Some conditions cannot be changed from the frontline.
Young people, professionals, organisations and places can do extraordinary work within the systems around them. But there are limits to what better practice, stronger partnerships or local innovation can change when the conditions shaping them are set nationally.
Responsibilities can remain fragmented. Access can depend on where a young person lives. Different parts of government can shape adolescence without a shared developmental framework connecting their decisions. And expectations placed on local systems can exceed the infrastructure available to meet them.
National Statutory Change asks what needs to change in the conditions themselves.
From shared responsibility to a shared settlement
Public responsibility for adolescence already exists.
Across education, local government, children's services, equality, safeguarding and other parts of public life, institutions already hold responsibilities that shape young people's development. What is missing is not responsibility altogether, but a sufficiently coherent settlement connecting those responsibilities around a shared understanding of adolescence and youth development.
YOUTHOOD believes the UK needs a new settlement for youth development.
Not a new service sitting alongside existing services. Not a single profession becoming responsible for adolescence. And not a national model that assumes youth development should look identical in every community.
A new settlement should create greater clarity about the responsibility society already shares for adolescence, strengthen the connections between national policy and local experience, and establish the infrastructure through which youth development can be understood, supported and held accountable over the long term.
Towards a New Settlement for Youth Development
Our national work is organised through Towards a New Settlement for Youth Development, YOUTHOOD's long-term agenda for strengthening the national foundations surrounding adolescence. At its centre is our Reform Agenda, setting out ten areas in which we believe national structures, expectations and responsibilities should develop.
The priorities are intended to work together. Some concern national leadership and accountability. Others address access, professional and institutional practice, young people's influence, transitions or the infrastructure connecting national ambition with local delivery.
Together, they ask a bigger question:
What would it take for youth development to become a recognised and coherently supported responsibility across national life?
Grounded in YOUTHOOD’s Wider Delivery Work.
The Agenda is informed by YOUTHOOD’s connected policy and practice architecture.
Our frameworks do not sit separately from our policy position. They provide the developmental reasoning, participation methods and practice tools through which the Agenda can grow.
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Establishes why we exist, and why youth development should be treated as a serious social, institutional and public policy responsibility.
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Provides the developmental, ethical and rights-based architecture underpinning the Agenda, including the Youth-Facing Landscape, Turning Points, Natural Equity and shared developmental outcomes.
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Provides the journey through which young people’s insight should reach decision-makers, shape decisions and receive visible feedback and accountability.
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Provides an intergenerational method through which lived adolescent and professional insight can develop separately before converging around shared understanding and recommendations.
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Provides practical expectations for reducing barriers created by travel, location, cost, short notice and inaccessible opportunity design.
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Develop individual priorities in greater depth and respond to emerging national policy conversations.
The Ten Priorities for National Youth Development Reform
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01: Establish an Office for Youth Development within the Cabinet
Create permanent national stewardship for youth-impacting policy across government, with clear responsibility for coordination, scrutiny, accountability and continuity.
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02: Create a Protected Developmental Enrichment Curriculum
Guarantee protected time within the school week for personal, physical, civic and skills development alongside academic education.
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03: Create a Cross-Government Youth Development Duty
Require departments to examine children’s rights and developmental effects, ensuring that significant policy and legislative decisions account for their combined impact.
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04: Establish a National Standard for the Insight-to-Influence Journey
Ensure that youth participation travels beyond consultation towards visible influence, meaningful feedback, institutional accountability and a clear understanding of tangible impact.
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05: Make Intergenerational Policy Development Standard Practice
Bring lived adolescent and professional insight together through structured reflection, enabling stronger shared understanding, more grounded policy recommendations.
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06: Appoint Regional Strategic Directors for Youth Development
Create named regional leadership with the authority to coordinate policy, align resources and lead regional youth-development coalitions.
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07: Guarantee Equitable Access to Youth Opportunity
Remove avoidable barriers created by travel, location, cost and timing, ensuring that opportunities can be discovered and meaningfully accessed by youth from different circumstances.
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08: Establish a National Turning Points and Transitions Guarantee
Protect continuity, relationships and responsibility when young people move between services, systems and developmental stages.
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09: Establish a Rights-Based Joined-Up Youth Development Standard
Place the UNCRC and shared developmental practice at the centre of how youth-facing institutions work together, make decisions and uphold young people’s rights.
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10: Build on Youth Matters Through a Biennial State of Youth Development Report
Create a shared outcomes framework and a meaningful two-year cycle of national evidence, scrutiny and public accountability.
One Connected Policy System
The ten priorities should not be presented as isolated demands.
Together, they create a connected policy system:
National leadership: Office for Youth Development
Developmental entitlement: Protected Developmental Enrichment Curriculum
Policy responsibility: Cross-Government Youth Development Duty
Youth influence: Insight-to-Influence Standard
Collaborative policy design: Intergenerational Policy Development
Regional coordination: Regional Strategic Directors
Equitable opportunity: GET THERE-informed access reform
Continuity: Turning Points and Transitions Guarantee
Institutional capability: Rights-Based Joined-Up Standard
Public accountability: Biennial State of Youth Development Report
The Agenda connects who leads, how policy is developed, how young people influence it, how institutions deliver it and how progress is measured.
A Stable Agenda That Grows in Depth
The ten priorities represent YOUTHOOD’s enduring policy position.
They are designed to remain consistent while growing through:
research and developmental evidence;
lived adolescent and professional insight;
Dual-LENS delivery;
national and regional policy engagement;
consultation responses;
campaign learning;
emerging position papers;
collaboration with practitioners, institutions and decision-makers.
This means YOUTHOOD can respond to political and policy change without repeatedly replacing its central position.
New evidence can deepen a priority. New position papers can develop its mechanisms. New partnerships can test its implementation. The Agenda itself continues to provide the long-term direction.
Work With The Agenda
YOUTHOOD invites young people, professionals, researchers, youth-facing institutions, regional leaders and national decision-makers to engage with the Agenda.
Engagement may include:
contributing evidence;
discussing implementation;
testing one of the priorities;
commissioning YOUTHOOD learning or facilitation;
supporting a policy position;
developing regional application;
inviting YOUTHOOD into policy and practice conversations.
YOUTHOOD’s Policy Work is Always Evolving.
We make every effort to engage with policymakers, practitioners, researchers, community leaders, and young people to strengthen how systems connect and how development is understood across sectors.
Interested in informing our policy work and wider delivery strategy? Join our Mission Groundwork network of professionals and young people contributing to our mission.
