Youth Strategy Implementation and Implications for the West Midlands
The meeting held on the 20th January 2026, focused on the new government youth strategy and its implications for the West Midlands region, with presentations from various organisations discussing funding, infrastructure, and service delivery challenges. Participants explored regional perspectives on youth voice, local authority roles, and partnership working, with particular attention to the Rigby Foundation's Inspiring Futures programme and Solihull Council's youth service initiatives. The discussions highlighted the need for better coordination of youth services, longer-term funding commitments, and stronger infrastructure support, staffing and participation of young people to effectively implement the 10-year strategy across the region.
Government’s National Youth Strategy
Rose Mansfield, Local Policy and Partnerships Manager, presented the Government’s Youth Strategy. The 10-Year National Youth Strategy signals a renewed focus on young people after more than a decade of fragmented policy and declining local provision. The strategy is framed around three “radical shifts”: from national to local leadership, from fragmented services to collaboration, and from young people being excluded to genuinely empowered.
At its heart is a vision that every young person should have someone to turn to, somewhere to go, and a voice that counts. The strategy is structured around three core themes: People Who Care, Places to Go and Things to Do, and Seen and Heard. These ambitions are backed by a mixture of new funding streams, repurposed investment (including dormant assets), and policy reforms spanning education, health, policing, transport and employment.
The scale of the proposals is striking. Commitments include investment in youth workers and youth infrastructure, the expansion of Young Futures Hubs, new funding for enrichment activities in schools, refurbished youth spaces, improved transport access, and a stronger focus on mental health and wellbeing. The strategy also promises to strengthen youth voice, including lowering the voting age to 16 and introducing new mechanisms to hold government to account.
However, behind the headline figures, the discussion highlighted some important tensions and risks. Much of the funding is short-term or centrally directed, raising concerns about whether it will reach the neighbourhood-based, relational youth work that funders and practitioners know delivers long-term impact. Though additional funding is significant, the majority is planned for capital investment with a strong emphasis on hubs, buildings and programmes, which risks side lining community-led organisations that work with young people who are least likely to engage with formal services.
A copy of the presentation can be found here.
Youth Infrastructure and Regional Support
Ruth Rickman-Williams, Chief Executive, Youth Focus WM, highlighted their role as a regional infrastructure body supporting youth work across 14 local authorities. She discussed the challenges of funding infrastructure compared to direct delivery programmes, noting their limited funding of £20,000 annually from DCMS. Ruth painted a picture of a highly uneven youth landscape across the West Midlands. Fourteen local authorities operate with very different models of support – ranging from directly delivered council services to commissioned voluntary sector provision, and in some cases, very limited local infrastructure at all. This fragmentation matters, because strong local infrastructure is the backbone of a sustainable youth offer.
Funding remains the most pressing challenge. The presentation highlighted how youth infrastructure is rarely seen as a priority, despite its critical role in coordination, workforce development and youth voice. Some voluntary sector infrastructure bodies have been forced into direct delivery simply to survive, placing them in competition with the very organisations they are meant to support. Local Youth Partnerships – a central mechanism for shaping a coherent youth offer – are operating with very limited funding, even as expectations of them increase.
Against this backdrop, the Government’s Local Youth Transformation Pilots and Young Futures Hubs were welcomed as opportunities, but with caveats. Early pilots in Shropshire and Stoke-on-Trent show promise, focusing on safe spaces, skills pathways, mental health, youth participation and system leadership. Birmingham is set to join the next phase, but its scale and complexity mean that place-based, neighbourhood-level approaches will be essential.
Ruth also covered the local youth transformation pilots in Shropshire and Stoke, as well as the Jung Futures Hubs with 8 early adopters in Birmingham. The new National Youth Strategy itself is grounded in extensive youth voice, with over 14,000 young people consulted nationally, including many from the West Midlands. The themes they raised – belonging, safety, skills, wellbeing, and being heard – closely mirror what practitioners have long observed. Crucially, the presentation underlined that disadvantage amplifies challenge: young people from lower-income backgrounds and those with SEND face compounded barriers across every aspect of their lives.
One of the strongest messages from YFWM was the importance of long-term funding and strong infrastructure. While new programmes and capital investment attract attention, it is sustained revenue funding, skilled youth workers and effective coordination that enable lasting impact. The region already has multiple youth voice mechanisms – youth councils, Youth Parliament members, combined authority youth boards – but these remain under-resourced and fragile.
For funders, the Government’s strategy opens a window for renewed focus on young people, but without stable local infrastructure, prevention-focused funding and genuine youth voice, its ambitions risk falling short. Independent funders have a critical role to play in backing what statutory funding often cannot: long-term capacity, trusted relationships, and the systems that allow young people not just to be consulted, but to shape decisions that affect their futures.
A copy of the presentation can be found here.
Youth Services Challenges in Solihull
Charly Slater, Youth Offer Development Lead in Solihull, discussed the challenges and progress of youth services in the Borough. She highlighted that Solihull lacks a statutory youth team and relies heavily on the voluntary and community sectors. Charly’s presentation of the Government’s new 10-year National Youth Strategy covered what it could mean in practice for local authorities — and where its ambitions risk falling short without sustained investment and partnership.
