Young people in the UK are facing some of the most challenging terrain on their journey into adulthood in modern times. The cost of living has soared and the aftershocks of a global pandemic continue to reverberate, all in a rapidly changing and uncertain world. For young people at the sharp end of social and economic inequalities, the climb is even steeper.
Too many young people are being failed. Endless waiting lists. Underfunded services. A shrinking youth ecosystem. Left to navigate the hardest years of their lives alone.
For 50 years, Youth Access has stood with and for young people, championing a network of community-based services that offer a cohesive range of accessible support under one roof. Whether it’s counselling, youth work, housing advice, or support with employment or sexual health, these hubs are embedded in communities and designed with young people, to help them find their footing before crisis hits.
There is now growing interest in this model, and rightly so. Research shows that these hubs are not only effective, they’re more likely to reach underserved young people who fall through the cracks of mainstream services. They’re what young people want - welcoming, local, youth-friendly spaces where they don’t need a referral or a diagnosis to get help.
Where they exist, these vital services are held together with short-term funding and fragmented commissioning that fails to match the scale of need. Elsewhere, youth workers regularly describe the challenge of meeting diverse, intersecting needs in under-resourced systems.
So, we asked ourselves: how can we support and scale what young people tell us is already working? How can we help services meet rising demand without compromising quality or mission? How can we make it easier for funders and commissioners to recognise and invest in effective, youth-centred provision?
Our answer: the Youth Access Quality and Improvement Programme.
This is not another top-down initiative. It is a sector-led, co-designed effort to celebrate, support, and grow high-quality youth advice and counselling services that are rooted in youth work values.
This Quality Framework is for all young people who deserve and have the right to high-quality support in their local community. This Quality Framework is for existing hubs, aspiring hubs, commissioners, funders and policymakers.
Developing the Quality Framework
The Youth Access Quality Framework is a shared guide that sets out how a good hub works with young people. It includes areas of focus, examples, and methods for measuring whether those areas are being delivered effectively.
Over the last twelve weeks, we developed this Quality Framework alongside young people, and with the people who will use it in mind, making it useable and meaningful rather than theoretical. We used a mix of approaches to make sure that the framework is evidenced-based and connected to real service delivery and young people’s voices.
Once finalised, the framework can be used in many different ways, such as:
- Helping hubs show what they do and how they work with young people
- Supporting hubs to review and improve their own practice to better meet young people’s needs
- Benchmarking progress and demonstrating quality
- Supporting funding bids and contracts
- Informing training and development
- Guiding services who want to become more “hub-like”
- Giving policymakers and funders a clear, trusted tool to guide decisions
- Providing a better national picture of these services
The framework includes 17 areas of focus arranged into three categories: Principles, Foundations, and Services.
- Principles describe the ethos, values, and relationships that underpin good hub practice.
- Foundations cover the operational and organisational elements that make hubs safe, effective, and sustainable.
- Services describe the specific supports hubs offer (such as counselling, youth work, and advice) and how these are delivered to meet young people’s needs.
Each area of focus defines an aspect of good quality and suggests a few ways that it can be measured. Much more detail and a list of all quality measures are available in the full Quality Framework document.
This stage of the project is about testing the content of the framework to make sure it reflects the reality of hub work and the needs of young people.
To achieve this, we’re seeking feedback from services, policymakers, funders and commissioners and people that share our mission. Your responses will be central to refining the Quality Framework to make it more practical, relevant and meaningful.
We are also seeking insight from young people aged 16-25 who are supported by our member services or other youth organisations. If you would like young people you are working with to be involved, please contact [email protected].
Consultation now closed
The public consultation is now closed. Sign up to our LinkedIn newsletter to keep up to date on developments.
