The document discusses Redbridge's efforts to become a Unicef UK recognized "Child Friendly Borough" through its Child Friendly Redbridge Programme. It provides an overview of the program, including engaging over 2,000 local children and prioritizing their safety, health, sense of place, and diversity. Several case studies are presented showcasing how the program maintained engagement during Covid-19 through surveys, leaflets, and creative projects. The program aims to put children's voices at the heart of local decision making and help services better support children's needs.

1. Unicef UK Child Friendly Cities &
Communities Programme in
Redbridge
London Policy and Strategy Network
Thursday 18 November 2021
Ferzanah Ahmed, Child Friendly Redbridge Programme Team
1

2. The Aspiration
2
The Redbridge Joint Partnership Plan for 2025 includes a commitment
to work towards Redbridge becoming a Unicef UK recognised “Child
Friendly Borough”.
Our local voluntary sector were talking about this up to ten years ago.
Redbridge has always been known as a good place to raise your
children: good schools, proximity to central London for work, green
spaces: “the green leafy borough”
But is this the case for all of our children?
This programmes works from a place of strength – but not complacency

3. The Unicef UK programme in Redbridge
• A global programme - we are one of a handful of communities on the programme in UK
• Aims to put the voice of children and young people (0-25) at the heart of local decision
making
• We have spoken to more than 2,000 children and young people across Redbridge, including
through the pandemic and continue to do so.
Priorities for our children and young people:
Our children and young people have told us the things that matter the most to them:
• Safety - knife crime, hate crime, safety on school routes, harassment of girls and young
women.
• Health – physical activity, obesity, mental health and wellbeing.
• Place - climate, green space, litter, safety, things to do
• Diversity – they are proud of our borough’s diversity and inclusion and fairness really
matters to them. This priority has to be present across everything else we do as a borough.

4. Where are we up to?
4
Pandemic
Badge
Vote

5. Home schooled children
Children not as confident in sharing their ideas
Young people affected by substance abuse
Young carers
Faith schools, private schools, free schools (school
improvements teams and early years)
Deprivation in Loxford and Hainault,
Hainault harder to access
Disillusioned children and young people
New communities – e.g. Eastern European
Travellers
School children not using our services
Vulnerable young people
Asylum seekers
Roma
Children who don’t speak English
Children from families with no recourse
to public funds
LAC’s out of Borough
Colleges
Children’s centres are UNICEF baby friendly
Children's centres autistic friendly/ SEND friendly
Healthy early years London programme
Under 5’s and their families (Children's centres
and other early years services- settings, FIND)
Substance misuse services for CYP
Teenage parents/ Family Nurse Partnerships
teenage mothers
Young offenders (YOT)
Children with SEND
School councils
Year 11 provision for late starters/ new arrivals
Looked after children
Who are the seldom heard? Who do we currently engage with?
Some overlap
and
disagreement
amongst
practitioners
and young
people
Who has a voice?

6. Continuing through Covid
During the epidemic we had to find ways of continuing to work with our
young people:
• Onboarding and development of the Youth Panel
• Zine with Space Studios
• Covid19 Youth Survey
• Back to school Leaflet
• Mental Health Asset Map
And also continue BAU engagement such as:
• Fairlop engagement
• Growth Commission
• Budget engagement
• External Scrutiny and lots more
6
29%
3%
2%
66%
Barking and
Dagenham
Havering
Not Answered
Redbridge
Responses to Covid Survey

7. Redbridge’s Toolkit for Services
1. Engagement support and guidance, including designing the
engagement with young people.
2. We continuously gather and share insight from and data
about our children and young people with services.
3. Training for on a child’s rights based approach, delivered by
Unicef
4. Our child's right impact assessment
5. Communications - our range of channels to communicate
with children and access to Unicef to share good practice.
6. Best practice - including from other Councils on the
programme.
7

8. What’s next?
• Action plan to Cabinet in December 2021
• Launch of plan in Spring 2022 – being co-designed with young
people
• New Child Friendly Redbridge Ambassadors just voted in –
planning work programme for the coming year
• Move into delivery of Plan through 2022-23
• Check in with Unicef and children and young people every six
months to monitor progress and impact.
• Mainstream and embed concept of a Child’s Rights Based
Approach (CRBA) - via business planning, commissioning,
performance management, engagement approach, Comms etc
8

9. Sharing ideas
Here are some questions we are asking ourselves:
1. How have you managed to retain stakeholder buy in and engagement with
partners through the pandemic?
2. How have you been able to continue and maintain meaningful
engagement with children and young people during the pandemic and
lockdowns?
3. What good practice can you share in implementing children’s rights in your
work?
4. Do you have any good examples of children and young people being
engaged in or leading on governance or decision making?
Please share your thoughts on the Miro board (link in chat)
9

10. 10

11. Case Studies and Good Practice at
Redbridge
11

12. Safe Routes and Safe Havens
From the Discovery phase engagement we learned from young people that they were concerned about
• Feeling unsafe when traveling on public transport or from school
• Knife crime, gangs and drugs
• Parts of the borough that felt unsafe or parents discouraged them from going to (Ilford Town centre
for example)
The basic idea of the scheme is twofold:
• To increase young people’s feelings of safety and actual safety on their routes to and from school,
through some form of parent watch and potentially physical improvements (designing in safety)
along high footfall routes along with the introduction of Safe Havens.
• To introduce Safe Havens (initially in Barkingside as the pilot area), where young people who feel
vulnerable , can go and wait somewhere safe and request further assistance. We are looking at
the Libraries initially but want to include business and other public premises in the scheme.
Currently Council are partnering with Police to create a task and finish group who will lead on the
development of this.
12

