Since 2023, more than 5,158 young people aged 10 to 25 have engaged in research and social action addressing youth violence across England and Wales as part of the Peer Action Collective (PAC) programme.
A new report, Sharing power, showing understanding, covering the second iteration of the PAC programme, draws on 273 peer-to-peer interviews between young people, 139 focus groups, and a survey with 1,510 participants.
Survey findings
The survey of 11- to 18-year-olds includes reflections from 557 young people with lived experience of violence – comprising 306 victims, 430 witnesses, and 210 perpetrators of violent crime. The views captured in this survey are not nationally representative, but include responses from regions across England and Wales, and reflect young people with specific relevant experiences as well as a broader sample. Findings include:
- 16% of the young people surveyed said they did not feel “at all” safe in online communities. This rose to a fifth (20%) of the 557 participants with lived experience of violence.
- More than one in eight survey participants (13%) did not feel safe in their local area, with 14% saying the same about parks and open spaces. A fifth of those with experience of violence did not feel safe in their local area (21%), or in parks and open spaces (22%).
- Feeling listened to emerged as an issue. Across all survey participants, four in ten (39%) said they did not have a system for youth voice – such as a student council – to have their say in their school or college, or were unsure if they did.
- Among the 1,310 participants currently in education, over a third (38%) overall – and nearly two thirds of the 472 both currently in education and with experience of violence (62%) – had been excluded or suspended during the 12 months before taking part. This is dramatically higher than Government data for England, which suggests those taking part in the survey were a particularly vulnerable cohort.
- Among those who had experienced exclusion or suspension, anger or being upset at the decision was common (30%), followed by feeling unfairly treated (21%), feeling embarrassed or ashamed (13%), and disconnected from family and friends (10%). However, 11% said they were indifferent and, worryingly, a quarter (25%) were relieved to have a break from school.
- More positively, three quarters (75%) of survey participants who were currently in education said their school or college provided enough information on mental health. A fifth (19%) said their school or college did not provide enough information, and this figure stood at 30% among those who had lived experience of violence.
Themes and actions
Between January 2024 and July 2025, PAC teams of young people based across England and Wales were supported by The Young Foundation and Delivery Partner organisations to conduct youth-led research and social action projects tackling the drivers of youth violence. Three common themes emerged, with young people developing ideas and tools to directly address them. Detailed in today’s report, these include:
1: Violence in context
Young people see violence all around, including on social media and in their neighbourhoods. They want positive activities and places they can go where trusted adults are on hand, that feel safe, fun, and far from negative influences. Ideas developed and delivered through the programme include interactive mapping resources in Bradford and Gateshead to support young people to access local activities, workshops to de-escalate online harms, and a successful campaign to make it easier to report unwanted sexual behaviour on the nation’s railways.
2: Power and understanding
Young people see relationships with adults as inconsistent. Often, they see adults – including teachers, the police, parents, and youth workers – as failing to treat them with empathy, fairness and understanding. Social action activities they designed and delivered to address this include tools to support teachers and students to build better relationships, materials to support better PSHE, and developing youth forums with local bus companies and charity arms of football clubs, and an immersive experience that puts adults in the shoes of young people.
3: Mental health and wellbeing
Young people want adults to create psychologically safe places, and to give advice when needed. PAC teams built an interactive film to support young people to regulate their emotions, and to support schools to better understand and respond to them, designed guidelines for youth worker recruitment, and co-designed enrichment sessions with a local college.
Centring youth voice
Reflecting on today’s report, Colin Cliff, Head of Youth Understanding at the Youth Endowment Fund, says:
We know that to tackle violence, we need more than statistics – we need to listen to the young people living with its realities. This research from the Peer Action Collective offers valuable insights into what matters most to them and, just as importantly, shows how young people themselves can lead the way in creating safer communities.”
Isabella Pereira, Interim Co-Director of Research at The Young Foundation says:
Working with young people through the PAC programme has been a privilege, and we have been overwhelmed by their courage and openness, as well as their creativity and innovative proposals for a fairer, better future. Insightful and potentially game-changing ideas have emerged, and I urge policymakers and adults engaging with young people to open their doors and minds to working hand-in-hand with them, to drive solutions to the all-too-real issues of violence affecting young people we see across the country.”
Funded by the Youth Endowment Fund, the #iwill Fund (a joint investment between The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) and the Co-op Group, PAC is a £11.4m programme, which aims to give young people the chance to make their communities safer, fairer places to live. The Young Foundation is the programme’s national partner.
Sharing power, showing understanding is the second report of the three-phase PAC programme.
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PAC is a network driven by and for young people at risk of or with lived experience of violence across England and Wales. PAC gives young people a chance to make their communities safer, fairer places to live through a programme of peer research and social action. Since PAC started in 2021, more than 12,000 young people have been involved through research or social action.
This report covers the second iteration of the Peer Action Collective, running from 2023-2025.
This iteration involved 10 community-based youth organisations in regions across England and Wales who employed young people as PAC Leads. The regions in England were London and the South-east, the South-west, East and West Midlands, the North-west, Yorkshire and the Humber, and the North-east; as well as a team in Wales. The young people designed and delivered peer research, and drew on their own lived experiences and peer insight to develop social action activities, supported by a wider team of young people in Changemaker roles.
Phase three of the programme will run through to 2028. Find out more at peeractioncollective.com
Community needs and priorities Criminal justice Education and employment Families and youth Inequality Peer research Social action Posted on: 24 September 2025