Campaigns

Why we campaign

We want to make a long-term difference to Co-op member-owners and their communities. 

Our campaign work helps us do that by breaking down the barriers that prevent us from building fairer and safer communities. Working at a systemic level adds value to our funding programmes and helps create long-lasting change.  

We believe co-operation is at the heart of strong communities and is key to generating meaningful change. That’s why we are partnering with others who put young people and those with lived experience at the heart of their campaign work. 

Youth custody: our new campaign focus

Young people told us they want to live in fair communities that are safe and crime-free and that prioritise rehabilitation of those who come into contact with the justice system. They told us this is something they wanted us to focus on as part of our campaign work – so that’s what we did.

We spent months listening to young people who have been in contact with the youth justice system and organisations who have supported them. We also looked for ways we could add value to work already taking place to reform the youth justice system to create safer communities as a whole.

Children who come into contact with the justice system are some of the most vulnerable in our communities. Custodial experiences can worsen vulnerabilities and disadvantages children might already be experiencing, significantly affecting long-term development and life chances. This is why custody should only be used as a last resort. But every year, too many children are being unnecessarily imprisoned in England and Wales. 

We also know that current conditions in youth custody are causing trauma and making it harder for children to achieve their potential. 

Radical reform of the youth justice system is urgently needed so custody is truly used as a last resort. And when custody is deemed appropriate, the setting is child-centred and trauma-informed.To build communities where everyone feels safe, we need to ensure children who come into contact with the youth justice system are effectively supported onto the right path so they can transform their lives.

Through our campaign work, we’re calling for more effective community-based approaches to justice, and for custody settings to be as child-centred and supportive as possible when children are deprived of their liberty.

We will do this by partnering with Alliance for Youth Justice and Transform Justice over the next three years to:

• Call for a reduction in the use of custodial remand for children (when a child is detained pre-trial or pre-conviction)

• Call for greater restrictions on the use of custody for children and a greater focus on community sentencing

Want to understand why keeping children out of custody is so important? Explore the resources from our campaign partners below:

Ensuring custody is used as a last resort
Podcast on the misuse of child imprisonment
Fighting Fatalism in Child Remand

Find out more about our campaign work and how you can support us by emailing Sophie Beresford on sophie.beresford@coop.co.uk 

Our campaign efforts align with and enhance work already being delivered across the business to creating safer communities for our colleagues and member-owners, particularly the Safer Colleagues, Safer Communities campaign.  

Together we’re helping to deliver on Co-op’s vision of co-operating to build more value for our member-owners every day.

Our campaign history

We’re not new to campaigning. 

In 2019, we launched our first youth-led behaviour change campaign, Lonely Not Alone, to tackle the stigma of youth loneliness. We wanted to help young people feel more confident talking about loneliness to improve their mental wellbeing and deliver on Co-op’s vision of Co-operating for a Fairer World. 

At its peak, 25% of young people in the UK had heard about our campaign, and there are now hundreds of stories and messages of support on our beautiful digital universe that was co-designed with young people in 2021. We had impact too: 

In November 2022, 55% of young people said loneliness is a normal emotion (up from 43% in February 2019) 

In November 2022, 83% of young people said they’d taken an action to help others (up from 73% in February 2019)

We stopped promoting our Lonely Not Alone campaign at the end of 2023. The digital universe is now managed and maintained by Digital Wonderlab. Read more about our Lonely Not Alone campaign and its legacy here.