Croydon (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Croydon Council has confirmed a new strategic direction for its youth engagement services, aiming to improve outcomes and expand support across the borough.
Croydon’s youth engagement program is evolving, with a stronger focus on reaching more kids and teens, enhancing assistance for older kids and teens, and stepping up efforts to record kids’ and teens’ voices and lived experiences.
Croydon Council will be collaborating with partners more closely to offer assistance in order to do this.
In the March 2022 budget, it was decided to cut core Council spending and evaluate the Council’s internal youth involvement program.
Last year, the Council conducted a study and concluded that Croydon residents were not receiving the best value for their money from the service. Just 75 kids used the universal provision in a single year.
As part of the process, the Council held consultations with parents, staff, partners, and young people who had used the service between December 5, 2024, and April 25, 2025.
The results showed that better results, particularly for at-risk youth, would be obtained through a more coordinated approach with other organizations.
Early assistance, community safety programs, and engaging Council partners to carry out focused, engagement activities are all being used to accomplish this.
This summer, Croydon will establish a brand-new Family Hub at the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Centre in South Norwood for older kids and teens. Its network of accessible, local services for families in Croydon will grow as a result.
In addition, the London Violence Reduction Unit and the Home Office are providing £200,000 in grant cash to Croydon’s community safety department, which will be used to implement safety-related projects for youth in the upcoming year.
How will Croydon’s new youth engagement approach impact young people’s voices?
Young people’s current reliable, trustworthy relationships with professional youth workers could be weakened if the council moves away from a dedicated, council-run Youth Engagement Team (YET) and toward a model that depends more on volunteers and outside providers. Both vulnerable and non-vulnerable children may have less options as a result to freely voice their opinions and obtain specialized assistance.
According to the council, the new strategy would concentrate more “targeted” support on the most disadvantaged adolescents, which could restrict youth engagement in general and leave out a large number of youth who gain from youth voice programs such as the Croydon adolescents Assembly.
This change has drawn criticism from young people who feel it excludes their opinions and diminishes their influence in local decision-making.