The Government’s commitment to roll out Young Futures hubs to deliver open access mental health support to children and young people in local communities provides a unique opportunity to truly integrate and invest in early intervention for children and young people.
Hubs of this kind are not new. For many years, co-located services have demonstrated their effectiveness in providing holistic support for children, young people and families. Youth, Information, Advice and Counselling Services (YIACS), otherwise known as ‘early support hubs’, already offer flexible, community-based advice and mental health support to children and young people aged up to 25, on a self-referral basis.
The Fund the Hubs campaign group has long been calling for a national network of early support hubs to ensure that children and young people receive timely mental health and wellbeing support. There are over 60 of these hubs across the country, but they are not yet universally available in every community.
The Government does not need to re-invent the wheel. The aims of Young Futures hubs align closely with the services that many pre-existing early support hubs are providing to young people. The Young Futures hubs policy represents a timely opportunity to consolidate and build upon the existing network of open access, early support hubs operating around the country.
Through establishing sustainable funding for existing hubs, alongside the development of new hubs in areas currently underserved, the Government can ensure that every young person has access to a trusted, welcoming support hub within their local community.
Open the blueprint for Young Futures hubs
In this blueprint, we set out a vision for Young Futures hubs:
- Young Futures hubs are co-created with young people to ensure successful engagement and impact. Young people should be involved in all stages of service development and delivery at both a national and local level.
- Hubs are designed and delivered against the values and principles set out in the Youth Access ‘YIACS’ model.
- Hubs are centred on mental health and wellbeing as the core service offer and cater for young people from 10-25 to cover the whole of this crucial transitional period in a young person’s life.
- Young Futures hubs build on, and integrate with, existing youth support infrastructure and expertise within local areas.
- We therefore call on the Government to set out a roadmap to deliver a hub in every local authority area, sufficiently resourced to offer accessible outreach provision beyond the physical hub, with the aim to have achieved 70% coverage within the next five years and 100% by the end of 2035. To achieve this, the Government should:
- Use the upcoming Spending Review to commit to a multi-year funding package for the roll out of Young Futures hubs. We estimate that £169-210 million per year is required to roll out a hub in every local area, with a further £74m to £121m needed for capital and set up costs.
- Carry out a comprehensive, cross-government consultation on delivering open access support for children and young people. This should include meaningful engagement with existing service providers, as well as establishing a ‘national design panel’ to co-design these services with young people.
- Take a cross-departmental approach throughout the development of the Young Futures programme, ensuring that it aligns with long-term, cross-departmental strategies such as the Youth Strategy, the Child Poverty Strategy, and the 10-year Health Plan.
- Develop joint commissioning guidance for local areas on implementing Young Futures hubs. This should include a mandated level of funding for hub services to ensure they are adequately resourced.
- Work with existing hub providers to design a clear and consistent outcomes framework that captures both quantitative and qualitative data.
- Set out a workforce development plan to support the roll-out of hubs.
- Put in place a mechanism to capture and share learning and quality practice from hubs to support continuous development.