The link between the youth mental health crisis, gang culture, and youth violence is uncontested. It’s time for young people to drive solutions, says Helen Goulden OBE, CEO of The Young Foundation.
A Narrative of Blame
We’re told young people are a problem. Scroll through your socials, read the news, switch on your TV, and this is a narrative you’ll hear in many forms and from many (adult) voices.
Because of this – and sometimes, too, because of our personal experiences – we know there’s a need to rethink youth policy and engagement. Yet both have been discussed in Westminster and Whitehall, and by policymakers across the country, for many years – seemingly to little avail.
Perhaps that can change. Just last week, the Prime Minister described key areas of concern as “young men in their bedrooms accessing all manner of material online […] on mainstream social media,” “children who have stopped going to school,” “young people who have opted out of work or education,” and people “retreating into parallel lives.”
These reflections came in the wake of the horrific Stockport murders – an incident that highlights a real and urgent pressure to revise our terror laws, and one that delivers a shocking indictment of multiple services and policies.
It’s important to make a distinction between these murders and a broader, ongoing culture of youth-on-youth violence, but we must not shy away from addressing either. Nor can we underestimate the broad set of challenges and societal conditions that continue to allow violence to happen in our communities – including among our young people.
Youth Violence in Numbers
In fact, young people in the UK feel and see this in alarming numbers and with frightening regularity. A 2024 survey of 10,000 13- to 17-year-olds in England and Wales found that one in five had been a victim of violence within the previous year, and a 2023 survey of 7,500 children found that one in four had either been a victim or a perpetrator of violence.
It cannot be true that a quarter of our young people are predisposed to this or have carbon-copy life experiences; therefore, the root causes of youth violence – as the youth-led Peer Action Collective programme (PAC) explores – must be varied and complex. These causes include all the things Starmer referenced: a lack of safe spaces, a dearth of employment opportunities, a desperate need for greater support in schools and with our school systems, and a lack of genuine understanding of young people’s daily experiences and circumstances.
Mental Health: A Key Issue
Yet 4,600 young people surveyed by PAC highlighted two further issues that need to be fixed to reduce youth violence and crime. Firstly, better mental health support for young people – because the UK’s youth mental health crisis is both well-documented and growing, while support is in short supply. A recent report found one in three 18- to 24-year-olds experiencing common mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. Another found 32,000 children waiting more than two years to be seen by a mental health professional, with self-harm and suicide while they waited described as “too familiar.”
The link between these failings and the prevalence of gang culture and youth violence is uncontested, and this Labour government has set out plans to bring specialist mental health workers into school settings as part of measures to tackle both problems.
Listening to Young Voices
But another key point – made by the young people surveyed and supported by organisations including my own – is that this all-too-familiar story of youth violence, youth disengagement, and the “youth problem” is told and retold by a long line of older people. They articulate our national failure to connect with, engage, understand, or sufficiently control our young people to act within the law. What the UK’s young people themselves think about all of this is less documented and much harder to hear.
At the same time, many of us, in our households and neighbourhoods, are done with listening to the three-steps-removed “grown-ups” and deeply frustrated by a lack of progress on youth crime. Action – change – is beyond overdue. But for real change to take place in ways that are meaningful, actionable, effective, and – perhaps most importantly – long-lasting, young people’s insights and ideas must be embedded in policy, societal shifts, and any kind of investment in services from the get-go. If young people don’t believe in or connect with proposed change, there will be no change.
Co-Creating Solutions
The issue of who has a say reaches into communities too. At The Young Foundation, our core work is to amplify the truth that people need a say in the things that impact their lives. For evidence, loop back to the Stockport murders, the manipulated narrative that ensued, and the riots that followed. When horrific incidents occur, and the policies and social contracts that should prevent them are seen to be broken, fear abounds. Add to that a cost-of-living crisis, geopolitical turmoil, and individuals with a loudspeaker spreading disinformation and misinformation – including, sometimes, through those same “mainstream social media” platforms – and the stage is set for civil unrest and political extremism.
The answers to such challenges are undeniably complex, but one thing is clear: our culture, community values, and the policies that support us all shouldn’t be “done to” those most affected but shaped with them. I’d argue that nowhere does this happen less than with young people.
Final Thought
We can fix this. In fact, many – including The Young Foundation – are already focusing efforts to do so, hearing young people’s views and concerns and really listening to them, engaging with their assessment of the root causes of the challenges in their lives, and responding to their ideas for solutions.
We need to recognise the complex tapestry that leaves young people with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no voice. People in power are used to having a platform from which to share their diagnoses of problems and solutions – but it’s fair to say, this hasn’t yet shifted the dial in the right direction. In fact, both youth violence and the youth mental health crisis are deepening and interconnected.
It’s time to pass the mic to young people and hear their ideas for change.
This isn’t blue-sky thinking. Through the PAC programme, young people are leading research and proposing practicable solutions to youth-affecting issues. Four PAC teams around England are exploring the links between mental health, wellbeing and violence – and, just last week, the London team of young people – together with partners from The Peace Alliance, McPin Foundation and The Young Foundation – met with the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing.
The young people shared their stories and proposed their solutions to better-support teenagers at risk of exclusion in schools. Because these young people know first-hand – through their own experiences and those of their peers – the links between disengagement from schools, poor mental health, and vulnerability to gangs, crime and violence.
Together, they discussed routes forward – considering the many plans for change that are already on the table that, with very little resource or difficulty, could be expanded. Is there a world in which it’s possible, for example, to bring young people into the tent as the government shapes its Young Futures hubs; or to hear young people’s views on school exclusions to help shape school policy; or to bring teachers, students and representatives of various government Departments, from the Home Office to Education, together for a more holistic approach; or even to reimagine our citizenship curriculum so it truly connects young people with social action, positive participation and community engagement.
There is no shortage of ideas, nor any shallowness in the drive for change. That young people ‘are a problem’ has been our narrative for too long, written in monochrome and in narrow columns. Broader insights, gained through personal experiences, cannot be under-valued as we forge a better way forward. We need to hear and respond to young people’s views and voices on the issues that impact their lives. We need flip our analysis: instead of seeing young people as hard to reach or difficult to engage, could we be more flexible, meeting them where they are at? Because, until we do, I cannot see a future in which young people will cease to be an adult-defined problem.
The Young Foundation’s #PassTheMic campaign is launching soon, amplifying youth voice and calling for youth-informed policy change for a greener planet, fairer prospects, and better places. Follow @the_young_fdn on social media for updates and to get involved in the campaign.
@the_young_fdn Your voice matters. Your ideas count. #PassTheMic is launching soon. Audio credit: ‘Money Money’ by Rex Banner #GenZ #YouthCulture #UK#YoungPeople #Reaction #viral_video #viral_tiktok #politicaltiktok #politicaltiktoker #activism #Trendingnow #foryour #fyp #goviral
♬ original sound – The Young Foundation – The Young Foundation
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