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MenuAcross England, localities, delivery partners and government are coming together around an urgent shared mission - helping young people build a fulfilling future as they move into adulthood. Young Future Hubs offer a chance to build a more human, joined-up foundation for wellbeing, opportunity and belonging, designed with young people and rooted in communities.
Our work
Innovation Unit has spent two decades working with places to design and deliver integrated, relational support across youth, health, education, employment, justice and communities. We believe Young Futures Hubs can be a turning point, acting as a catalyst for integration and system change, towards a system that is easier to navigate, more responsive to young people’s lives, and works better for those facing the biggest inequalities.
Why Young Futures Hubs matter now
We set out the scale of the challenges facing young people, from mental health and economic insecurity to fragmented systems of support, and explain why Young Futures Hubs offer a timely and necessary response.
Designing and scaling open access multidisciplinary mental health hubs
For over 10 years, Innovation Unit has helped design, grow and spread Living Well Hubs, an integrated, person-centred approach to supporting people with complex mental health needs to access multidisciplinary support, including help to move towards work, and live well in their local communities
Embedding youth voice to shape better support
We supported Sport England to co-design, test and learn how to embed youth voice in practice, showing how listening and responding to young people can change organisational culture and improve how services are designed and delivered.
Grow Young Futures Hubs that work
Delivering on the ambition of Young Futures Hubs will take more than new funding or buildings. It will require a shift in how support is designed, delivered and learned from, so young people are not left to navigate complexity alone or lose access to support and opportunity during key life transitions.
From our experience designing and scaling joined-up approaches across youth, health, employment, justice and communities, we see three conditions as central to growing Young Futures Hubs that work.
1. Building genuinely integrated, multidisciplinary support
Young Futures Hubs must be more than a service or offer with a referral route. They are a way of organising support differently around young people.
To work, Hubs need to function as open-access, multidisciplinary spaces that bring together relationships, services and opportunities in one place, and connect them to a wider integrated system. This means collaboration between youth work, health, wellbeing, employment and community support, with shared ways of working, joint accountability and a clear focus on the whole person.
Young Futures Hubs must be more than a service or offer with a referral route. They are a way of organising support differently around young people.
To work, Hubs need to function as open-access, multidisciplinary spaces that bring together relationships, services and opportunities in one place, and connect them to a wider integrated system. This means collaboration between youth work, health, wellbeing, employment and community support, with shared ways of working, joint accountability and a clear focus on the whole person.
2. A universal offer with an inequality lens
For Young Futures Hubs to have the greatest impact, they need to be places any young person can walk into, without stigma or fear.
That means offering universal, everyday support that feels normal, welcoming and useful, alongside the ability to provide more intensive support for young people facing the greatest barriers, shaped by poverty, discrimination or a lack of social and educational support. That offer might include health advice, youth activities, social connection, careers support, or help with housing challenges.
Done well, Hubs become places of belonging and possibility for all young people in the community, while remaining highly effective at reaching those least likely to engage with traditional services.
For Young Futures Hubs to have the greatest impact, they need to be places any young person can walk into, without stigma or fear.
That means offering universal, everyday support that feels normal, welcoming and useful, alongside the ability to provide more intensive support for young people facing the greatest barriers, shaped by poverty, discrimination or a lack of social and educational support. That offer might include health advice, youth activities, social connection, careers support, or help with housing challenges.
Done well, Hubs become places of belonging and possibility for all young people in the community, while remaining highly effective at reaching those least likely to engage with traditional services.
3. A catalyst for wider system change
Young Futures Hubs are also a chance to change how the system works.
They need to be shaped by young people’s voices over time, and supported by leadership that enables workforce development and collaboration across organisational boundaries. Hubs create an opportunity to redesign roles, processes and how money flows around shared outcomes and practice that acts early, stays alongside people, builds agency and supports young people as they transition into adulthood.
Young Futures Hubs should be developed with learning built in from the start, enabling insight from delivery to be shared across places and influence national decision-making, shaping policy and future commissioning.
Young Futures Hubs are also a chance to change how the system works.
They need to be shaped by young people’s voices over time, and supported by leadership that enables workforce development and collaboration across organisational boundaries. Hubs create an opportunity to redesign roles, processes and how money flows around shared outcomes and practice that acts early, stays alongside people, builds agency and supports young people as they transition into adulthood.
Young Futures Hubs should be developed with learning built in from the start, enabling insight from delivery to be shared across places and influence national decision-making, shaping policy and future commissioning.
How can we help you
If you're developing your approach to Young Futures Hubs, Innovation Unit can help you to:
- Co-design Young Futures Hubs with young people and communities, so hubs are shaped by lived experience and local strengths, and feel trusted, relevant and worth engaging with
- Turn ambition into delivery, supporting teams to move from plans to practice through practical implementation, workforce and leadership development
- Create actionable learning and embed evaluation, supporting adaptation, improvement and shared insight as hubs grow
- Rewire local systems so Young Futures Hubs have the cross-system resources, leadership and accountability needed to take root and grow
- Influence policy and commissioning, using learning from hubs to support national partners to act as enablers of local collaboration
Relevant projects
Explore our projects in relational support across youth, health and education.
