Welcome to this month's edition

Good morning! April was another great month for the VERU and partners.

Earlier this month, we had the pleasure of welcoming Youth Endowment Fund Executive Director, Jon Yates, to HQ. Jon heard directly from our incredible team including our YIS Team Coordinator Tasha Case and Lead Public Health Analyst Ade Abitoye, before JP, from Boxing Saves Lives, joined us virtually to talk about his work with the VERU. A huge thank you to Jon for joining us, the team for their work and of course the wonderful JP for making time to speak to us.

Also this month, I was delighted to join Central Bedfordshire's Exploitation and Missing Coordinator, Mia Tomlinson, in delivering a briefing to GP’s on Exploitation & Contextual Safeguarding. We have a number of sessions booked throughout the year, which I'm looking forward to. I would like to extend my thanks to Mia for her support and the GP’s for attending the briefing.

Looking forward, the team and I are excited to attend and speak at the first ever Youth Conference later this week, hosted by Police and Crime Commissioner, Festus Akinbusoye. We're extremely honoured to have been able to make contact with and invite Aliyah Morgan to share her experiences at the conference too. Late last year Aliyah featured in BBC documentary, Hidden Girls, which highlights the unseen life of young girls groomed and exploited by criminal gangs. This is a fantastic initiative that the Commissioner has committed to, and we're confident it will have an incredible impact on the young people across our county.

Finally I would like to say a huge thank you to Link to Change for partnering with us on a number of school deliveries. During these inputs, Link to Change reached more than 1000 students over the course of 22 sessions that covered Online Safety, County Lines, CSE and CCE, as well as Gang and Exploitation awareness. Amazing work!

I hope you enjoy reading through this months VERU in View.

Lisa Robinson | Interim VERU Manager

As we approach the summer months, we also approach a critical time where violence in the community sadly increases.

In and amongst a wide range of activities that we'll be engaging in to tackle this, we would like to produce a countywide activities calendar to share with our young people and local community. 

Please use the link below to detail you summer programme, we hope to share this ahead of the summer holidays.

You can expect to see the Central Bedfordshire Tree project out and about in the community again next month.

Replicating the successful approach that was pioneered in Luton, the TREE project – Tackling, Reducing and Ending Exploitation – sees youth and charity workers team up with police officers to conduct joint outreach work across the district.

The aim is to engage with young people and the wider community and signpost people to support services.

The project in Bedford and Central Bedfordshire is led by the Bedfordshire Youth Offending Service, part of both Bedford Borough and Central Bedfordshire councils, and funded by the Bedfordshire Violence and Exploitation Reduction Unit (VERU).

Upcoming dates & locations:

• 06/06/22 - Grove Gardens | Dunstable College | Asda
• 11/06/22 - Flitwick Fun Day
• 15/06/22 - Sandy Secondary School
• 23/06/22 - Bedford Academy | Jubilee Park
  
• 27/06/22 - Grove Gardens | Dunstable College | Asda
  
• 6/07/22 - Sandy Secondary School
• 09/07/22 - Leighton Linslade Carnival
• 14/07/22 - Bedford Academy | Jubilee Park
• 23 & 24/07/22 - Bedford River Festival

As part of the Youth Endowment Fund’s Annual Report, the Crest Advisory has commissioned by YEF to conduct a poll that looks at youth crime and violence.

As well as polling a representative sample in England and Wales, the YEF are also undertaking purposive sampling through Violence Reduction Units and are keen to reach more young people, particularly those with experience of violent crime.

For further details on the research and the link to the survey, click the button below.

Safeguarding Bedfordshire are carrying out a review of their training offer.

Safeguarding Bedfordshire would like to hear from practitioners across the county, about their learning needs and experience of training they provide.

The survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete. If you are happy to be contacted to discuss your feedback further, please provide your contact details for a chance to win a free full day training place (or 2 half days) for you or a member of your team. 

We welcome any feedback you have on VERU in View, simply reply to this email to share your comments.