National Youth Strategy
On the 10th of December, the Government launched ‘Youth Matters: Your National Youth Strategy’. The strategy was shaped by listening to young people about what they want to see improve over the next 10 years. We are pleased that the strategy prioritises young people's wellbeing and sets out 10 key actions to make a difference. We welcome the focus on trusted adults, places to go and youth voice, but big questions remain about the how it will be delivered, at what scale and ensuring sufficient funding.
Youth strategy
Trusted adults
The Government plans to make sure 500,000 more young people have access to a trusted adult outside of their home by 2035. The strategy sets out that young people will be able to choose their trusted adult and that adults will receive training, including on safeguarding responsibilities.
The inclusion of this is important as young people told us as part of the Good Childhood Report 2025 that they needed better support from adults, as they felt that adults did not always understand their experiences or take them seriously. No young person should feel alone, and every child deserves a chosen trusted adult they can turn to.
This chosen aspect of trusted adults is hugely important - trust isn’t allocated, its earned. That is what The Children’s Society has been calling for, a few weeks ago, we wrote to the Secretary of State, Lisa Nandy MP, along with 2,500 of you to call for this. The inclusion of this in the strategy is hugely positive.
Youth strategy
But this commitment alone won’t work - it needs to go further. We need to end the postcode lottery on access to youth services and the trusted adults within these community spaces. Every young person should have access to a trusted adult, and there should be a clear definition of what a trusted adult means based on young people’s views.
Progress should also be tracked through a national wellbeing measurement. Only by embedding this in the strategy’s delivery can this be a success - in the same way trust is earned, not allocated, progress can only be assessed by young people themselves.
Young Futures Hubs
Close to £70 million has been provided, over the next 3 years, to rebuild and improve local youth services and establish a network of 50 Young Futures Hubs by March 2029. Whilst this is a welcome investment in community-based services, it falls significantly short from the manifesto pledge of £95 million a year for the Young Futures Hubs Programme - risking a continuation of a postcode lottery of support and no long-term plan for how this will be embedded in every community.
We have concerns about how this programme is progressing, and specifically its lack of focus and reduced scale from the Labour Party Manifesto commitments.
Ongoing clarity is needed on how these hubs will work in practice, including how a young person will experience these services. We know the importance of these being safe considering the holistic needs of the whole young person.
Youth strategy
Funding
For all of this to work, services need long term funding to allow relationship building with young people and continuity of provision. While the strategy includes new funding, which is greatly welcomed, it in doesn’t make up for the 73% fall in local spending on youth services in England since 2010.
In that period, more than 1,000 youth centres closed, and more than 4,500 youth worker roles were lost. A step change in funding over a sustained period is needed to build back up this level of provision. We know that youth services have a hugely positive preventative impact but without both the capital and revenue funding required, too many young people will miss out.
Measuring progress
Young people must help design and measure this strategy. It is positive to see the ambition to include young people’s voices at the heart of this strategy. The young people in the strategy’s Advisory Group highlighted that ‘the strategy will have made a difference if young people’s mental and physical health outcomes have improved and it will truly have succeeded if we can look at the next generation and say they have hope and excitement for their future’.
Right now, it’s unclear how success will be measured. We want the government to commit to a National Wellbeing Measurement to better understand young people’s wellbeing. Being able to measure the progress on this strategy through a coordinated national programme would help the government to understand where it has been achieved, what is working well and what needs more focus.
A promising start
We welcome this strategy and the attention it brings to the youth sector. Many of the commitments will go a long way towards improving young people’s wellbeing, and we hope that the government will be bolder in its delivery, scale and funding to see these ambitions achieved. We’ll keep monitoring progress and holding the Government to account to make sure young people get the changes they asked for and are enabled to share their voices on the impact of the strategy on their day-to-day life.
