We've gathered a selection of external resources to support the continuous development of the Principles that underpin the hub approach: that is, your values and youth work ethos.
The quality framework areas of focus in this section include:
- Youth voice
- Trusted relationships
- Accessibility, equity and anti-oppressive practice
- Values and culture
- Sustained community presence
- Safe and welcoming spaces
You'll find a variety of external resources, including webinars, podcasts, guidebooks and toolkits.
All of the resources linked here will take you to third-party sites not managed by Youth Access. For Youth Access Principles resources, please visit youthaccess.org.uk/auroraresources.
1. Youth voice
📓 Evaluating participation: a guide for professionals
Guide with logic models, journey maps, and feedback forms to plan and evaluate participation. Supports services in auditing youth voice, safe spaces, and inclusion within youth work.
Open guide
📓 Involving young people in the recruitment and selection of staff and volunteers
This resource offers practical guidance, evidence, and case studies to help organisations involve young people meaningfully in staff recruitment and selection processes.
📸 Participation as protective visual
Safer Young Lives Research Centre
Along with artist Zuhura Plummer, the Young Researchers’ Advisory Panel (YRAP) at Safer Young Lives Research Centre designed Participation as Protective: a model to describe the different ways that participation can be protective and supportive for young people.
📓 Payment for involvement playbook
This comprehensive playbook equips you with everything you need to create a fair and equitable payment for involvement policy. It incorporates extensive research, best practices, insights from leading experts including the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), Citizens Advice, the Department for Work and Pensions, and includes examples of policies.
🎤︎︎ Research in practice podcast
Research in Practice, Safer Young Lives Research Centre
Three members of the Young Researchers' Advisory Panel talk about how young people's participation in services and research can be protective at an individual level and for young people more widely.
🌱 Rewarding participation
This toolkit, developed by YoungMinds as part of the Amplified project, supports mental health providers and commissioners to meaningfully reward and embed the participation of children, young people, and their families across all levels of the mental health system.
🌱 Supporting the participation of children and young people experiencing extra vulnerabilities
A toolkit for professionals working in mental health settings, aiming to support organisations to increase the participation of children, young people and families who face marginalisation and barriers within the mental health system. As well as insights into how these barriers impact young people's experience of service and engagement with participation opportunities, this toolkit provides practical tools you can use to make your participation more representative.
🔎 Youth participation: models used to understand young people’s participation in school and community programmes
Evidence Based Practice Unit (EBPU), Anna Freud Centre
This briefing reviews key models of youth participation to help schools and community programmes understand and apply different approaches to involving young people meaningfully in mental health interventions and service design, highlighting the benefits and challenges of each model in practice.
🎬 Young peoples participation in governance
This 90 minute webinar is aimed at senior leaders and trustees/board officers working in youth mental health organisations who would like to effectively integrate children and young people into the strategic planning and leadership of their organisation.
📓 Youth voice: a typology of youth voice for UK youth provision
Report introducing a typology of youth voice with practical categories and case studies. Helps services design opportunities, reflect on practice, and ensure young people’s input leads to meaningful change.
2. Trusted relationships
📓 A guide to creating a trauma-informed environment
This guide helps organisations understand how the physical and virtual environments in which services are delivered can either ease or intensify the effects of trauma, influencing people’s sense of safety, trust, and ability to engage - making it essential to thoughtfully design spaces and procedures with trauma-informed principles in mind.
🎬 Exploring some less-talked-about essentials of trauma-informed practice
These three video resources give a snapshot of some key - but often ignored - areas of trauma-informed practice. They can be used as a teaching resource, as well as part of a wider knowledge exchange agenda.
Watch Towards Building a Trauma-Informed Environment
📓 Practitioner self-regulation guide for trauma-informed practice
This guide helps trauma-informed professionals understand how awareness of their own nervous system responses and self-regulation strategies is essential for creating safe, co-regulating interactions with others - especially those affected by chronic stress or trauma.
🎬 Responding to extra-familial harm through a trauma-informed lens
Nuffield Family Justice Observatory
In this webinar, hosted by Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, Michelle Lefevre and Carlene Firmin set out some of the challenges that local authorities and other social care organisations face in developing trauma-informed responses to extra-familial risks and harms. They share some emergent findings from the Innovate Project’s fieldwork with two sites in the UK.
🌱 Trauma-informed ways of writing about young people
This infographic reviews less helpful ways young people have been described and offers trauma-informed, strengths-based alternatives relevant to working with people of any age or service need.
🎬 What does trauma-informed care look like?
Dr. Danny Taggart shares how trauma-informed care can be experienced by children and young people with lived experience of trauma through this short video and accompanying reflective questions to stimulate conversation and support practice.
3. Accessibility, equity and anti-oppressive practice
📓 A guide on inclusive practices in youth activities
This European Youth Foundation toolbox, shaped by an interactive session with young people, provides practical guidance, reflective activities, and tools to embed inclusive, intersectional practice - treating inclusion as a dynamic, needs-led, collective journey rather than a fixed end point.
