“Catch22 Zine is an annual publication designed to give you a flavour of the depth and breadth of what we do across our organisation. It allows us to share the latest achievements and successes across our hubs, giving a deeper insight into how our work improves the livelihoods of individuals across the community within the UK.
“With this people-focused zine we explore how our services and programmes have helped individuals build strong support networks, secure safe places to live and work, and find their purpose in life. We hope you enjoy and get to know Catch22 a little better.”
– Prince-Oke Ugorji, Editor
Editor’s highlights include:
- Supporting youth into the job market
- Closing the gender diversity gap in tech
- Reimagining public services: 22 ways to build resilience and aspiration
- Ethical use of AI: How do we get it right?
- A forgotten generation
- Creating the right environment for support in a climate emergency
- Safeguarding vulnerable youth from exploitation
- HRH The Princess Royal tours our services
The power of place-based support
Community Links (which fully merged with Catch22 in 2021) in Newham, East London was established in the 1970s to provide advice to people in the local area. Newham is in the 10% of the most deprived areas across the country. Community Links helps the local community in the face of adversity with their advice service, emergency food support, digital skills, and employment and health services amongst others. Crucially, people who use Community Link’s services can access multiple services at once, alongside a community of people. This is what makes it ‘legendary’.
“The cost of living pressures has tipped people who were just about managing into poverty. at the start of the winter the borough was starting to see significant impact on services, particularly people seeking help from the hardship service due to debt and increases in homelessness.”
– London borough of Newham’s Corporate Director for Adults and Health
With the rising cost of living crisis, at Community Links we are certainly seeing more requests for help. In the last year, our advice service worked with a total of 1,536 members of the community (an increase of 18.6% on the previous year).
The impact of our free advice services at Community Links speaks for itself: for every £1 spent on staffing, £11 is gained by those using our services. But the help we provide is not just beneficial in terms of financial assistance, empowering people to support themselves and their families. Our advice services create a ripple effect, easing the pressure off public services in other areas such as mental health – which is strongly linked to financial difficulty.
Supporting youth into the job market
Up to 70% of the jobs available in the UK are hidden from the public. With people needing to find work, you would think employers had a vested interest in being more visible. But the fact is, job ads cost money and many companies hire from within before going outward, which impacts access to employment for young people and those trying to break into the job market.
The future of pre-employment support for young people
With the Government announcement that traineeships would no longer be a stand-alone programme, we brought together key players from the employability sector to discuss and debate what makes successful pre-employment support for young people.
Featuring speakers from the Learning and Work Institute, West Midlands
Combined Authority, and the Department for Education, key asks included:
- a Youth Guarantee to ensure all young people are able to access a job, apprenticeship, or other education or training programme,
- streamlined access to training, and
- adequate financial support for young people embarking on pre-employment training.
More than 1,000 people with barriers to work will benefit from a pilot pre-employment programme delivered by Catch22, which supports people aged 18+ into energy transition careers.
The programme, launched in September 2023 and funded by Shell UK, will initially run in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Norfolk. All participants receive one-to-one support from a dedicated Catch22 Career Coach, access to training funds for specific energy transition roles, access to employers with energy transition job opportunities, and in-work support.
Our Energise programme forms part of Catch22’s growing portfolio of programmes to support those furthest from the job market into ‘green’ jobs, including Grid for Good which is funded by National Grid.
Why we need a national employment service
Public opinion towards JobCentre Plus (JCP) in the UK is decidedly mixed. While most people would ideally see these centres as essential support structures that offer hope and guidance to job-seekers and those needing financial help, they are often viewed as places of frustration, punishment and stigma. Processes are bureaucratic, there are often delays to benefit disbursement, and there is a drive for staff to place job-seekers into the first job available, suitable or not.
While it is essential to recognise that JCP provision is integral to the UK’s social safety net, it often falls short in matching job-seekers with roles that offer immediate income and long-term sustainability. Instead of focusing on quality interactions with work coaches who guide individuals towards
sustainable and engaging career paths, the emphasis tends to fall on completing tick-box exercises, in which individuals must spend at least 35 hours per week on an application to “earn” their benefits.
