#59: Maybe We Should Stop Consulting Young People, And Give Them Some Power Instead

The Sussex And The City Podcast – Episode #59 Maybe We Should Stop Consulting Young People, And Give Them Some Power Instead Host: Richard Freeman Guest: Adam Muirhead – Director of Youth Work Services, Trust for Developing Communities 🔍 Episode summary Sussex devolution is a 'once-in-a-generation opportunity'. But for which generation? If the decisions being made now will shape housing, transport, skills, jobs and public services for decades, the people who will live with them longest need more than an occasional invitation to tell adults what they think. Perhaps we need to stop talking quite so much about consulting young people and start talking about giving them some power. Adam Muirhead has spent nearly 25 years working with young people. He has worked in youth clubs and on the streets, in hospitals and youth offending services, taught youth work as a lecturer at the University of Brighton and held leadership roles across the profession. He is a former Chair of the Institute of Youth Work. His definition of youth work strips all of that back to two things. Relationships. And power. Build meaningful relationships with young people; help them claim some power over their own lives; and, where possible, change the systems in which the odds are stacked against them. Those systems are not in especially good shape. Adam describes escalating mental health needs, exploitation and safeguarding concerns alongside a steady erosion of the universal services that once provided young people with somewhere to go, someone to trust and a route into help before a problem became a crisis. As he puts it, "the need goes up and the resource goes down." Devolution will not magically repair that. But Sussex is creating new institutions, moving responsibilities and money away from Whitehall and deciding how a new strategic authority should work. That means there is a brief opportunity to decide whose voices (and whose power) get built into the system from the beginning. Adam asks why a future Sussex mayor shouldn't have a permanently funded and genuinely powerful youth assembly, embedded within the governance of the strategic authority rather than sitting alongside it as a consultative body. Why not a commissioner for future generations? Why not young people represented directly within decision-making? And could Sussex even become the first mayoral area to introduce a children's precept, raising money specifically to invest in the generation that will inherit all of this? There are immediate questions. If you're 17 in Bognor Regis, 19 in Hastings or 22 in Crawley, can you afford to get to college or work? Are you being trained for the jobs Sussex actually needs? If you've grown up here, is there a realistic prospect of being able to afford to stay? Transport is a particularly tangible example. Greater Manchester already offers free bus travel to 16–18-year-olds. As Sussex gains greater influence over its transport system, Adam argues for an affordable county-wide youth travel concession; not just as a benefit for young people, but as an intervention in skills, employment and social mobility. And then there is housing. There is little point creating jobs for the next generation if the people trained to do them cannot afford to live anywhere near them. Young people Adam works with are not currently clamouring to discuss strategic authorities or mayoral governance. Why would they be? But they are interested in the questions devolution will ultimately have to answer, like Can I afford to live here? Can I get where I need to go? Is there a job for me? And do I have any influence over the place I'm going to inherit? If this really is a once-in-a-generation project, perhaps those questions should carry rather more power. --- This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Sussex Intelligence Unit, a new independent research platform from the team behind Sussex and the City. It brings together data and evidence-led analysis on growth, infrastructure, governance and belonging across East Sussex, West Sussex and Brighton & Hove, helping businesses, voluntary sector organisations and policymakers understand the decisions that will shape Sussex for a generation. --- 🎯 In this episode Why Adam believes youth work is fundamentally about power and relationships How being young today differs from previous generations Why adults need humility about experiences they have never had Rising mental health, exploitation and safeguarding pressures The erosion of universal youth services Why consultation alone doesn't necessarily give young people influence The case for a permanent, properly funded Sussex youth assembly Whether Sussex should have a commissioner for future generations Adam's proposal for a dedicated children's precept Why having one young representative can itself become tokenistic Examples of youth participation already happening in Brighton & Hove How devolved skills funding could improve young people's prospects Why affordable transport is an economic and social mobility issue The case for a Sussex-wide youth travel concession Whether young people growing up in Sussex will ever be able to afford to stay How housing, employment, transport and skills are connected What a genuinely generational approach to devolution could look like 🧠 Key themes Consultation isn't the same thing as power There is plenty of goodwill towards listening to young people, and Adam points to some genuinely good participation work already happening. But listening is only one part of the equation. Young people can attend meetings, sit on advisory groups, respond to consultations and be invited to speak at scrutiny committees without having much influence over the eventual decision. Adam's challenge for devolution is therefore to go further