13. Covid19 Youth Survey
• Done in partnership with the CCG, the Covid-19 Youth Survey sought to find out the
key concerns amongst children and young people across each of the CCG areas
• Redbridge had the best response rate with more than 900 young people responding
(more than two thirds of the responses across the three boroughs)
• Our Child Friendly Redbridge Ambassadors helped draft the questions in the survey
and pushed and promoted the survey amongst their friends and in their schools
• The feedback was shared across the different service areas
• The key findings were around:
• Mental health – young people with existing mental health issues were feeling worse
and others were experiencing mental health issues for the first time
• School work – young people were worried about falling behind, not being able to study
at home and their exams. This was a huge cause of mental health issues, such as
anxiety and stress
• Catching the virus – many young people felt people of all ages were not taking social
distancing and lockdown seriously enough and were worried about transmission
13

14. Schools Covid19 Information Leaflet
• Created as a result of
findings from Covid19
Youth Survey,
responding to the
various issues that
young people said they
were worried about.
• Designed by Youth
Panel with opportunity
for all services to
contribute
• Shared with all schools
• Paper and print
versions
14

15. Mental Health Asset Map
• Response to findings from Covid19
Youth Survey
• Large number of young people told us
that they felt down, sad or negative.
• Gives information about services in
Redbridge, including those that are not
directly mental health services but
contribute to wellbeing (e.g. arts or
sports clubs).
• Trying to build resilience in young
people before they get to the point
that they need to be referred into
services
• Being promoted to young people and
practitioners
• Available here: https://lbr-
gis.github.io/Mental_Health_Mapping/
15

16. Zine with Space Studios
• To help young people get creative and express
themselves during lockdown, we partnered up with
Space Studios in Ilford to create a zine, called MyZine
• Entirely designed by young people with the help of a
local artist, MyZine intended to capture how young
people were feeling during lockdown and a way to stay
creative without being in the classroom
• We distributed arts and crafts material to all young
people taking part and weekly meetings were held via
Zoom to discuss a different topic to help create MyZine
• Explored ideas around characters, abstract art, anime
and stories through images
• MyZine has now been printed and distributed to the
young people that took part
• The artwork was also shared in Space Studio’s in Ilford.
16

17. Young Carers Project
• Feedback from a group of young carer’s at Barnardo’s highlighted the difficulties
they faced
• The challenges faced by young carers on a daily basis are unique when compared to
a ‘normal’ young person
• Their responsibilities as a young carer affects their schoolwork, their social life and
their own wellbeing
• This feedback has been taken on board by colleagues looking at the Carers Strategy
• As part of this, we are developing the support we offer to young carers so that
children and young people are protected from inappropriate caring roles and have
the support they need to learn, develop and experience positive childhoods.
• We plan to work with schools to develop a model to support young carers that can
be shared as best practice.
• As part of this work we will be arranging workshops with schools and our
contracted young carers services to develop the model of support.
17

18. External Scrutiny 2020
• Young people presented at External Scrutiny via MS Teams on four topic
areas that they felt were the most important to them. These were:
• Black History
• Why Redbridge?
• Young People’s Current Concerns
• Environment
• Prior to the meeting, young people met with officers from relevant
service areas as part of their research into each topic area to help them
arrive at recommendations
• Recommendations were presented at External Scrutiny on 25th November
at a lively session with Councillors and Officers
• Councillors received a summary of issues raised by the young people for
their cabinet portfolio areas to take forward.
18

19. Fairlop Park Engagement
• Pack used to engage with
Youth Council and Youth
Panel for Fairlop waters with
support from the Youth
Involvement Worker and
Child-Friendly Programme
Team
• Helped to ensure we
captured design ideas from
young people local to the
park
• But also ensure engagement
from a diverse group
including those that are
further away or might not
currently use the park.
19

20. Fairlop Park Engagement (continued)
20
A screenshot of
the online tool
that the young
people used to
collaborate and
share ideas
about Fairlop
Park.
The session was
really good and
we had a very
engaged group!

21. 21
https://www.unicef.org.uk/child-friendly-cities/press-releases/rights-at-work-mental-health/

22. 22
https://nla.london/news/redbridge-child-friendly-communities
https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/The_importance_of
_building_child-friendly_places

23. 23
https://www.rtpi.org.uk/media/8829/children-and-town-planning-2021-final.pdf

24. 24
https://www.localgov.co.uk/Its-time-for-councils-to-get-
serious-about-play/52126
https://www.unicef.org.uk/child-friendly-cities/press-
releases/councils-get-serious-about-childrens-right-to-play/

25. 25
https://www.unicef.org.uk/child-friendly-
cities/press-releases/bridging-the-digital-divide-
through-childrens-
rights/?utm_source=Unicef_UK&utm_medium=Ema
il&utm_campaign=email__campaign%20name

26. 26
https://www.lgafirst.co.uk/comment/heard-but-not-
seen-children-have-a-right-to-participate-even-in-
lockdown/
You can also see the mental health mapping here:
https://lbr-gis.github.io/Mental_Health_Mapping/

27. 27