We are Children And Young People Now Award Winners 2024!
The night of Thursday28th November 2024 proved to be both a memorable and successful one for the Gamechanger team who attended the prestigious Children and Young People Now Awards at a ceremony in Hammersmith, London. We were delighted to have been shortlisted in both the Digital Innovation and Safeguarding categories for our ground-breaking blended learning programmes delivered for schools and youth services across the UK.
The Awards:
Now in their 19th year, the awards showcase innovation and outstanding practice across the children’s services sector. They also provide an all-too-rare opportunity to champion the vital work of services supporting children, young people and families across the UK. The awards also recognise outstanding practice in services for disadvantaged children, young people and families.
Sponsored by Amity, Cafcass, Foster Support and the National Youth Agency, this year’s awards received over 500 entries with 116 shortlisted schemes for the 24 award categories covering every aspect of the sector. The judging process was rigorous with a panel of 27 adult and young judges spending 2 full days assessing and grading all the entries.
Gamechanger:
At Gamechanger, we combine cutting edge VR technology with engaging drama and activity-based workshops to create unique blended-learning programmes that raise awareness and inspire change amongst young people around some of the UK’s biggest social issues. ’Inspiring change, improving lives’ being our moto. Our innovative, early intervention programmes (IMPACT and INTERVENTION) have, throughout the last two years, sought to transform outcomes for young people on hard-hitting issues including CCE, County Lines and Knife Crime.
The Gamechanger team were absolutely delighted to have their hard work recognised and when we received the news that we’d been shortlisted for not one, but two award categories.
Award categories shortlisted for:
- The Digital Innovation Award
- The Safeguarding Award
We were thrilled to win The Digital Innovation Award after being shortlisted for the award alongside three other highly reputable and credible services below:
- Achieve Psychology for Learning
- The Lucy Faithful Foundation, Shore
- University of Cambridge, Isaac Physics & STEM SMART
The judging criteria:
The criteria for The Digital Innovation Award meant that it was awarded to the service or project that harnessed the use of digital platforms and technologies to deliver effective interventions and strengthen relationships with service users. The Gamechanger team needed to demonstrate the beneficial impact our digital innovations have on disadvantaged children’s outcomes. Judges looked for evidence of how our interventions had been used in an innovative way to address long-standing or emerging problems for young people.
Gamechanger’s INTERVENTION programme:
In terms of satisfying the above criteria, it was Gamechanger’s INTERVENTION programme that swayed the judges and won the award.
Our INTERVENTION programme is detailed here:
Designed and built as a cutting-edge 360° VR experience with branching narrative, decision-making elements and gamification, this unique offering includes:
- Gamified online learning portal with interactive resources and personal development platform. Participants can track their progress and gain points along the way. Progress can be monitored by the overseeing professionals.
- Facilitator-led Gamechanger Challenges focusing on building resilience and positive behaviour change.
- Specifically designed to target smaller groups of young people on a referral basis, and/or identified as potentially at higher risk. Delivered across multiple sessions.
- Professionals within a community/school/region undergo accredited training to deliver the course (regional upskilling and legacy).
- Accredited CPD and support for professionals working with young people.
- Outcomes: Deeper discussion into social issues severely affecting children and young people; an understanding of the group cohesion and emotional resilience required to deal with real-life challenging situations; practical implementation of mental toughness for decision making.
More on INTERVENTION can be found on the Gamechanger website – https://gamechanger.org.uk/intervention/
After winning the award, Gamechanger MD, Jessica Wright said:
“Gamechanger is an outstanding collaborative partnership originally formed with the objective of using technological innovation to reduce the risks of CCE involvement for young people. Five years after initial discussions, we have an incredible piece of integrated VR, and are developing blended learning programmes for many other social issues affecting young people, including – but not limited to – Knife Crime, Child Sexual Exploitation, Online Safety and Bullying, Anti-social Behaviour and Violence Against Women and Girls. Winning this award was a huge endorsement of all the hard work that has gone into this project”
Greg Brookes-Clayton, Gamechanger Operations Director added the following sentiment:
“Our blended learning programmes provide unique and refreshing intervention approaches for children and young people. We use immersive formats (VR and drama) to introduce gritty and complex social issues a very realistic and relevant way . We have taken advantage of the latest VR technology and our work is thoroughly researched and evaluated.
Sound evaluation and evidence supports the effectiveness and efficacy of our work, raising awareness and informing is easy, but some might say ‘so what?’…..unless we arm young people with the resilience to be upstanders and act upon any concerns they might have, young people remain at risk!
Our programmes do this and we feel this is the very reason we won this award.
Richard Dawson, Gamechanger Business Development and Partnerships Manager picked up the award on behalf of the team and said:
“After all the hard work that has gone into Gamechanger, picking up this prestigious award on behalf of the Gamechanger team in front of 450 peers and fellow award winners was a massive honour and a real privilege. The team felt like we had developed something hugely innovative that not only harnessed the power of virtual reality but also utilised a unique blended-learning approach with a fun, gamified portal that really appealed to and resonated with children and young people and more importantly facilitated increased resilience and positive behaviour change. We were so glad the judges recognised that the team had been truly innovative in our approach.”
Young judge Ed Peasgood said of Gamechanger:
“Gamechanger use technology to work alongside – not replace- traditional youth work activities and discussions and has a clear focus on tackling a social issue. I’m so pleased to see how involved young people have been in the co-production of this work.”