In France and Germany, over 70 per cent of job-seekers utilise public employment services. In the UK, however, less than 20 per cent engage with these services – significantly below the European average of 54 per cent. It prompts us to question where our employment services may have gone astray.
JCPs could be vibrant hubs offering opportunities and guidance for those seeking work. They should be places where people learn new skills, explore different career pathways, and are supported to access other services to overcome their barriers to work. They could also be reskilling and upskilling centres. Beyond the traditional skills routes, JobCentre Plus must cater to the industries of the future, offering training in digital skills, green skills, and the creative industries. Politicians have started to recognise that. Labour’s shadow employment minister Alison McGovern regularly calls for JobCentre Plus to allow people to retain their benefits while in education or training for long-term careers, rather than being pushed into short-term fixes.
Dedicated career counselling services should be central to the job-seeking journey. Experienced professionals can help individuals explore new career paths and set achievable goals. At Catch22, we have been working in employment services for many years. Our work coaches get to know people as individuals and understand what motivates them. We have also found that providing people with three to six months of in-work support is key. This is particularly true post-pandemic, when many people are looking to re-enter the workforce after prolonged economic inactivity.
That is why programmes like the TikTok Creative Academy, delivered by Catch22, are so effective; providing young people who face barriers to work with the opportunity to learn about jobs in the cultural and creative industries, build their employability skills, and connect with prospective employers.
Our other programmes – such as Digital Edge and Digital Leap, two skills
programmes funded by Microsoft and Salesforce respectively – provide general employability support as well as digital role insights.
The national average for staying in work six months after being placed at a job by JCP is 37 per cent. Our programmes achieve, on average, 63 per cent.
“One government’s struggle with keeping unemployment rates down becomes another’s tendency to allocate people any jobs leaving them to suffer from skills gaps later. a lot of political space is spent criticising people receiving benefits for not returning to the job market.”
– Victoria Head, Strategic Director of Employability and Skills
I started working in the welfare-to-work pipeline more than 25 years ago. During that time, I saw governments come and go. These problems are stubbornly cyclical. One government’s struggle with keeping unemployment rates down becomes another’s tendency to allocate people any jobs leaving them to suffer from skills gaps later. A lot of political space is spent criticising people receiving benefits for not returning to the job market. The solution is not individual blame but addressing the concerns of each new generation with new facts and expectations.
This is where a good work coach makes a difference. They do not simply funnel people into another coding programme but guide you to navigate the tech industry and advise you on where you belong. We have the opportunity to transform JCP so it looks beyond skills and towards aspiration.
Closing the gender gap in tech
Part of our mission is to assist individuals (back) into work, particularly those who face
barriers to employment or training. As a public service, we are based within communities,
delivering high-quality, tailored employability services that equip all people, regardless of
gender, race, or pronouns, who have struggled to find opportunities through conventional routes.
The technology industry is facing a gender diversity issue. Recent research from TechNation found that just 26% of people working in the UK tech industry identify as female. According to research from PwC, this gender gap begins at school, for example with differences in the choices students make for their GCSEs and A Levels, and only widens as these young people grow into adults: just 5% of leadership
positions in the technology industry are held by women.
Attempting to close this gap is the Click Start by TechUP Women programme: a one-of-a-kind digital training programme from Nominet, the Institute of Coding, Durham University, and Catch22. Developed by tech industry specialists, the programme supports women and non-binary people in the north and north east of England with their first steps into the technology industry.
In 2017, it was reported that 78% of students could not name a single famous woman working in tech – which is a problem because it means that women and non-binary people who aspire to work in the industry do not have role models to look up to. Click Start by TechUP Women aims to address this by supplementing specialist training and career coaching with access to mentors who currently work within tech or digital roles.
