The Youth Now project was a two-year pilot project using contextual approaches to improve responses to increasing levels of youth violence in the Oldham area of Greater Manchester. The project was based within the Youth Justice team of the voluntary sector organisation ‘Positive Steps’ in partnership with Greater Manchester Police and Oldham Council.
Paula Skidmore, Senior Research Fellow in the Contextual Safeguarding team, worked as an embedded researcher with Youth Now, to support the pilot to establish and sustain local Contextual Safeguarding approaches to extra-familial harm around serious youth violence.
The resources below were co-developed by Paula and practitioners from the Youth Now team to share learning from the project.
School Audit Toolkit
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School Safety AuditThis tool outlines the whole process of building the work with one secondary school. To carry out a full School Safety Audit you would need to use all tools related to this process in conjunction with each other. -
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Student focus group guideThis guides outlines the student focus group work with one secondary school as part of the School Safety Audit process. -
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Student focus group informed consent sheetAn example consent sheet for student focus group work with one secondary school used as part of the School Safety Audit pilot. -
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Building community guardianship around a secondary schoolThis tool outlines how to build community guardianship connected one secondary school as part of a School Safety Audit.
Other resources
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Youth Now Community Implementation ToolThis flowchart was created by the 'Youth Now' team to capture how they planned a contextual intervention to bring together key providers around a joint offer for young people and increase community guardianship. -
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Using observational information with a visual recordThis case study shares how the Youth Now team have taken photographs to inform observational assessments in numerous locations within Oldham where safeguarding concerns were identified. -
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Youth Now ‘peer mentoring’ approach to support Contextual SafeguardingOne of the Youth Now mentors describes how they use a Contextual Safeguarding approach in their mentoring within community settings and schools, and how that has developed over time. -
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Bringing context into your teamThis infographic describes how, over the course of the project, the Youth Now team changed its organisational structure to enable a clearer focus on cross-cutting issues related to Contextual Safeguarding.
