Policy and Public Affairs round up blog – Apr & May 2023

This is our regular policy and public affairs round up blog, covering what the team have been up to here at UK Youth, what young people have been saying, and what is coming up in the next couple of months. We would love to hear from you so please get in touch if you have any questions, thoughts or ideas to share with the team.

What have we been up to?

We have been engaged with a range of All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) these last couple of months, including attending the APPG on Youth Employment’s event on place based approaches to tackling youth unemployment and responding to the APPG on Youth Affairs’ inquiry into the skills gap and youth employment with examples of our programmatic work at UK Youth and what we would like to see change.

Last week we attended a roundtable on loneliness with Minister Stuart Andrew MP, before attending the APPG on Tackling Loneliness and Connected Communities’ event on youth loneliness, alongside our Belong Collective Young Leaders Molly Taylor and Finty Royle. Molly gave a passionate and inspiring speech outlining her personal experience and what she would like to see change, and we heard from Minister Stuart Andrew MP about his work in this area. We are looking forward to seeing more discussion around youth loneliness in the near future!

The Coronation Weekend was also a very busy time for the team, with young people from UK Youth and #iwill attending a Big Lunch at Number 10 Downing Street, have a look at some of their great snaps of the day! The Big Help Out also ran on the Bank Holiday Monday, we are really grateful to anyone who gave up their time to volunteer with young people!

Young people have also been representing UK Youth in policy spaces this month, you can read more about #iwill ambassador Neisha Hussain’s experience at the Back Youth Alliance Strategy Day in her blog. Belong Collective Young Leader and #iwill ambassador Molly Taylor has also shared a blog about her experience at the Future Generations conference, hearing from MPs.

Our focus on the cost of living crisis has been continuing, with the launch of our recent polling data on the experiences of young people, and our film headed up by actor Ben Bailey Smith. More than half of young people (54%) surveyed saying their mental health has been negatively impacted by the cost of living crisis. Likewise, a shocking three quarters of young people (76%) are concerned the crisis will restrict their ability to get a secure job now and in the future. We have shared an update on policy around the cost of living crisis in this blog.

We have also visited youth organisations, including heading to Theatre Peckham to hear about their amazing work and the challenges facing their organisation at present, as well as met with MPs to continue championing youth work in Parliament including most recently Ian Levy MP.

What have young people been saying?

We have been hearing from young people about a range of issues this month, please do get in touch if you have any comments on policy updates to share or if you would like to be more involved!

Finty Royle, Young Leader from the Belong Collective, said about the APPG:

“I really enjoyed being a part of the Loneliness APPG (All-Party Parliamentary Group), and I found the discussions to be incredibly insightful.”

Neisha Hussain, #iwill ambassador, said about the Back Youth Alliance Strategy Day:

“As a young person myself, I was able to use my own lived experiences to bring insight into different discussions where I am directly affected. Being able to sit in a room talking about the problems I care about, whilst truly being listened to, is an absolute privilege.”

What’s on the horizon?

We are continuing to work on our resources, toolkits and training sessions for youth organisations and young people, including developing resources for youth workers to utilise with young people about the next general election which is due to be held in 2024 – keep an eye out for these.

Our Thriving Minds programmes have been doing incredible work focusing on mental health, we are working with a number of MPs to meet the grantees at their youth organisations and see first hand the great work that is being done.

We have also recently started a policy development process on the value of outdoor learning. If you would like to be involved in this work, or if you have some best practice examples of outdoor learning working really well that you would like to share please do get in touch with us.

We’d love to hear from you!

Please get in touch by emailing kate.roberts@ukyouth.org with any feedback you have on the content of our roundup, as well as any ideas/reflections you’d like to share to feed into our policy and public affairs work.