📓 Accessible communication guidance
This online guide, co‑produced by the Good Things Foundation and the VCSE Health and Wellbeing Alliance, offers practical advice and examples on removing communication barriers - such as language, disability, cultural and digital exclusion - to ensure healthcare content is accessible and inclusive for all.
📓 A guide to inclusive recruitment for employers
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)
This guide contains practical, evidence-based actions, aligned with international standards for inclusion and diversity, which employers and hiring managers can implement to make the recruitment process more inclusive.
🌱 A toolkit for working with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller young people
Toolkit from the Traveller Movement supporting effective work with GRT young people. Based on peer research, it offers insight and strategies for culturally responsive youth services.
🌱 Empowering Black young people: the roots to wings toolkit
Black Thrive Lambeth in collaboration with Comuzi
Culturally responsive toolkit co-created with young people, parents, and educators. Offers practical activities to support Black and mixed-heritage pre-teens’ mental health, resilience, emotional understanding, and open communication, rooted in cultural identity and community strengths.
📓 From here to diversity: a practical guide for recruiting Black and Asian charity trustees
This resource aims to help charities take positive and sustainable steps to increase the racial diversity of their Boards. The advice, case studies and quotes will provide invaluable learning and support as well as stimulating discussion at your diversity and inclusion events and training.
Open guide
🖊 Humanising health care: reframing lived experience in mental health leadership
David Gilbert calls for a radical shift in mental health services by embedding lived experience at all levels. He proposes reframing ‘patient leadership’ as Experiential Practice and Leadership to move beyond tokenism and create more responsive, equitable, and human-centred systems.
🌱 Inclusive volunteering toolkit
This toolkit is designed to support voluntary organisations to make their volunteering programmes more inclusive. It was informed by focus groups with marginalised people, surveys of voluntary organisations and extensive desk-based research on inclusive volunteering in Scotland.
🌱 Race is complicated: a toolkit for psychological therapies training
Commissioned by The Coalition for Inclusion and Anti-Oppressive Practice
Interactive toolkit helping counselling and psychotherapy sectors address race and diversity. Aimed at leaders, coordinators, and tutors, it offers reflective exercises, guidance, and practical resources to challenge bias, build inclusivity, and embed anti-oppressive practice across training and service delivery.
🖊 Refugee and asylum seeker recruitment
NHS Employers case study highlights how the Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust partnered with Growing Points to recruit refugees and asylum seekers via tailored support, workshops, and guaranteed interviews - creating a more diverse, locally reflective workforce and a blueprint for inclusive community-rooted recruitment.
📓 Roads to Success for Gypsy Roma and Traveller youth
The Traveller Movement and Youth Futures Foundation
Learn how to build stronger connections and create meaningful opportunities for Romani (Gypsy), Roma, and Traveller young people with this peer-led research project to identify barriers and propose solutions for youth education, training and employment.
You can also rewatch our Roads to Success webinar in partnership with The Traveller Movement to hear firsthand from Shaun and Olivia, as they share their lived experiences with youth services and education here.
📓 Shaping the future: getting the best for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic young people
This report provides a vital window into the persistence of racism and race inequality in Britain, through a seminar series focused on young people and their families.
The report offers an overview of the seminars and the solutions posed by participants, including recommendations for the voluntary sector.
🖊 Strengthening local youth partnerships for sustainable impact
Network of Regional Youth Work Units
Showcases how Local Youth Partnerships unite organisations to improve provision, share resources, and secure funding. Middlesbrough and Stockton examples demonstrate collaborative, sustainable models for strengthening local youth networks.
📓 Supporting Black people and People of Colour
Pathlight Mood and Anxiety Centre
Hear from clinical experts what they wish other people knew about mental health for people of colour, as they explore the barriers to mental health care, the impacts of racism, discrimination and marginalisation, trauma and recommendations for mental health professionals. Plus a selection of further resources to enhance your understanding of mental health for Black people and People of Colour.
🌱 The intersectional storyteller’s toolkit
A free five-day email series designed to enhance your organisation's intersectional approach in communications and media. The toolkit includes guidance from experts at Stonewall, Black Thrive Lambeth, Climate Outreach, Inclusion London, BBC, The Guardian and Metro, tailored to the unique needs of charities. You’ll learn how to tell stories that are truly powerful and relevant.
Open toolkit
💻 Working with deaf children and young people
National Deaf Children's Society
This online learning course is highly recommended for anyone working with deaf young people and is designed to provide practical information about different types of deafness, basic communication methods and different technology deaf children may use.
4. Values and culture
📓 Leadership library
A series of resources and articles that can help you on your leadership journey.
📓 Psychological safety for hybrid work environments
This guide supports leaders to navigate the benefits and challenges of hybrid working, with practical strategies to foster psychological safety, work-life balance, and staff wellbeing - offering transferable insights beyond the further education and skills sector.
