How does London Ventures try to address some of London’s biggest challenges? Through collaboration; we collaborate with local authorities, charities, the private sector, researchers, policy leads and the people who are affected by these challenges. This is so we can bring a variety of perspectives together to develop innovative solutions to the biggest challenges in London: innovation through collaboration.
We are currently developing and refining our solutions for our focus on children and families. We held our fourth challenge panel on Friday 23 November with senior representatives from London boroughs, the third sector and policy organisations to assess a long list of innovative solutions. We asked them to score the commerciality and the strategic fit of our solutions against a rating of low, medium or high. The commerciality score was based on whether the solution is deliverable, sustainable and if there is a clear local authority buyer. The strategic fit score was based on if it is scalable across multiple local authorities, will improve outcomes for residents, and also whether the solution addresses the strategic challenges identified at a previous challenge panel. (You can read about the challenge panel in the blog: Challenge Panel Delves Deep.)
One of the key strategic challenges identified is that community support is often available but is not always mobilised or accessed effectively to support vulnerable children and families locally. This can lead to local authorities having to respond to a greater number of referrals at all levels as people are unaware of the wider support available to them. This challenge was particularly apparent from discussions with young people at our youth hackathon in October (you can read the blog to find out more). They discussed how joining gangs might be seen as one of the only options available because that is what vulnerable young people see around them. They may not be aware of other opportunities available.
Many of our solutions focus on giving opportunities to vulnerable young adults in order to address this challenge. For example, we have developed a concept around providing skills to young adults that they would not necessarily get in school, including teamwork in hospitality and coding projects. This comes back to collaboration: collaborating across the community to mobilise and enable access to the skills and support available; collaborating to provide opportunities to those vulnerable young adults that need it; and collaborating to enable a smoother transition to independence.
Based on the criteria we gave our challenge panel members, we asked them to agree which solutions we should take to our Dragon’s Den with Capital Ambition Board members in January and which ones to reject. This will involve attendees assessing the shortened list of innovative solutions and agreeing which ones London Ventures will be sponsoring into build and launch stage. We are holding a young person’s panel in January before the Dragon’s Den to gather feedback from a young person’s perspective. Look out for further updates on our Targeted Ventures on Twitter and Linked In or on our website.
If you are interested in being a sponsor borough or helping us to develop any of our solutions then please get in touch with Thomas Man, Head of Capital Ambition (thomas.man@londoncouncils.gov.uk)