We are proud to announce that LifeLine Projects have been shortlisted for The Children and Young People’s Charity Award in the CYP Now Awards 2021.
The Children and Young People’s Charity Award recognises the charity that “has made the most impressive contribution, at a local or national level, in improving the life chances of children, young people or families.” The work of the charity will “have been driven through a combination of innovative practice, effective partnership working or campaigning for change.”
What we do
Since then, we’ve grown from a small organisation with just two part-time members of staff, to a charity employing over 70 members of staff with great impact and national reach.
Our approach to working with young people is to walk alongside them on their difficult and occasionally traumatic journey into adulthood. We see the best in young people—we acknowledge their worries and appreciate the positive and impactful contributions they have to their families and community. But we do more than just invest in young people–we champion them and help them realise their own amazing transformations on their journey into adulthood.
This approach to supporting and helping disadvantaged young people has led them to turn away from knife crime and gangs, to improve their school attendance, gain a vision for their future and improve their relationships with family and community.
We endeavour to cultivate long-term relationships with disadvantaged young people through listening and collaboration. These are key in creating and developing the kind of young people that we need for the future.
We want to see these young people grow up to be society’s best contributors and its next leaders. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to reach their full potential. We believe that no-one should be left isolated from their community.
What we've achieved
One of the biggest challenges we faced during the pandemic were the lockdowns. Many of our projects are built around personal contact, so we’ve had to work hard to ensure that our teams could maintain an ongoing one-to-one relationship with as many our services users as possible.
For the young people we work with through our SW!TCH projects, a wide range of positive activities were held online while we still attempted in-person activities that could be done in a COVID-safe manner. Our youth workers turned to video calls, instant messaging, and social media were great ways to keep in touch with young people on an informal basis without needing them to commit to full sessions.
as SW!TCH Ambassadors
SW!TCH Ambassadors receive leadership training and personal development to support them to become leaders and positive influencers in their community
New ways of support
Many special guests also joined these coffee mornings to offer their support, including a member of the Met Police’s Gangs Unit to answer parents’ pressing questions relating to gangs and youth violence.
Building on this, we also began to offer more structured support by developing the Champions Support Network. Supported by funding from London’s Violence Reduction Unit via Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge, and Havering Councils, we were able to train parents and carers from the local area so that they could offer their knowledge and expertise to other parents and carers in need. The Champions Support team have been working closely with our SW!TCH teams to ensure that whole families are receiving the support they need.
