Nobody budgets for 4pm: A thought piece by our Chair

Our Chair, Liam McDaid-Jones, has written a thought piece responding to the Children’s Commissioner’s Childhood Lottery report.

The findings are stark. In four English councils, the amount spent on youth services per teenager is £0. The median is £92. And nobody counts how many youth workers there are in England at all.

Closer to home, Salford, Oldham and Tameside are among the twenty hardest places in England to be a child. Trafford is among the twenty least hard. Same city region, different lotteries.

For almost twenty years, GMYN has worked with the young people the system finds hardest to reach: care experienced young people, separated young people and unaccompanied asylum seeking children, disabled and neurodivergent young people, and young people not yet ready for work. Our programmes across Greater Manchester span work readiness, youth voice and creative wellbeing, grounded in trauma-informed, strengths-based practice. And through Youth Alliance GM, we lead the See Youth Work Differently campaign, because the first step to funding youth work properly is seeing it properly.

Next year we turn 20.

Liam’s piece sets out what we are asking of national government, the Mayor and the ten councils, fellow charities, business, and schools as we head into that year. The short version: build on twenty years, do not build around them.

Download the full piece here.