The impact of the programme is not only felt by the participants but also by staff working with them too. The Catch22 team and wider Click Start team have worked closely together, building and growing the programme over the past year towards the common goal of making a difference to our participants’ lives.
Both organisations don’t just deliver a quality service, we care passionately about the people we work with. We are able to identify potential and have a fantastic team with the skills, energy, knowledge, and trust to nurture it. Every person, including those facing barriers to employment, has the chance to be successful – some just need a little support or encouragement to believe in it.
“Reflecting on my experience, I can confidently say that
your guidance and encouragement have been invaluable to me. your guidance has played a pivotal role in my journey with catch22.”– TechUp Women Participant
Expanding our support
Our digital skills programmes are designed to provide opportunities for people from excluded groups to get working in digital or tech enabled roles.
If you, or someone you are working with, would like to find out more about one of our programmes, then please get in touch with our team today.
Since Catch22 and Durham University came together to form a partnership to deliver Click Start by TechUPWomen, almost 90% of participants have fully completed their technical training. Furthermore, thanks to the work that our career coaches do with participants on a one-to-one basis following their training, many participants have gone on to start new roles in tech-enabled jobs such as Communications Officer, Marketing Executive, and Audit Associate. Our support does not end with the programme however: we also support many participants with additional qualifications, such as Level 4 apprenticeships in Javascript, coding, and marketing.
Investing in future skills is part of Catch22’s manifesto. As the world changes and the employment market transforms alongside it, people already facing barriers to work may miss out on opportunities to acquire new competences and resilience – this in itself becoming another barrier. As the digital revolution continues, digital poverty means that accessing training pathways and securing a ‘good’ job can be hindered by a lack of available guidance, limited flexibility within the system, or simply through a lack of confidence.
We know that life is full of challenges and barriers but there are equally real opportunities out there. Some are serendipitous and others must be discovered. Having organisations and staff working seamlessly and collaboratively together fosters new opportunities. With focused publicity and community outreach there is a real chance to engage with that untapped wealth of talent and make a real difference.
In March, participants and staff from the programme came together for a weekend to recognise our members’ journeys over the last year. In addition to activity sessions and career fairs, the agenda was packed with guest speakers including Rituja Rao, TechUP Alumni and Sue Black OBE, Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist at Durham University.
“It really helped that the cohort that we had was really warm and welcoming. and i think we all bonded. so that gave me a support group, i didn’t think i was on my own. the tech group became like a sounding board, there’s no silly question which is great, and we can all bounce off each other and learn.”
– TechUp Women participant
Reimagining public services: 22 ways to build resilience and aspiration
(A moment with the manifesto)
Catch22 works with some of the most vulnerable people in society. We help build resilience and aspiration in people to help them lead fulfilling lives for themselves and their communities. We want to see all political parties, in the run up to the 2024 general election and beyond, commit to policies that ensure everyone in society has good people around them, a safe place to live, and a purpose in life.
Policy Crime and Safety
Our first set of policy asks focuses on creating true solutions to crime by providing safe spaces and positive role models for young victims of exploitation and those displaying risky behaviours, who are often rarely the focus of policymakers.
This assertion is backed not only by heartfelt testimonies from those on the ground but also by the latest research that shows what we at Catch22 have long suspected: there is a correlation between the cost-of-living crisis and the rise in serious crime.
A recent speech by Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, and the subsequent discussions, hopefully underscore a pivotal narrative shift that criminal justice organisations, like Catch22, have been advocating for years. The Mayor’s recent commissioning of the London School of Economics (LSE) to investigate the link between the cost-of-living crisis and serious crime has illuminated a stark reality: a 10% increase in the cost of living is closely followed by an 8% rise in crime rates.
This finding is a critical piece of the puzzle in understanding the complex nature of youth crime and the external pressures that drive individuals towards criminality.
It is a clear indicator that economic instability and hardship are significant contributors to the surge in youth violence, challenging the efficacy of traditional punitive measures.