🌱 Psychological safety staff questionnaire
This simple 9-question team survey helps assess psychological safety in your workplace, offering a clear scorecard to identify strengths, challenges, and opportunities to build a safer, more supportive team culture.
🌱 Strengthen team trust with these psychological safety tools
Creative Huddle offers free, practical psychological safety resources, tools, and techniques for workshops on strategy, innovation, teamwork, and culture. Grouped by purpose and format, each includes duration tags and supports leadership modelling and everyday team culture - ideal for building trust and high-performing teams.
5. Sustained community presence
📓 A guide to collaboration: the what, why and how of collaborating
This guide sets out what collaboration is, why it matters and what it takes to make it work. On paper, it seems easy: working together to do something you can’t do alone through a partnership or relationship of some kind. In reality, there are many reasons why effective collaboration can be very difficult, and these take time and sustained effort to address.
🌱 Developing peer support in the community toolkit
🌱 Developing Peer Support in the Community Toolkit
Created with small community projects in the Side by Side programme. Emphasises community-led peer support, reflective adaptation to local needs, and sustained engagement.
📓 Local mental health partnerships: what the research tells us
This literature review by the Centre for Mental Health offers practical insights for those developing or supporting local mental health partnerships—highlighting what works, common challenges, and key principles for effective collaboration, co-production, and system change.
📓 Together through tough times: the power of community to support mental wellbeing across the UK
Report on strengthening community resilience via trusted sector networks. Offers lessons on local embeddedness, longer-term continuity, and responsive adaptation to crises.
📓 Top tips and key actions for successful collaborative partnership working across mental health services
Practical tips and actions co-developed to strengthen collaborative partnership working in community mental health. Recognises common challenges from statutory and cultural differences and offers guidance for planning and delivering effective cross-organisation support.
🖊 When collaboration is more label than practice: a challenge to surface‑level working
This resource questions superficial notions of collaboration and - by highlighting when collaboration is in name only - challenges you to rethink what meaningful teamwork really looks like, even if you believe you're doing it well.
6. Safe and welcoming spaces
🌱 Accessibility guide to meetings and events
The Sisters of Frida Accessibility Guide to Meetings and Events is a practical toolkit created by a disabled-women-led collective, offering checklists, planning steps, and inclusive principles to help organisers design truly inclusive events that support everyone’s participation.
🖊 Addressing local inequalities through employment
This NHS Employers case study showcases UK-based examples of how NHS and partner organisations have worked together to tackle local inequalities - using inclusive, community-focused recruitment strategies, pre-employment programmes, and targeted hiring to create meaningful jobs for local residents.
📓 A ‘how to’ guide on recruiting a community organiser
While the guide from the Community Practitioners' Network focuses on recruiting community organisers, it offers practical UK-based recruitment guidance - including sample interview questions, assessment exercises, and reflective prompts - to help comunity based organisations design inclusive, values-led, and locally rooted recruitment processes.
🌱 Community creative digital toolkit
The Community Creative Digital Toolkit is a practical resource designed to empower organisations, community groups, and individuals to create and nurture creative digital hubs and projects. The toolkit provides insight into why embedding digital technology and creativity into community spaces can be beneficial, what it involves, and how to do it collaboratively with your community.
📓 Digital engagement in participation
This guide, developed by YoungMinds as part of the NHS-commissioned Amplified project, supports professionals to deliver safe, meaningful digital participation with children, young people, and families across the mental health system, offering practical advice, skills, and tools for adapting or developing engagement approaches.
📓 Digital youth work standards
Standard-setting document for digital youth work across UK youth sector. Emphasises youth-led design, accessible platforms, meeting young people where they are digitally, and ensuring consistency of delivery online.
🎬 Embracing complexity: improving services for neurodivergent people
This webinar is a panel discussion and exploring how small and easy-to-implement changes can improve access and experiences of using different services, for example, mental health services or education.
🌱 Speak out toolkit: creating safe spaces to challenge narratives of hate and division
This toolkit is designed to be used with young people aged 11+ to stimulate discussion, thought and reflection around key themes such as identity, belonging, diversity and community.
📓 Using digital solutions to make your facility more accessible
This resource outlines why inclusive and accessible visual assets matter, what to consider when creating them, and showcases good practice examples to help all visitors feel confident and welcome.
📓 Venue access info guide
Attitude is Everything is a UK disability-led charity helping live music venues and festivals become more accessible; their Access Starts Online campaign guides organisers to provide clear, comprehensive online access information for Deaf and disabled audiences - advice that’s relevant for any public building.
a note on external resources
Please note that these links will take you to a third-party site not managed by Youth Access. If you have any other resource recommendations that fellow youth advice and counselling services might find useful, let us know!
You can find external resources to support your work on areas of focus falling under foundations and services below.