The Voice of Young People study aimed to gain insights into the challenges young people aged 12-29 face. The research involved 388 respondents from across the UK who participated in an online, anonymous questionnaire in late February 2023.
The findings were then reviewed and discussed by Sport 4 Life’s Youth Panel in May 2023, who provided additional context and qualitative information.
Video transcript
I really don’t think that there’s enough services for young people at the moment.
I feel like there’s not a lot of things young people can do and I feel like it causes problems, like crime and stuff like that, because there’s no outlet.
Finding support is as hard as it is. I had to go to a third party company, but then they sent me to another one. It takes a long time. And then sometimes I don’t even answer your questions or just leave you on a cliffhanger.
Sport 4 Life has been a great opportunity to get involved with, and it’s a really nice thing to see that there are certain services there. But, I really think we are kind of severely lacking both in funding and actual youth services themselves.
I think that the government is letting down a lot of people at the moment.
I think the lack of funding is having quite a detrimental effect on the youth.
Yeah, I feel incredibly angry about that, to be honest.
If we cut the funding, there’s less places for them to go. There’s less places for them to experience good things and feel better about just life in general. Everyone’s struggling at the moment and any kind of positive outlet is what people need.
It’s just getting to that point we need that support for young people. It is imperative for the future.
There’s more and more young people who are getting picked up by gang crime, falling in with kind of people that they might not be in touch with if they had better support.
I think it’s having an impact both on their lives generally, and also on their mental health, their general wellbeing, their kind of access to opportunities all around.
People are going to become very desperate, struggle just to live a day-to-day life.
Getting food and stuff like that, it’s becoming a lot more complicated and expensive.
New funding for youth services will help people have a new outlet, learn new skills, new life skills. They’ll improve their confidence. They’ll try things that they’ve never done before. They’ll network better and meet new people and possibly new friends.
New funding for youth services could have untold positive effects. It can allow better outreach to the youth, it can allow better kind of community activities to get them more present in their communities, to help them feeling more fulfilled, to helping them find stability in their wellbeing.
It gives them a good outlet as well. It’s a good way for them to have a positive experience rather than do something that’s more negative.
It keeps them away from bad situations. It gives them new skills and it gives them more confidence to go out there and maybe try new things, apply for new jobs and such.