“We can’t arrest and incarcerate our way to solving crime”
– Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London
Catch22’s manifesto, ‘Reimagining public services’, sets out 22 crucial policy asks that we believe will improve the lives of the people Catch22 supports. When the next Government is formed, we ask them to consider our manifesto in deciding policy and shaping the future of the country:
Renew focus on adolescents.
We want the next Government to provide resources that equip young people with the confidence, resilience, and ambition they need to thrive in adult life, regardless of where in the UK they grow up. There should be guaranteed opportunities for every young person when they finish school, be it further education, an apprenticeship, or a first step on the career ladder.
Introduce a national offer for young people leaving care to end the postcode lottery.
We particularly want a focus on care leavers, with a commitment to consistent, nationwide provisions that end the postcode lottery, giving everyone leaving care an opportunity to succeed.
Invest in the skills of the future.
We want the next government to transform the UK into a forward-looking skills hub: training the next generation and building a thriving, sustainable future for everyone across industries like technology, health, and social care which are already seeing unique challenges on the horizon.
Ensure job opportunities are open to all.
In doing so, we want the Government to ensure job opportunities for all. We believe that this can be done by embracing diversity in the workforce, implementing strategies with employers to eliminate bias in the hiring process, and empowering people with modes of remote working.
Place rehabilitation and victims’ rights at the heart of criminal justice policy.
And finally, Catch22 believes changes to the justice system, and the treatment of victims, will improve the lives of people across the country. Expanding the Victim’s Code to include restorative justice services will both empower victims and reduce reoffending, especially around cases of fraud. Giving offenders access to rehabilitation services, including education and training, while in custody has been proven to reduce reoffending and save money for the taxpayer.
Our manifesto is rooted in the belief that everyone, no matter their background, can thrive if they have the 3Ps: good people around them, a safe place to live, and a purpose in life.
This important publication is a team effort, which is why Catch22 works with our partner organisations to get our policy asks into the right hands. We aim to be thought leaders in these policy areas, using our expertise and experience to show the next Government that helping the most vulnerable in our society benefits us all.
“Unless you have been personally impacted, you think something doesn’t affect you, but it does. it is not just inner-city London. Nowadays, you go to Norwich and see kids running around with knives on the beach”.
– Catch22 Frontline Youth Worker
Ethical use of AI: How do we get it right?
For a recording of the Catch22Minutes podcast, Stella Tsantekidou, Head of Policy and Campaigns, spoke to Rachel Coldicutt, Executive Director of Careful Trouble and Magid El-Amin, Director of Evidence and Insight, on artificial inteligence (AI) and its uses within the future of public service.
ST: Today we will be focusing on AI: particularly using AI to improve public services and the hiring process, the challenges, the dangers and of course the opportunities. At Catch22 we want to see AI being used to drive equity in the job-hunting market, and we also want it to see it improve public services. With me today to discuss all that is Rachel Coldicutt, Executive Director of Careful Trouble, and Magid El-Amin, Director of Evidence and Insight at Catch22.
To set the scene a bit, could you tell me how AI is currently being used to make automated decisions within public service delivery?
Obviously, people know that AI is becoming more and more ubiquitous: we see it being used in the private sector a lot, a lot of people have started using ChatGPT, and we hear of a lot of people using it for their day-to-day jobs. Often when we think about public
services we think that they haven’t developed as fast, and may be lagging behind the private sector. Rachel would you like to start and tell us where we see it being used and how we can maybe use it further?
RC: Firstly, it’s important to think about what AI is, and it tends to be used as a term that captures lots of different things: it captures a number of
different kinds of technologies that would be everything from an automated decision about you, to for instance a facial recognition to identify you.
In terms of the public services we have now, a lot of the time it is used to try and save money, very often around the more complicated things that happen. I always think you’re better off automating the easy things that you really understand. But what tends to happen is that you get automated information popping up in the justice system, for instance, to help judges decide whether or not people ought to be eligible for probation, you see it used at border to help assess the entry claims for people, it’s used in the Department of Work and Pensions, to look at the bank accounts for people who are in beneficiaries.
