Making space: Meeting the needs of young women and girls through Young Futures

Young people are facing a rising tide of complex challenges. Growing up through more than a decade of austerity, the grip of social media, rising child poverty, a school absence crisis and the aftershock of a global pandemic – many young people are facing higher and more intractable needs than in recent memory. Yet these needs manifest differently across gender. Any efforts to improve young people’s lives must recognise the unique challenges and needs facing young women and girls. 

The Young Futures programme – dubbed “Sure Start for Teenagers” by Baroness Anne Longfield - whose Commission on Young Lives proposed the model in 2022  – is the government’s answer to many of these challenges, improving the way local partnerships respond to youth vulnerability and creating hubs across the country where young people can join engaging activities, connect with youth workers, and get the help they need.

But as the government aims to open 50 hubs across the UK by the end of the parliament, we want to see girls and young women at the forefront in the development of this initiative. 

In collaboration with Agenda Alliance and Centre for Young Lives, IPPR has spoken to several organisations who will be primarily responsible for delivering Young Futures Hubs in community settings to explore how we can ensure girls and young women benefit from this new initiative. Their voices are represented throughout this blog. 

In these conversations we’ve heard how too often girls describe youth spaces as male-dominated and not adapted to their needs. This is unsurprising as girls aged 16–17 are the least likely age group to access youth provision according to new research published this year by UK Youth.

While boys on average have a greater likelihood of being both a victim and a perpetrator, girls are at much greater risk of sexual violence and intimate partner violence as evidenced by the Youth Endowment Fund in 2024. Girls and young women experience some of the highest and rising rates of exploitation, digital harms, family and peer on peer abuse as found by Digital Poverty Alliance this year. Yet their needs are often invisible in interventions to prevent gang and exploitation related interventions. This leads to missed safeguarding opportunities and poor data collection which shapes the services and interventions available.

It’s no surprise then that girls and young women’s happiness has been steadily declining and is now at an all-time low according to Girlguiding last year. The NHS has stated that Common Mental Disorders (CMD) – such as anxiety or depression are around three times more common in women aged 16-24 when compared to men of the same age. With a core ambition of addressing youth mental health need, it is vital that young futures hubs are reaching and engaging girls and young women in mental distress.

We must learn from the experts who are doing this work well, rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel. The Centre for Young Lives has recently developed ambitious principles for good practice in delivering Young Futures Hubs, and these principles can guide government and delivery partners to ensure vulnerable women and girls are prioritised on the ground. They are built from the work of the Commission on Young Lives, which highlighted the importance of specialist, targeted work with girls and young women at risk. 

Key principles and mechanisms for good practice

• Single front door with integrated local system: Young Futures Hubs must be visible, trusted, and embedded in communities, offering consistent support and opportunities through a coordinated local system.
• Voices of young people and families are heard: Hubs must co-produce services with young people and families, responding to their needs rather than imposing services.
• Embedded in communities and reach those most in need: pulling on the strengths of communities and reflecting the needs of the local population.
• High-quality services: Hubs must provide meaningful, impactful, and inclusive opportunities that prevent harm, support wellbeing, and transform life chances.
• Capacity to begin to meet the needs of girls and young women.

Good practice in engaging with girls and young women also needs to include: 

1. Preventing harm: establishing clear processes on how to intervene where harm may be presenting itself and continually reviewing processes in collaboration with girls and young women.
2. Responding to harm: delivering specialist trauma-informed support and gender-specific crime prevention work, combined with expertise regarding girls and young women's mental health needs.
3. Creating safe spaces: creating environments where girls and young women are safe from harm (including from their peers).
4. Partnership working with girls and young women’s services: Building capacity within the Hub to recognise and respond to need through meaningful partnership with local specialist services. The Young Futures hubs are an exciting chance to do something different. But unless supporting girls is one of its key priorities, youth services will continue to have challenges engaging young women and risk establishing male-dominated environments. To prevent this, Young Futures must be designed in collaboration with girls and young women putting their needs at the core of decisions and actions across this new initiative, which has the potential to transform their lives.

This blog post was co-authored by IPPR, Centre for Young Lives and Agenda Alliance.

Efua Poku Amanfo is a research fellow at IPPR.

Connie Muttock is head of policy at the Centre for Young Lives.

Maria Brul is campaigns and influencing manager at Agenda Alliance.

Tara Harris is policy and public affairs officer at Agenda Alliance.