Camden hosts Youth Safety Fortnight - a series of events on keeping young people safe
Camden Council has launched Youth Safety Fortnight, which combines a series of events and workshops to provide support for the borough’s young people and raise awareness about what is being done locally to keep young people safe.
Youth Safety Fortnight kicked off at Regent High School on Friday 25 June with an event bringing together youth services, schools, youth MPs and councillors to discuss how to improve youth safety in Camden and to share some of the successful work which has been happening over nearly three years since the borough’s Youth Safety Taskforce Report was launched.
MP Keir Starmer and Cabinet Member for Young People, Equalities and Cohesion, Cllr Abdul Hai, also spoke at the launch event about the latest work from Camden’s Youth Safety Steering Group and their latest Youth Safety Action Plan report which has just been published and also includes a chapter on priorities and areas for the steering group and partners to focus on in 2021.
The winners of the Council’s multi-media competition, which encouraged students to get creative by producing a range of media projects based on the theme ‘keeping children and young people in Camden safe’, were also announced at the launch event at Regent High School.
Acland Burghley School won the top prize with their filmed dance and spoken word piece with an original soundtrack, while William Ellis School and Swiss Cottage School were the runners-up. The other two shortlisted entries were from Regent High School and the Camden Centre for Learning.
This year’s Youth Safety Fortnight focuses on ways to prevent young people being drawn into violence, promoting employment and training opportunities for young people, and improving young people’s relationships with the Police, the Council and other agencies.
The fortnight of action includes workshops, events and activities - both face-to-face and virtual (online) - including community mental health workshops for young people and parents, specialist training and employment support for young people and awareness programmes on online safety, personal safety, substance misuse and positive and healthy relationships for young people.
Our goal is to make Camden a place where every young person feels safe and can succeed. We’re proud of what we have managed to achieve so far, but we know more can and should be done to reduce violence affecting young people in Camden and improve access to a wide range of opportunities and support for our young people. As we continue to build on this vital work, we are now focusing on tackling the issues that have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, including youth unemployment and the inequalities and injustices faced by our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities.
This will be Camden’s second Borough-wide Youth Safety event, which will allow us to directly reach out to communities to see what support they may need. This will also give us an opportunity to bring Camden’s youth services, the Police, community groups and schools together with young people to find real solutions to the problems they may be facing to support them now and in the future.
You can view or download a full list of events taking place during Youth Safety Fortnight here.
If you would like to contact us or get involved in making Camden safer for our young people, please email youthsafety@camden.gov.uk
If you are worried about a young person at risk call 020 7974 3317 (daytime) or 020 7974 4444 (out of hours) - if a young person is in immediate danger or a crime has been committed, call the police on 999.
For more information and advice about youth safety in Camden, please visit camdenrise.co.uk/stay-safe