So, there are a whole load of other ways that it can be used that it isn’t always used for. Probably the most well-known is in healthcare, where there are extraordinary leaps ahead in terms of scans and imaging and that kind of thing. I think we can see that it’s
actually very broad and means lots of different things in different settings.
ST: So, you’re saying we haven’t done that yet? There’s a lot of scope to use AI but we haven’t yet started using it.
RC: There’s a lot of scope to use AI but I think this is a difficult question. A lot of the ways it is being used may not be in the best ways. That can be because of the incentives are set up to save money rather than to deliver better services.
ST: Magid if I could bring you in? So you work for Catch22. We are a big government service prover. What are your thoughts on using AI to improve public services?
ME: Well, I think from our perspective, there’s less of a money pressure, because our portfolio of services is a mix of contracts that are delivered on behalf of the commissioner, be it local authority, or central government. Some are purely for a charitable perspective so there’s less of a money pressure, but there is a need to demonstrate efficiency, there’s a need to demonstrate quality. For example, one or two of the use cases we’re considering is one of the services we have, which is a food bank, so what we would like to understand quite quickly is the level of dependency on that food bank within the clientele that use it. And that’s not with the aim of reducing that dependency, it’s with the aim of providing support that’s outside the food bank. So, the basic question that we’re sort of positioning to ourselves is “Can we understand quite quickly who is using the food bank and what other services they might want to use?” – such as financial advice, housing advice, or migration advice.
We will then try and intervene appropriately at the right time using the food bank as the entry point, then provide them with access to other services that are beyond that. And if we can recognise that early, it means we recognise the dependency on that service much earlier. So that’s much less about money, it’s much more about supporting those we engage with.
ST: So Rachel, have you seen any dangers in the way AI is used or the way we are planning to use AI for public services?
RC: I think the main thing, really, to be thinking about is whether the data we have about people is fit for purpose and whether it’s contextual. One of the things that we defintely know is that a lot of the time, when data is collected, it only tells a tiny part of the story about the person.We also know that the kinds of tools that you buy off the shelf, whether they’re from Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, or whoever, is that they draw on reserves of data
language that are not representative of the lives of everyone.
We know for instance, in ChatGPT 3 (the version that was released earlier this year), upweighted data in its learning model that came from Wikipedia, things that were linked from Reddit, has a bias towards the English language and people for whom English is their first language. We know that Wikipedia for instance is mostly written and edited by white men, so the language and the constructs that they’re using is not representative of many people at all. So what happens is the power and perspectives of a very tiny number of people are generalised out as being the norm. I think this is very problematic when we’re thinking of making important decisions about people that may change their lives. It’s completely different to be thinking about what kind of music might be recommended to a person or what they might be watching on Netlifx, compared to making a decision about their insurance, their energy bills, their access to work, or to healthcare. I would say we need to think of AI as a set of tools that we use: they’re not ready to be things that replace us.
“It’s up to service users to understand what algorithms might look for and how to appropriately address some of the issues that they flag out.”
– Magid El-Amin, Director of Evidence and Insight“Computer science is a complex discipline, and those who excel at it are rightly loaded, but so is understanding and critiquing power and holding it to account.”
– Rachel Coldicutt, Executive Director of Careful Trouble
As an organisation that credits itself for investing in the support of vulnerable groups and communities, it is imperative that we use our access to AI to not just better our services, but to ensure that there is a deeper understanding in using AI automated tools. By empathising with the much broader impacts it will have on those who are the most marginalised and vulnerable, we can steer the focus and decrease the legitimisation of its inequalities.
A forgotten generation
Teenagers need to be supported to explore alternative paths into employment if we’re to help them fulfil their potential. The dark days of lockdowns and pandemic panic may have left us, but for many the impact of that period continues to loom large. It’s been well documented how the mental health and wellbeing of the population suffered
because of the pandemic, not least
because of impact of lockdowns.
