Introducing the Alliance for Youth Justice!
Our Director, Pippa Goodfellow, reflects on the process of relaunching as the Alliance of Youth Justice, formerly the Standing Committee for Youth Justice.
“We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to revisit and refresh who we are, what we do and what we want to achieve - working together to lay strong foundations to achieve greater engagement and impact in the future.”
Exactly two years after taking up my role as Director in February 2019, I am extremely excited to introduce the newly relaunched Alliance for Youth Justice (AYJ) - formerly the Standing Committee for Youth Justice (SCYJ). This marks a new phase in the history of the organisation and an opportunity to recognise everyone who has been involved in shaping our work in the past, present and into the future.
I was delighted to be given the opportunity lead the SCYJ’s management, strategy and development, having previously been actively involved as the representative of a member organisation for a number of years and then as an Associate Member. I had always been impressed that so many organisations worked together with a shared purpose to improve the youth justice system and particularly the extent to which the SCYJ punched well above its weight.
In the first few months, I met a wide variety of people when attending meetings, seminars and events (vaguely remember when we actually did that) and a pattern of polarised reactions began to emerge when I introduced myself in my new role. The SCYJ was either instantly recognised and understood, or was met with a look of bemusement and something along the lines of “Huh? What’s that?”.
On the one hand, the SCYJ had a long-standing credibility (originating in the 1990s) and a very strong reputation, worth their weight in gold in policy terms. On the other hand, there were a wide range of individuals and organisations who weren’t familiar with our work, but we needed to reach out and engage with them. Introducing the ‘standing committee’ seemed confusing in these contexts - providing a timely prompt to consider how the organisation had evolved and our ambitions to further develop a dynamic and inclusive network for change.
Revisit and Redefine
On the back of this, with the support of our board, a year-long consultation process was undertaken with our member organisations and external partners to inform our future direction. With the generous support of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Youth Fund, we were able to start a programme of organisational development in 2020. A fundamental aspect of this was working towards enhancing our external profile as an alliance that is engaging and influential, whilst retaining the strength of our reputation that was developed over several decades. In July 2020 our members unanimously voted to change our name and the process of becoming the Alliance for Youth Justice (AYJ) had begun.
One of the most obvious changes we have made is to our new logo, a good example of where we have tried to maintain a fine balance between retaining our best features while also rejuvenating our image and appealing to a wider range of audiences. In a steep evolution from our previous logo, we have carried over our signature speech bubble embodying the AYJ as forum where ideas are exchanged, and where the voices of our members and the children and young people they work with are amplified. The overlapping of the two lozenge shapes in our logo represents the coming together of our members, whose expertise we bring together to strengthen our collective influence, which is far greater than the sum of its parts. Together, these elements complete a ‘Y’ to symbolise ‘youth justice’ - the common ground of all our members and the central focus of our collaboration.
Our relaunch as the AYJ has been an opportunity for us to revisit and redefine our main goals and values, to achieve greater clarity on who we are, what we do, and what we want to achieve. We hope that you enjoy exploring our new website and social media and keeping up to date with AYJ updates and details of how to get involved in our monthly newsletter.
We would like to thank all of our members, partners and young people for their invaluable contributions to the consultation process and for their suggestions, ideas and commitment to helping us to develop and define the work we do together. With a renewed external profile, we are looking forward to building on our existing foundations and working together to achieve greater engagement and impact in the future for the benefit of children, young people, and society.
“We make this transition during a fundamentally pivotal time for children in our communities and the youth justice system. The complex and deep-rooted issues within our society that drive children towards being in conflict with the law have been exacerbated by the pandemic, in the context of deepening disadvantage and inequality.
To play our part in developing future solutions, the AYJ aims to promote the rights and voices of children, and to amplify the views and experiences of our members.”
Finally, I’d like to give a massive shout out to the team who worked on making this vision a reality. Thank you so much to Aimee, Hayden and Millie for being a pleasure to work with on the website; and to the staff team, board and youth advisory group for their support.