VRU - Expert Partner for Youth Digital Safety in London

The London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) is undertaking a virtual market engagement exercise on Monday 29th June 2026 at 3PM, via MS Teams, to inform the commissioning of an Expert Partner for Youth Digital Safety in London.
The London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), hosted within the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), pioneers a partnership-based public health approach to tackling violence rooted in prevention and early intervention. Since 2019, the VRU has invested in over 550,000 targeted interventions for young people across London.
The VRU invests in interventions at critical moments to keep young people safe in and out of school and at the key touchpoints that influence a young person’s journey; early years and families, education, positive opportunities, youth work, and communities and place.
In London, working in partnership, we bring together services at a local level to better coordinate delivery of prevention. We build and support effective partnerships with government, local authorities, the NHS, education services, and the police. Our strength is in connection to London’s diverse communities and young people. We’ve made embedding the voice of young people, practitioner and communities a critical part of our approach and decision-making.
You can read the VRU's strategy on our website and view the VRU’s outcomes framework, which measures our impact.
Background
The VRU recognises that the rapid proliferation of online platforms and technologies has created new challenges and opportunities for young people. Online spaces can provide connection, creativity, learning and participation, but they can also expose children and young people to harmful content, exploitation, misogyny, harassment and coercion, and exacerbate conflict.
The boundaries between online and offline life are increasingly blurred. There remains a significant gap between young people’s lived experiences of the online world and the systems, policies and services designed to...