Policy and Public Affairs Round Up – August 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!

On Wednesday the 30^th of August Secretary of State Lucy Frazer MP visited North Paddington Youth Club to announce the launch of a new sports strategy, Get Active, that sets national participation targets of an additional 2.5m adults and 1m children and young people active by 2030. We were happy to hear that the strategies five outcomes are; physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing, individual development, social and community development, sustainable economic development. It was also a great opportunity to highlight the fantastic work of North Paddington Youth Club, who have been heavily involved with UK Youth as part of our learning journey and Sport England Systems Partner work.

Our engagement with MPs on Thriving Minds continues to be a success. In August we have met with Jacob Young MP at The Link Charitable Trust, alongside youth organisation Rubies. Both organisations are funded by our Thriving Minds fund to work on young people’s mental health. We also had the opportunity on 25^th August for Kevin Jones MP to meet with Stanley Area Youth Consortium to hear about their Thriving Minds funded work and meet some of the young people they support.

We would like to extend our gratitude to our colleague at our activity centre Avon Tyrrell, as well as the Scouts, Girlguiding, the Outward Bound Trust, Duke of Edinburgh Award, the Institute for Outdoor Learning, and the United Kingdom Sailing Academy for chatting to us about outdoor learning as part of our policy development process. Keep an eye out for our final report coming soon!

We have been working with colleagues at Save the Children and National Children’s Bureau on plans for influencing in advance of the next General Election. Again, there are lots of exciting projects happening in this space, if you have anything you want us to highlight please do get in touch!

Lastly, we have also been preparing for the upcoming Conservative and Labour Party Conferences, where we will be taking young people along and hosting a number of events and panel discussions. If you have plans at conference you want to share, or would like to connect whilst there please do let us know!

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!