Riots, medals, mental health and jobs

A spotlight is shining on British young people right now. Max Rutherford, Director of Programmes, Policy and Public Affairs on what People’s Health Trust is planning to do to support young people who are furthest from good work.

Over the last two weeks, a bright light has been shone on British young people.

Some of this highlighted stark contrasts. While many teenagers celebrated top grades in their GCSEs, tens of thousands finished school with few or no qualifications at all. On the same evenings that some took part in racist and violent riots (or helped with the subsequent clean up) other British young people stood on medal podiums at the Paris Olympics.

As well as capturing these moments in time, the spotlight also highlighted some appalling longer-term trends. The Children’s Society reported that 15 year olds in the UK are most likely in Europe to say they have low life satisfaction - described by the charity as a ‘happiness recession’ for teenagers.

The numbers of young people referred to mental health services for anxiety and depression is reported to have doubled since before Covid, reaching an average of 500 per day, totalling well over 200,000 over the last year.

The rise in these referrals is described as ‘shocking’ and ‘staggering’ by doctors and NHS officials, and further exposes the urgent need to resource children’s mental health services. Yet for us at People’s Health Trust, it is sadly not surprising. We’ve heard for years from our funded partners about the exponential rise of poor mental health in the communities we work with, those at the sharpest end of health inequality, poverty, discrimination and marginalisation. Specifically, communities have been sounding the alarm bell about young people’s health and wellbeing, including their sense of purpose.

The Trust’s work began in 2011, just as the austerity ideology was taking root, and when young people hitting 15 today were babies. Now, in 2024, they are approaching their transition to adulthood. In the 13 years since the Trust’s started work, we’ve funded over 3,500 organisations, with many hundreds working with children and young people. They are all at the front line of health equity, seeking to protect local people in the face of decimated services, bind together communities through projects that create stronger links and ties, and establish stewardship of assets that foster community control. Independent evaluations of our programmes showed these factors all proved to be important to supporting people’s health, while in the wake of austerity, the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, levels of self-reported good health have declined.

The latest statistics on young people’s mental health and life satisfaction show in the starkest terms the consequences of more than a decade of swingeing cuts to the fabric of societal safety net. Long gone is Sure Start, while it seems as if youth clubs have closed as fast as food banks have opened. More children than ever are absent from school. More are living in temporary accommodation. Fewer are accessing good work on leaving education. Given all of this, the government’s ambition for a new Young Futures Unit to tackle rising mental health issues among young people, which will include a national network of young futures hubs to bring local services together, must be realised. It’s also essential that young people furthest from good work are a major focus for the government’s newly announced Skills England.

Incrementally over this time, what was once clearly the domain of the state and a no-go area for philanthropy is now core business for many funders - children’s centres, libraries, warm rooms, food security, mental health support, advice services, bereavement support, employment support. While the Trust has supported some of these kinds of activities at a local level as part of our previous programmes that sought to increase local connections and collective control, our work in the last year has focused more explicitly on system change and the pursuit of health justice - including Homes for Health, a major programme and campaign to improve housing conditions and health for tenants effectively paying rent to live in destitution.

Now, following input and guidance from our network of funded partners and the co-creation of our Community manifesto for health justice earlier this year, we’re turning our attention to the young people of today, through a new fund aiming to demonstrate the health benefits of good work for those young people furthest from employment – those who maybe didn’t get the GCSE grades they needed or those who have their heart set on a vocational route to work but don’t have access to one

We know for many, that route is incredibly hard to navigate and leaves too many by the wayside. And as the ONS reported in August, the number of 16-24 year olds who are economically inactive (not in or looking for work) increased by 245,000 compared to the previous year, to 2.99 million, close to the highest recorded level since records began in 1992.

Starting in January 2025, the fund will support a network of community-led organisations to work in collaboration with young people, employers, local authorities, and health systems to demonstrate the economic and health benefits of securing good work for young people who may otherwise be headed for unemployment, low-paid, poor quality and insecure work, and ultimately poor health.

This work will be evaluated by the School for Public Health Research as part of a major programme of academic in-kind partnership with the Trust. We will use the evaluation data and the experiences of those on the ground to influence decision-makers to help evaluate the best routes to good employment for young people and employers alike.

If you’d like to partner with us in co-funding this vital work, we’d love to hear from you. Find out more here, and contact us at piers.atherton@peopleshealthtrust.org.uk