John Barneby
Chief Executive, Oasis Community LearningJohn Barneby, Chief Executive of Oasis Community Learning, emphasises that Labour’s new Youth Hubs initiatives must embrace a community-led, holistic approach to succeed. This involves engaging local residents in decision-making and creating places that foster a sense of belonging, ensuring lasting and positive impacts.
Labour Youth Hubs: Don’t Exclude the Village
Given the list of issues needing to be tackled in the first hundred days of this new Labour administration, it was heartening to see one of their earliest policy announcements being the launch of their Youth Hubs – dubbed ‘Sure Start 2.0’ for teenagers – backed by £95 million in investment. Crucial now is how this commitment is translated into action.
Focusing on Teen Violence: a Broader, Bolder Vision
Unlike the original Sure Starts, which focused on supporting families during a child’s early years, these youth hubs are primarily about reducing teen violence. This is vital, but to have real impact on the lives of young people, we need to think bigger, broader, and bolder. These hubs need to be about community. They need to be led by the community, to support and empower those they are set up to serve, rather than having one-size-fits-all products imposed from Whitehall.
In doing so, they have the chance to not only bring down violent crime but also to have other positive impacts, including reducing the number of young people not in employment, education, and training, as well as helping our children to have a sense of purpose and navigate who they are and who they are becoming.
This is what we have done at Oasis for the past forty years – build community. We started with supported housing and then expanded into youth work, and for the last two decades, we have implemented our holistic community hubs, churches, and academies. In every part of the country, our work is different, but we have one consistent approach – it is about what communities want and need.
Where possible, our academies partner with Oasis ‘hubs’, which offer everything from debt and immigration advice to food banks to Zumba lessons, all based on local wants and needs. In south London, our work includes a farm for young people at risk of exclusion from school, and in the northwest, our work includes our ‘Navigators’ working in A&E departments with young people who have been victims of violence. We know that a young person cannot be successful in the classroom if we don’t support them and their families with what happens beyond the school gates.
The Power of Collaboration: a Holistic Approach
What we learned very quickly is that no institution, organisation, group, or individual will have as much success alone as they will when there is an integrated and holistic approach that brings in skilled and passionate partners from wherever the expertise and passion lies.
Creating Places of Belonging: a Village Approach
It takes a village to raise a child, but too often, we give the responsibility to groups of well-meaning professionals and leave the village out. Co-location of services won’t be enough. If Labour are to be successful in their ambition with youth hubs, they will need to create places of belonging, where young people are known and cared for and where they and their families are involved in the decisions that impact them. They will only truly have success reducing violent crime and improving the lives of young people and their families if they do this with local communities, not just to them.
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