brave Space to talk about Racism” forum. A four-day anti-racism conference in May 2022 increased the knowledge of staff, with the proportion reporting a “good” or “excellent” understanding of the issues more than doubling after attending.

A Better Start Southend is a partnership of statutory, community and voluntary organisations working to make Southend-on-Sea the best place to have a child and raise a family. The partnership supports pregnant women and children up to the age of four in the most deprived parts of Southend. The Early Years Alliance has a central organising role in the partnership, which includes the local council, NHS trusts, Police, and University of Essex. Parents report increases in their knowledge, skills and confidence.

Rochdale Borough Council and HMR Clinical Commissioning Group have created a multi-agency alliance to improve support and outcomes for children and young people requiring Send support. The alliance worked with children and their families to create a set of outcomes to underpin its actions and developed minimum standards for early help services to reduce the burden on specialist therapies. More children are now receiving early help and more professionals are accessing specialist training. The team has reduced waiting times for autism diagnosis and commissioned three new peer-led projects.

Chloe is a member of the Greenwich Children in Care Councils. Her achievements include designing a training session for corporate parents to improve their awareness of the stereotypes that care-experienced young people face and developing workshops for the Junior Children in Care Council, to empower children to influence senior civic leaders. Chloe was also a leading voice of the group during the pandemic. “It is inspirational to see a care-experienced young person use their lived experiences to transform the futures of generations to come,” said judge Jaffer Ali Hussain.

Cath Pickles started Restitute to support families like hers, who are left with trying to cope with the devastating impact of abuse. Through Cath’s determination, Restitute has become a respected and consulted organisation. Her willingness to share her story and use it to illustrate how professionals should react is reducing risk, poor mental health, and social care involvement. “It takes special bravery to overcome a devastating family experience,” said judge Lib Peck. “Cath has shown that, alongside tenacity and diligence in shaping a valuable service for survivors and their families.”

In the last year, Victim Support delivered 49 services for children and young people including those focusing on a specific crime such as domestic abuse, homicide, sexual violence, and hate crime, and programmes offering wider support. In 2021/22, Victim Support engaged with 23,000 children and young people, and provided high-quality direct support to 11,000. “This charity has a huge reach, and the specialist work with children and young people is clearly impactful at a local level as well as influencing national policy and practice,” said judge Alison O’Sullivan.