For school-age children, there was the social isolation as well as the inevitable effect of home schooling. For those in the upper years of primary school and early years of
secondary schools, it’s well known how tricky that transition period can be at the best of times. We’ve seen in the years following the pandemic that school attendance rates have plummeted, with over a fifth (22%) of pupils persistently absent and 2% completely absent. The number of pupils on Education, Health and Care Plans has increased.
The very nature of what education is, and its importance, is being questioned and
challenged. Parents who previously had no problem with their child’s school attendance are often being met with resistance.
“As a parent, and as a passionate believer in providing young people with the opportunity to build interesting and lasting careers, I am concerned.”
– Victoria Head, Strategic Director of Employability and Skills
Alternative routes
One of the problems with our traditional education system is that, in many ways, it doesn’t equip children and young people with the skills required for the ever-changing future job market. There is a growing gap between the employment opportunities that are, and will be, available, and the awareness and skillsets of young people to enter those jobs.
Young people want to be financially independent and want to be doing something career-wise that is interesting and gives them purpose. The question is, how best to support them to get there?
Almost daily, there are new skills bootcamps emerging that are tailored to specific industries and roles, and which offer a fast-track into future-proof employment.
Modern apprenticeships not only pay a decent salary, but in many cases give apprentices a way into an organisation that will train them up and retain them as loyal employees.
Work placements are woefully underused, yet are excellent in giving people an understanding of what a particular job involves and seeing if it’s a good fit.
For those 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds who are struggling to see the value in traditional education, and who are striving for an alternative, what are the options?
Catch22’s alternative provision schools and colleges are one example of doing things differently. While we work with young people who struggle to cope in mainstream education, our approach is highly applicable across other settings. Every child benefits from a bit of direction, some support and encouragement and, ultimately, someone taking an interest in them. Many get this at home, but lots don’t.
We do a lot of one-to-one work with pupils, helping them map out where they want to get to and how to get there – encouraging them to be ambitious and to match their interests with a potential future career. To make this a success, we need employers to be willing to do things a bit differently too. One thing we find all too often is that entry level roles are very restrictive, and progression pathways in organisations are based on time spent doing a role rather than whether the talent is there to move onwards and upwards sooner.
We should be empowering people and giving responsibility to young people so they can prove their potential. We need to be proving to the young person who is a victim of County Lines activity that their business acumen can be put to better use in a legitimate career
setting. We need to get better at giving young people the support and ambition early so when it comes to the world of work, they are motivated and ready to embark on their career of choice.
Supporting victims: What does a holistic approach look like?
Our work crosses sectors, from offender resettlement and rehabilitation services to health and wellbeing support for children and young people. We take an approach to delivering victim services, with a broader expertise of services delivered right across the welfare cycle, which work to build resilience and aspiration in people and communities.
We know how to “spot the signs” of other problems that require intervention, understand how to help, and tailor our offer to individuals, not labels. For example, what makes someone a victim of romance fraud? Loneliness is a common culprit. For someone who’s been left broke and heartbroken, we go beyond the practical support of advocating their needs to banks and writing to the financial ombudsman to reimburse funds.
Where we can’t support an individual with their peripheral needs ourselves, we work collaboratively to make an onward referral to a service that can. Over 200 years of service delivery means that we have established strong networks and partnerships with other organisations, government agencies, and community groups. Through these, people who come to our services don’t have to wait to get help or look for referrals. No case is too complex or challenging for us because if we can’t address someone’s specific problem, someone from our internal or external network will step in.
“All the girls are so lovely and supportive to me. I feel I can say anything to them, and no one judges you. I feel they understand what I went through, and it helps me put my life back on track.”