On the positive side, the Strategy was welcomed for its clear shift towards local, collaborative and empowered approaches. It brings long-overdue visibility to youth services, reinforces the importance of safe spaces and trusted adults, and recognises that youth outcomes cut across multiple policy areas — from transport and education to health and employment. For local authorities like Solihull, this national spotlight gives legitimacy to long-standing concerns about gaps in youth provision and the uneven experiences of young people across the country. However, the presentation did not shy away from the structural weaknesses in the current proposals. Chief among these is the absence of a ring-fenced budget for local authorities. While youth has been added into broader children’s services funding, this comes at a time of intense pressure from social care reforms and ongoing funding cuts. There is also no clear national outcome framework or consequence for councils that fail to meet their statutory youth duty, raising the risk that delivery will continue to depend on local leadership and resources — reinforcing a postcode lottery. This unevenness is already visible. National initiatives such as Youth Hubs and Transformation Pilots are not evenly distributed, and Solihull itself is not currently eligible for these programmes. Where pilots do exist, they offer promise, but without consistent infrastructure funding, their long-term impact remains uncertain. The presentation highlighted a small number of funding opportunities emerging from national announcements, including Pride of Place funding for Chelmsley Wood East (£2 million a year for 10 years), which must be community-led and independently chaired. Other initiatives, such as the Youth Trailblazer and Jobs Guarantee, require competitive applications, with no certainty of success — again favouring areas with stronger bid-writing capacity and infrastructure.
Against this backdrop, Solihull MBC outlined its own youth offer, grounded in asset-based community youth development. The focus is on neighbourhoods with the greatest need, including North Solihull, Shirley and Blythe wards, alongside efforts to maximise existing funding streams such as the Holiday Activities Fund and local resilience funding. Central to this approach is collaboration with voluntary, faith and community organisations, infrastructure bodies, and grant funders — not just as delivery partners, but as co-investors in quality, innovation and youth voice.
For funders in the West Midlands, the message was clear: without long-term revenue funding, strong local infrastructure and shared data on need, its impact will be limited.
A copy of the presentation can be found here.
Rigby Foundation Youth Strategy Update
Jemima Waltho, Partnerships Manager, Rigby Foundation presented their perspective on a youth strategy funding, highlighting their focus on West Midlands-based initiatives supporting young people aged 11-25 through education, employability, and wellbeing programmes. The Foundation, which is part of the Rigby Group, has invested £3 million in their Inspiring Futures programme, which pairs 10 education partners with 9 charity partners to provide services to schools, with a particular emphasis on post-16 destinations, academic attainment, and mental health support. Importantly, schools and colleges select from a menu of support, allowing provision to be tailored to local need rather than imposed from above.
The presentation offered a compelling illustration of what sustained, place-based funding can deliver in a region where the challenges facing young people are deep and persistent. After five months of implementation, the programme has reached 1,373 young people, exceeding its initial target of 1,000, with NFER conducting an evaluation to assess outcomes and outputs rather than impact.
What stood out in the presentation was the Foundation’s emphasis on how funding is delivered, not just what is funded. Inspiring Futures is explicitly strengths-based, collaborative and place-based, recognising the intersecting risk factors that shape young people’s lives: poor mental health, lack of role models, limited transport, unstable housing, language barriers and weak parental engagement. These are not issues that can be solved through single projects or short funding cycles.
The programme’s approach to evaluation and learning is equally significant. Independent evaluation partners, including the National Foundation for Educational Research, work alongside delivery partners to develop a shared theory of change, gather both qualitative and quantitative evidence, and use learning in real time to improve delivery. Regular feedback loops, partner meetings and youth ambassador involvement ensure that learning is not an afterthought, but a core part of the programme’s design. Early signs are promising, with evidence of improved wellbeing, attendance, self-belief, skills development and understanding of post-school options. Schools and charities report stronger partnership working, while young people show more positive beliefs about their futures and clearer pathways beyond education.
For funders in the West Midlands, a key message, in the context of the Government’s new 10-year National Youth Strategy, programmes like Inspiring Futures show the value of long-term commitment, flexible funding and investment in relationships and infrastructure, not just delivery. If the ambition of the national strategy is to be realised locally, independent funders have a vital role in backing prevention, collaboration and learning — and in supporting the conditions that allow young people to thrive well beyond the lifespan of any single programme.
A copy of the presentation can be found here.
Youth Funding and Infrastructure Planning in the WM
The meeting focused on the outcome of breakout discussions about youth funding and infrastructure in the West Midlands region. Participants highlighted that while funding is primarily directed towards capital projects, there is a critical need to invest in staffing and people to make these initiatives successful. The group emphasized the importance of conducting needs assessments and gap analysis to better understand funding requirements and collaborate on funding approaches. They also discussed the potential for funders to support smaller organizations by providing grant application assistance and sharing resources, while noting the importance of place-based leadership and avoiding mission drift.
Next steps
Potential role and task for WMFN – consider facilitating mapping exercises to identify needs, gaps and existing provision in the region for more strategic and collaborative funding approaches.
Potential follow-up action for WMFN – consider collating and sharing information about different funder approaches to applications and reporting, to help organisations understand and access funding more effectively
Potential follow-up for local authorities – consider sharing prospectus/lists of quality-checked organisations working in the area of youth services to support collaboration and reduce duplication in due diligence.
For funders to consider exploring how to support smaller organisations that have reach into particular communities that have a profile of disadvantaged youth that require capacity building for grant applications, reporting and collaboration.
National Youth Agency could share information about the Youth Sector Census and related survey work for wider understanding and potential group action.
