In Our Own Words – Youth practitioners and young people outline their needs, preferences and perceptions in relation to youth provision

What happens when you give youth workers and young people the microphone and ask them to share their perspectives, needs and desires for youth provision?

This is what NCS commissioned UK Youth to do in 2024; to understand how youth provision across England is perceived, what these groups want youth services to look like in future and how the youth sector should be supported to deliver them, writes Oscar Bingham, UK Youth assistant director of research and impact.

We asked youth practitioners and young people to record testimonies and informal interviews on their phones. This creative approach was backed up with other research methods. For example, focus groups with youth practitioners explored the role that digital plays in young people’s lives and how digital solutions can be better used to deliver and underpin youth provision. 

Today, UK Youth is proud to publish the full report, In Our Own Words. It makes recommendations for policy-makers, funders and youth sector infrastructure organisations – including UK Youth. We also wanted to amplify the voices of young people and practitioners through this research and have brought their perspectives to life in a short, animated film.

This research has clearly highlighted the preventative role youth work can play in young people’s lives. Many findings came as no surprise to us – the report highlights issues young people and youth practitioners have been grappling with for many years. However, it also shines a spotlight on the solutions young people and youth workers most need and want today. 

We heard about the critical role that open access, holistic, accessible, centre-based provision plays in young people’s lives, as the foundation for other types of youth work. We also heard about the importance of responding to young people’s individual needs and giving them ownership of the provision and spaces they engage with. We were told the youth sector workforce needs significant investment and better recognition, alongside a step-change in cross-sector and joined-up working. 

It is clear the increasing scale and complexity of young people’s needs, particularly in relation to mental health, is putting extreme pressure on youth practitioners – they can’t meet demand, or fill gaps in statutory provision and this can have severe consequences for their own wellbeing, as well as young people’s.  

Lastly, the report explores the role of digital solutions in the youth sector. The pandemic necessitated an immediate shift towards digital and remotely-delivered youth work, but most now do not see it as an adequate alternative to face-to-face, in-person time with a youth worker. However, innovative digital youth work is taking place in England and there’s a lot of potential and appetite for digital solutions to transform how the professions working with young people coordinate and collaborate. 

To find out more, click here to read the report.

In Our Own Words is incredibly timely. Just this week, the Government launched a national conversation with young people. Across England, young people can now have their say on the Government’s new National Youth Strategy and what support services, facilities and opportunities they need outside the school gates.

UK Youth is proud to be part of a consortium, commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to conduct research and facilitate this national conversation. In partnership with Volunteering Matters – through our joint coordination of the #iwill Movement – My Life My Say and leading research agency Savanta, we are running a national survey, focus groups, Democracy Cafés and Hackathon-style events to hear from thousands of young people from a diversity of backgrounds across England.

Deliver You, an exciting and ambitious programme of research and youth engagement will build on the In Our Own Words report. It will deepen understanding of young people’s needs, preferences, perceptions and desires today and directly inform the National Youth Strategy.

About UK Youth

UK Youth is a leading charity with a vision that all young people are equipped to thrive and empowered to contribute at every stage of their lives. With an open network of more than 9,000 youth organisations and nation partners; UK Youth reaches more than four million young people across the UK and is focused on unlocking youth work as the catalyst of change that is needed now more than ever. To find out more, visit ukyouth.org 

UK Youth is involved in a range of programmes designed to help young people thrive, such as outdoor learning, physical literacy, social action and employability. For more on UK Youth’s programmes, see ukyouth.org/what-we-do/our-programmes