Summit hailed for joining up sectors supporting young people

Delegates have hailed the Joined Up Summit for the connections it made between different sectors supporting young people.

The inaugural summit, in Birmingham, welcomed more than 500 leaders and decision-makers from the worlds of employment, social care, criminal justice, business and the Government, as well as health, education and youth work, alongside 16-25-year-olds, in a bid to build a brighter future for young people, by putting their needs first. 

The summit aimed to break down barriers between different youth sectors and promote a “new era of joined-up working that puts young people’s needs and aspirations at the centre”.

Among those in attendance was Alex Kenmure, head of partnerships at RockCorps.

RockCorps uses music and culture to inspire young people to volunteer and engage with their community, for example, offering concert tickets as a reward for volunteering.

Alex said: “I really enjoyed the Joined Up Summit. It’s a testament to the organisers as to the sort of people they brought together. Everyone I spoke there had really enjoyed it and taken an awful lot from the conversations. It’s made me think a lot about who I should be joining up with more.”

Rose Regan, co-chief executive officer of The Care Experienced Movement, hailed the summit as “fantastic”.

The Care Experienced Movement is a collective of care-experienced people working together as activists to drive the change they need.

And Rose said: “It’s been really lovely to be in a space where there’s such a wide range of people. Usually at the events I go to, it’s just social care or youth-led whereas I saw people from NHS, I saw someone from Burger King, I did not expect that.

“It’s lovely that everyone came together to try to solve a situation that is in desperate need of fixing.”

Rose praised the co-creation labs, which saw delegates encouraged to work in small groups to discuss how examples of excellent practice could be scaled through collaboration across sectors.

Rose said: “I really liked that, where we got a chance to speak to everyone and come up with ideas of how we can practically implement things in our own work.

“I am going to look closer into including young people in a wider range of work and not just the bits it’s easier to have them participate in.”

Gracie Chick helped lead one session, talking about the power of youth and creating the conditions for young people to rise, in her role as an #iwill ambassador.

The #iwill movement believes young people should be supported and empowered to make a positive difference on the issues that affect them.

Gracie said: “We were talking about Ipswich as a case study for place-based change. It was amazing to be able to talk about being a young person with big ideas and then being able to go into an environment like Ipswich, which has created these amazing conditions for ideas for young people to lead and then be able to go in there and build the relationships I needed to develop my own project.”

The 20-year-old has developed Third Dimension, which works with schools “to acknowledge, educate and equally value young people’s ‘third dimension’ – their humanity”.

Gracie said: “The summit was great. It was so nice to bump into so many people I hadn’t seen for ages. I think that kind of cross-sector part of it is as much as about the relationships you have with people as human beings, as well as on a work level.

She pledged to take the “energy” from the summit to drive her own work.

“When you’re working on your own, or you’re just keeping going on a journey, hitting brick walls a bit, then you go into a room with so many people who have such a common goal, it’s just so energising,” she said. “You go away thinking it’s so important, you have to keep going, have that absolute commitment.

And Gracie hailed the summit for its cross-sector approach.

“It’s made me think  there were so many people there from the youth sector as a whole, but education, social sector and voluntary sector, areas of the youth sector which I would never necessarily have considered as connected to what I’m doing, but it shows everyone has a perspective that’s really valuable and being in spaces with people you would never normally talk to can just give you new ideas, through engaging with a broader perspective of people.”

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/programmes

#iwill is a movement comprised of more than 1,000 organisations and 700 young #iwill Ambassadors & Champions from across the UK. They are united by a shared belief that all children and young people should be supported and empowered to make a positive difference on the issues that affect their lives, their communities, and broader society.

#iwill is empowering, challenging, independent, collaborative and inclusive – it belongs to everybody.

The #iwill movement is powered by young people and organisations. The #iwill Ambassadors and #iwill Champions, alongside organisations who sign up to the Power of Youth Charter, help ensure meaningful action is taken to support more children and young people to be active citizens.

The #iwill Partnership is made up of leaders of collective action groups working within and across sectors and nations of the UK to guide the #iwill movement. The independent #iwill Coordination Hub, hosted by Volunteering Matters and UK Youth supports the #iwill Partnership, #iwill Ambassadors and broader #iwill movement.