– Peer Support Group attendee
Our most significant advantage is that we tackle both sides of crime, helping victims in the aftermath of an offence, and offenders in their rehabilitative process. Doing so aligns with our broader mission of promoting safer communities and helps us understand the “Victim-Perpetrator Cycle”. In other words, facilitating both offender and victim support services gives us a unique lens into the cycle of crime, showcasing to us that, very often, offenders are themselves victims. This means we have the tools, practices, and expertise to support them effectively to move forward, minimising the risk of recidivism.
One example of this is in Restorative Justice (RJ). Restorative Justice is a practice that allows the victim to feel involved and heard outside of the usual clinical processes we often see in the criminal justice system. The victim is at the centre of the process and gets the opportunity to ask questions directly to the perpetrator, which can significantly help the healing process of both parties. By working across the victim and offender sectors, Catch22 can develop integrated and coordinated services, like Restorative Justice, that address both needs. This approach can help bridge gaps in the system and heal communities.
It is because we come from the communities we serve and are an organisation built by social workers: we care for both the victims of crime and the causes of crime, empowering victims and offenders through collaboration and resource-sharing to create a safer, happier, and more connected society.
Creating the right environment for support in a climate emergency
Reports show that the climate emergency is impacting children across the UK both physically and mentally. We will delve further into these statistics, the effects that climate change could have on our young people, and why we believe that action is needed.
Even if we were to succeed in creating systems change: in radically improving the support for children and families, securing world-class mental health provision, and in realising the ambition of ‘Stable homes, built on love’…
What kind of world would the next generation inherit?
As it stands, 30% of the world’s population is exposed to deadly heat waves more than 20 days each year. The homes of at least 200 million people will be below sea level by the end of the century. Approximately one billion children are at extremely high risk of the impacts of the climate crisis. Without urgent action, large parts of the globe will be almost uninhabitable, leading to vastly increased migration and consequent political instability and conflict.
Some of these numbers and facts are hard to take in, especially when looking at the personal impact on children in the UK. A report from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) found that: 49% of survey participants aged 16 to 25 were either very worried or extremely worried about climate change. More than half of all the young people questioned felt that humanity was doomed.
The RCPCH press release talks of “a staggering rise in eco-anxiety among younger generations.” It is therefore little wonder that about 1 in every 5 children and young people aged 8 to 25 years had a probable mental disorder in the UK in 2023. If this is how young people feel about their world, the future doesn’t look so bright.
“Every child is at grave risk of the effects of our changing climate, but none more so than children in lower-income families. These children are facing an increased mortality risk from extreme weather events, exacerbated respiratory conditions from dirty air and even increased rates of cancer, diabetes and obesity.”
– Dr. Camilla Kingdon, former President of the RCPCH
As a charity, our mission is to tackle structural inequalities, which means the climate change crisis cannot be ignored. It can be hard for organisations, who are already dealing with shifting political priorities, and the multiplicity of social and technological issues young people face, to now accept we need to tackle yet another thing. But without thinking about the environment, the positive impact we can have for young people will be significantly diminished. We are on a journey towards becoming a more sustainable and environmentally-aware organisation. Our focus on our environmental impact is supported by our 3Ps:
Working to combat environmental degradation will most obviously help create good places to live.
It will also give young people a greater sense of hope and purpose.
And, in showing we care about them and every aspect of their future, we can be the people who support them to a more positive future.
Safeguarding vulnerable youth from exploitation
“Through my work supporting at-risk children in an education setting, conversations about exploitation are often avoided and/or perceived as taboo.”
– Wiktoria Kurek, Criminal Justice Project Worker
The urgency and necessity of these conversations and roles such as mine has become more apparent. The UK government reported that in 2023, an estimated 27,000 children were experiencing county lines, with 4,000 of those in London alone. The need for prevention and support within educational settings is clear, with 120,000 children being identified as at risk of broader exploitation factors.
These numbers are not just statistics: they represent lives, futures, and the potential for change. In tandem, there has been a significant increase in school exclusions, rising from an annual figure of 2,097 in 2022 to 3,104 in 2023 – that’s a 48 per cent rise in just a single year.
