Insight from Westminster’s youth workers
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, YWF had been working in partnership with King’s College London, Rocket Science, Partnership for Young London and Westminster City Council to conduct a peer researched needs analysis; examining the experiences of young people across Westminster.
This would be an update to our 2017 study, A City Within A City. We hoped this research would support the YWF community to identify and address the challenges faced by young people growing up in Westminster, all the while ensuring that they are truly at the heart of the conversation. Following the lockdown, we took the decision to pause the project.
In the weeks that followed it became clear that we were witnessing one of the most significant challenges of our lifetime. The pandemic had disrupted the life of every young person and family in Westminster. Young lives had been disrupted at crucial stages of education and transition. Our project looked to provide the hyper-local Westminster context to ensure we were responding as well as we could during the challenging times.
We ran bi-weekly online focus groups with 10 Westminster youth workers, working with young people in a range of settings. We jointly set 3 themes of focus each week. Youth workers reflected on these questions in their interactions with young people and asked for young people’s views. This insight was regularly shared with the YWF community in a bi-weekly bulletin.
