Charlbury Youth Corner 2026

Mon 22 Jun, 21:42 (last edited on Mon 22 Jun, 23:10)

Hi again! One more thing.

There has been some talk about town that Youth Corner does not have proper safeguarding, which is a very serious concern that I would like to address publicly.

While it’s sad this kind of talk is going around, I’ll just take this as a positive opportunity to brag about how qualified our team is!

I am a qualified Designated Safeguarding Lead and have over 15 years experience in being a safeguarding professional, building policies from nothing since I was 18 years old when there was none that existed at the time for self harm disclosures from youth and I found myself needing guidance. So I researched, consulted experts, and built policies, procedures, and packages to give to parents. This was over 15 years ago. I’ve been at the forefront of safeguarding advancements ever since, from safeguarding LGBTQ+ youth in churches to creating educational material and policies for large organisations to use as guardrails to prevent systemic abuse.

I also have loads of other training as a teacher and counsellor, but I think you get the point.

Youth Corner’s safeguarding policies go above and beyond best practice and are aligned with the NYA and OSCP guidelines. When I train my staff and volunteers, I am always sure to explain to them exactly how to go about reporting me if they disagree with me and don’t feel comfortable telling me. I always encourage them to hold me accountable as their leader. The same thing goes for those I will be apprenticing through Youth Corner.

This is not an organisation where I have no one to answer to. We have a rapidly growing an advisory board and a separate safeguarding governance lead, all of whom are extremely qualified, accredited, and hand selected.

Due to my digital and safeguarding expertise, I have also led the development of the entire digital safeguarding infrastructure from scratch for a large Charlbury charity. 

THATS NOT ALL. Here comes the fun part.

This summer Youth Corner is building a digital safeguarding tool for youth workers with a team of safeguarding professionals from across the national youth sector. This is being developed for national rollout in Sept 2027 in collaboration with several organisations that serve this sector. This is inspired by the National Youth Strategy to make the youth sector more robust.

Youth Corner and some founding member organisations in Oxfordshire will beta-test this digital dashboard from Sept 26 - Aug 27. I can assure you that all of our risk assessments, policies, and procedures for all of our programmes launching in September will be aligned with national best practice standards.

Lastly, OXIE (an accelerator I founded that backs projects, programmes, and events that empower youth through the technosocial shift we are hurtling through) just qualified as a fully funded research partner for the National Youth Agency's quality certification programme they are developing for any organisation providing youth provision. So not only am I project managing the development of a digital safeguarding tool for national rollout, I am also helping shape a quality certification programme. 

The plan was to launch Charlbury Youth Corner fully in September, however I fast-tracked things a bit to do a pre-launch as I have ongoing programmes that needed a new organisational home. After speaking to some organisations and parents in Charlbury, I was encouraged to take the leap and start Youth Corner early.

If any parent or community member has any questions or concerns, feel free to come to me directly. 

My best,

Bryanna Bone