Not only is exploitation iself on the rise, but so too is the population of children not in school and therefore vulnerable to it, posing a double danger.
We know that many young people are mistrusting of directives from those in positions of authority. Instead, our mission is about fostering a culture of open dialogue and understanding. Recently, I have begun working with members of the behavioural team and the Senior Leadership Team, to pilot an interactive tutor-time session which will run weekly.
This initiative is designed to spark conversations on exploitation, mental health, and wellbeing, in a way that resonates with the students. Through these interactive sessions, we’re aiming to challenge and dismantle negative views and beliefs, creating a community of mutual respect and understanding.
Our ambition doesn’t stop there. We are in the process of introducing group sessions and interventions, similar to those delivered in Catch22’s community and custody settings, but tailored for the school environment. This approach will also aim to foster open and honest communication, allowing the students to discuss any concerns they may have, without fear of punishment.
Individual children are at a crossroads, many of whom are on the brink of being drawn into exploitative situations, due to their increasing disengagement from school. Our Catch On resource is an educational resource for teachers to lead PSHE with students on the risks of exploitation and grooming. It’s one of the ways in which we’re hoping to drive change.
Catch On is aimed at pupils in year 7 and 8 but has a range of activities for varying needs and abilities so can be used across secondary schools. We’ve also made it free to download as we know that a lot of these resources are expensive, and therefore inaccessible to teachers.
One of the most crucial steps forward in protecting our young people from grooming, ‘gang’ involvement and exploitation is to enhance the provision of prevention-focused training and resources in our education settings.
The ongoing escalations in school exclusions, suspensions and exploitation signify the need for this action now. Such measures will bolster the collective ability of our educators and provide them with the tools, vocabulary, and trauma-informed approaches needed to provide children at-risk of exploitation with the space and protective networks they need to thrive.
HRH The Princess Royal visits Community Links
“It was an honour to host the princess royal at include London and showcase the work that we do here.”
Our Patron, HRH Princess Anne, toured our Include London school, speaking to staff and pupils, and congratulating them on their achievements. She was presented with a painting created by one of our students, and unveiled a plaque marking the visit. The school had received a monitoring visit from Ofsted a month earlier, resulting in all Independent School Standards being met.
As our Patron, HRH The Princess Royal has visited many Catch22 service locations nationwide to champion the work we do and show support for the people we help. In 2020, Catch22 received a letter of appreciation from Her Royal Highness, commending staff for their work to maintain services during the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Catch22’s Commissioned Rehabilitative Services (CRS) in London received a visit from HRH The Princess Royal in February to officially open the new Wellness Room. The Wellness Room has been designed to support all of our staff members who work within the Community Links building.
During her visit, Her Royal Highness spoke with partners of the CRS about the support they provide, and with service users about their experiences.
Her Royal Highness’s visit was made in her capacity as Patron of Catch22, which in total delivers four schools across the UK in London, Suffolk, Norfolk and Wales: all of which come under Catch22’s ‘Include‘ banner of alternative provision schools.
During her visit, Her Royal Highness received a tour of the school from staff and one of the pupils, who took her to see lessons in Art and Citizenship in action. Her Royal Highness also met with Include London staff, hearing from them about their work to support some of the most vulnerable young people in London.
The visit culminated in Her Royal Highness unveiling a plaque to commemorate her visit, which now hangs proudly in the main hub of Include London’s Phoenix Road site.
As our Patron, HRH The Princess Royal has visited many Catch22 service locations nationwide to champion the work we do and show support for the people we help. In 2020, Catch22 received a letter of appreciation from Her Royal Highness, commending staff for their work to maintain services during the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Catch22’s Commissioned Rehabilitative Services (CRS) in London received a visit from HRH The Princess Royal in February to officially open the new Wellness Room. The Wellness Room has been designed to support all of our staff members who work within the Community Links building.
During her visit, Her Royal Highness spoke with partners of the CRS about the support they provide, and with service users about their experiences.