Capital Child Issue 13

6. GLA Peer Outreach Team on the case with new borough health and participation projects

Long time Capital Child readers will have followed the setting up and development of the GLA’s Peer Outreach Team over the last 3 years. We now have a well established team of 40 Peer Outreach Workers, aged between 15 and 25, from across London, who are involved in delivering pan London projects and advising the GLA on issues ranging from health to gangs, guns and knives.

The pool of paid workers is drawn from a very diverse mix of young Londoners and includes many who are not in education, employment or training (NEET). The team gives them the opportunity to undertake sessional work at City Hall, where they receive training on youth work, participation, child protection, research methods, facilitation, events management and conflict resolution. For some of the young people it is a huge step and is their first experience of working for a professional organisation.

Members of the Peer Outreach Team started work in January 2008 to develop a toolkit and train young people in London boroughs to make local health provision more accessible for young people. This ‘You’re Welcome (Pilot) Project’ is part of the Department of Health’s wider ‘You’re Welcome Quality Criteria’ and the boroughs that are involved in London are: Barking and Dagenham, Barnet, Hackney, Greenwich, Lambeth, Redbridge, Richmond upon Thames and Westminster.

At the same time, the ‘Peer Inspectors Project’ is underway, through which members of the Peer Outreach Team will review and inspect local authority Children and Young People’s Plans, alongside local young people’s groups, and advise on improvements to local engagement mechanisms. This project, funded by Government Office for London, is being piloted in Kingston upon Thames, Greenwich and Haringey, before being undertaken in further boroughs which have expressed an interest in participating.

The team are also involved in other key, London initiatives, as set out elsewhere in Capital Child 13 – with the launch of the London Child Poverty Commission final report and international children’s rights events.

For more information, contact Rebecca Palmer in the CYPU.