and ask where will young people actually hold power within the new system? Young people need more than one seat at the table Putting a young person on an adult board can look like participation while reproducing the structures that already exclude many young people. Adam argues for a range of approaches. Different young people will participate in different ways, and conventional boards are particularly likely to attract those already confident enough to navigate adult institutions. Meaningful representation needs to reach young people who are disadvantaged, marginalised or simply unlikely to volunteer for a committee. The foundations underneath young people are weakening Adam describes a pyramid of support that once had a broad base of universal youth provision, capable of building relationships, identifying emerging problems and directing young people towards more specialist help. That base has substantially contracted. Meanwhile, youth workers are encountering increasingly complex mental health, exploitation and safeguarding issues, sometimes while young people wait years for specialist assessment or treatment. The result is what Adam describes as a "chart of doom", where demand increases while the resources available to respond decrease. Devolution creates a chance to design something differently New political structures do not automatically produce better participation. But because Sussex is creating new structures anyway, there is an opportunity to build youth power into them rather than trying to bolt it on afterwards. Adam suggests a permanent youth assembly, stronger youth representation within governance and potentially a commissioner specifically concerned with future generations. His most provocative proposal is a children's precept, using the strategic authority's ability to raise money for priorities to make an explicit, visible investment in children and young people. Transport can determine who gets an opportunity For a young person with limited income, the cost of getting somewhere can determine whether an opportunity is genuinely available. That means transport connects directly to education, skills, employment and social mobility. Adam argues that if a future Sussex mayor asks young people across the county what would make a practical difference to their lives, affordable transport is likely to appear very quickly. With Greater Manchester already providing free bus travel for 16–18-year-olds, he sees a strong case for an affordable Sussex-wide youth travel concession. Can you grow up in Sussex and afford to remain here? Young people could acquire the skills local employers need and find jobs in the Sussex economy, but still be forced elsewhere because housing is beyond their reach. Adam argues that increased housebuilding therefore needs to include genuinely affordable and social housing across Sussex, rather than concentrating it in communities already experiencing disadvantage. 🗳️ So what would giving young people power actually mean? Adam points to good foundations already operating in Brighton & Hove. The city's Youth Council uses the Make Your Mark campaign to identify priorities and campaign around them. Youth Wise creates opportunities for young people using youth services to question political representatives directly. Trust for Developing Communities has run peer research, trained young people as researchers and involved them in co-producing approaches to public services. The problem isn't that nobody knows how to involve young people. It's turning that practice into permanent democratic infrastructure. Adam draws on the Lundy model of participation, which considers whether children and young people have space to express their views, a voice through which to do so, an audience that will listen and – crucially – actual influence. A Sussex youth assembly that can be politely ignored therefore wouldn't be enough. Nor necessarily would a single youth representative sitting around an adult boardroom table. The opportunity is to build multiple routes through which different young people can participate, connect hyper-local conversations with Sussex-wide decisions and demonstrate what changed because young people were involved. 👤 About Adam Muirhead Adam Muirhead has worked with young people for nearly 25 years and is Director of Youth Work Services at Trust for Developing Communities in Brighton & Hove, where he has worked for almost two decades. His experience ranges from traditional youth clubs and street-based youth work to specialist services supporting young people experiencing exploitation, violence and other harms. TDC provides youth work within the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital emergency department and works with young people entering the youth justice system, alongside its wider community and participation programmes. Adam has lectured in youth work at the University of Brighton and previously chaired the Institute for Youth Work. He currently chairs Youth & Policy, an international youth work journal, and the Regional Youth Work Unit for the South East of England, and is Head of Youth Work for the Hope Collective, a national collaboration working towards a fairer and safer future for young people inspired by the legacy of Damilola Taylor. He describes himself as being both "in youth work and of youth work". It is his profession, but also something that has occupied much of the rest of his life. 🎧 Production credits Host: Richard Freeman Guest: Adam Muirhead Sound design, editing and original music: Chris Thorpe-Tracey Production management: Letitia McConalogue 📣 Get involved 👉 sussexandthecity.info — episodes, resources, events and more about devolution and change across Sussex 👉 sussexintelligence.com — independent research and evidence-led insight into growth, infrastructure, governance and belonging across Sussex