Our latest listening report commissioned by Mid/South ICB about young peoples views on mental health provision in Essex is now available to download. A big thank you to the young people that took part. Please do take a look and share with anyone that can help us use this to make positive changes for young people’s mental health provision ICB mid and South listening mental health report
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A MASSIVE thank you to everyone that attended our youth voices day at Anglia Ruskin University on the 11th October. We welcomed over 100 young people (200 people in total!) Young people attended workshops around issues relating to safety in Essex and then Challenged leaders from Essex about changes that need to happen in order for them to feel safer. It was a great day, and we promise to follow up with everyone, and chase the Essex leaders about changes they are making.
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The Essex Violence and Vulnerability Units listening project; ‘Young peoples views on how safe they feel in their communities’ 6th annual report with just under 2,500 young people in Essex taking part via various engagement methods.
We are excited to present to you the views and comments from young people in Essex about how safe they feel in their communities. This report is used to help shape the work of the VVU in Essex, the Community grants, and wider partnership work focused around keeping young people safe. The report itself is 94 pages long! This is because we have given an Essex wide overview, and then broken down all the young peoples feedback into the appropriate District/Unitary Authority areas to give a more localised insight.
We are currently in the process of delivering this report over a series of webinars. To find out more please email nicole@ecvys.org.uk You can also download the full report;
Full report VVU listening 24-25
Alternatively you can download the report for the District or Unitary Authority that you are particularly interested in;
Brentwood Castle Point Rochford Basildon
Castle Point Southend Thurrock
Young peoples views on health and care research
Working with the mid/South ICS we are pleased to share with you are latest youth voices listening report that highlights the views and feedback of 160 young people in the Mis and South of Essex around taking part in Research. Its a great read and will be used by the funders to create more accessible opportunities for young people to get involved, and hear about health research opportunities. A massive thank you to our groups for taking part! Read the report here Health & Care Research Report FINAL
UPDATE! Let us know if you are a group in MID/South Essex and would like to get involved in a similar project focused on mental health from July-September 2025!
ESSEX YOUTH VOICE DAY 12th October 2024 at ARU Chelmsford
A massive thank you to the 200 young people and Essex Leaders who cam along to our youth voices day in October. We have heard so many amazing ideas and views about how to keep young people safe in Essex, and the PFCC and the Essex VVU are going to be very busy actioning all these ideas!
We will keep everyone who attended updated about the progress made on this.
Thank you again 🙂
The Essex VVU Listening Project 2023-2024
Once again, we are delighted to have been involved in this really important project that influences and helps shape priorities and spending for the Essex VVU over the coming year.
This year 1434 young people from 64 youth clubs across Essex, Southend & Thurrock have taken part!
The report gives an Essex overview and then is divided into each Area to give a more local look at what young people are saying about how safe they feel in their communities.
There are some brilliant findings so please do feel free to share far and wide as this can be used as a great piece of evidence as to the need, value and impact of youth work in Essex.
The full report can be read Here
The presentations from each of the areas can also be downloaded-
West Overview 23-24 VVU Report (1)
North Overview 23-24 VVU Report (1)
Mid Overview 23-24 VVU Report
South Overview 23-24 VVU Report
Thurrock & Southend 23-24 VVU Report (1)
Thank you again to all who took part – your voice will be heard and will make a difference.
Anglia Ruskin University and Internet Watch Foundation – Creating and Sharing Images
We were asked by the ARU and IWF to undertake some research for them with young people around Creating and Sharing Images. The young people have shared their views and perceptions around this topic, their awareness of what support is available and how this could be improved. We hope that this
information is useful and can be used to directly influence future campaigns and policies around keeping young people safe online.
The full report can be read here
We are really excited to let you know about our youth voice projects across Essex: A unique & innovative way to engage young people in research & listen to their views
Come along to our youth voices conference 2023 and have your say around issues of safety in Essex
The Essex VVU youth listening project 2022-2023
This is a really important project that influences and helps shape priorities and spending for the Essex VVU over the coming year.
This year 1553 young people from 73 youth clubs across Essex, Southend & Thurrock have taken part!
The report gives an Essex overview and then is divided into each Area to give a more local look at what young people are saying about how safe they feel in their communities.
There are some brilliant findings so please do feel free to share far and wide as this can be used as a great piece of evidence as to the need, value and impact of youth work in Essex.
VVU Youth voices report 2022-2023 final pdf
A massive thank you again to all the groups that took part.
Please email rachel@ecvys.org.uk if you have a group that would like to take part in our next project around peer on peer abuse starting in May 2023
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HALN Anchor youth partnership; listening work around Employment options for young people
We recently completed some work for The HALN Anchor youth partnership to have conversations with young people from Southend, Chelmsford, Basildon and Thurrock around current employment options for young people, their awareness of what support is available and
how this could be improved. This was a really interesting piece of work with feedback that may surprise you. Have read of our findings and what the young people in are saying…
Our Southend report can be found here; Anchor Youth Partnership Youth voices report
Our Chelmsford, Basildon and Thurrock report can be found here; Anchor Youth Partnership Youth voices report Project
Young people have lots of valid opinions & views to share and it is vital that we listen. Not only because we should(!) But because they can give us valuable insight into how things really are for young people living in Essex today. Young people are change makers, we just need to give them a better chance to participate. It is our belief that this project allows young people to have their say and contribute in an accessible, inclusive and creative way.
Through our network we have amazing links with youth clubs across Essex. Our youth voices projects come in the shape of a flexible session plan that can be run within any shape /style of youth group. This means that young people can share their views about issues in their own safe environment, with their own trusted youth leaders and eat *pizza at the same time…What more could you want?!
Our commitment to empower the voluntary youth sector means that we build into all our projects a chance to ‘give back’. As a result, every youth group that takes part and returns the feedback may also claim a donation towards costs and refreshments for taking part – BONUS! Please contact rachel@ecvys.org.uk if you would like to know more.
Past projects
The Violence and Vulnrability units ‘Young peoples views on knife crime in Essex’
In February 2022 we produced two reports for the Essex VVU around peoples views on knife crime in Essex to help them with their priorities for spending in the coming year.
The 1st report is based on 761 young peoples views in Essex VVU listening 2021-2022 Youth Report final
The second report (produced by Maldon CVS) is based on All age listenign with 378 people in Essex Community Listening Project on Youth Violence 2021-22 – summary report
Young peoples views on the Covid vaccine
In January 2022 we produced a report based on 176 young peoples views across Essex to help ECC understand young peoples views on the Covid vaccineCovid vaccine youth voices report
The Essex PFCC’s Crime plan strategy
In November 2021 0ver 120 young people across Essex shared their views on the plans for the new PFCC Crime Plan. Read the report here PFCC Crime plan youth voices project.docx
Essex Police
In April 2021 we helped Essex Police to listen to young peoples views around their new children & young peoples strategy. 217 children & young people took part in the project which revealed some great insight for Essex Police. Have a look at Essex Police CYP Strategy listening report to find out more.
2021 Violence & Vulnerability listening projects
In 2020 youth leaders across Essex, Southend and Thurrock engaged with over 600 young people on the violence and vulnerability themes for 2020. The feedback from young people was exceptional and helped the violence and vulnerability team to prioritise issues that young people felt were important. It even helped us to put detached youth workers in 5 local districts.
This year our listening project took place in communities with local residents and also with youth groups-
The project enabled over 600 children, young people and adults to input into the Violence and vulnerabilities strategic priorities and spending for 2021-2022 read the report here
Digital youth vocies- Young people in lockdown
Due to the Covid-19 virus we are all currently in lockdown and many young people are left feeling isolated, alone and unable to enjoy the freedoms that they usually experienced. We have just finished our digital youth voices session about how young people in Essex are coping with the lockdown, and if there is anything that can be done to help support them more.
There are some great insights from young people, so please click on the link to read ‘Young people in Lockdown’ ECVYS youth voices report
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We have recently finished work on two Essex Wide projects-
1.) A ‘Curriculum for life’ 
Funded by the Essex Community Foundation and the #Iwillfund in partnership with the Young Essex Assembly who wanted to find out young peoples views on having a ‘Curriculum for life’. This project heard how young people in Essex felt they were being educated for ‘life’ and how they thought it could be improved.
You can download our report and findings here
2.) Youth violence & vulnerability in Essex 
Our second project was funded by the PFCC’s Violence & Vulnerability unit and focused on Youth violence & vulnerability in Essex. This project heard young peoples views about how they felt about their communities. The unit will use this report to help highlight future spending priorities for the team.
You can download our report and findings here
How did we start our youth voice projects?
An idea about more inclusive listening and youth engagement led to a meeting with the National Institute for Health research in the East of England, who believed in our idea too! As a result, In April-July 2019 we ran a ‘micro’ project in the North East of Essex funded by the National Institute of Health research around how young people are consulted in the creation of mental health services.
In June-September 2019 we can a ‘micro’ project funded by the Community Safety partnerships in West Essex (Harlow, Epping & Uttlesford) around young people’s involvement in gangs & knife crime.
Essex Council for Voluntary Youth Services 