Nine years ago, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) first called for a plan for childhood in A country that works for all children. That call was renewed in Childhood Matters in 2024, yet, today, national policy still pays too little attention to young people’s distinct needs, vulnerabilities, experiences and strengths.
Teenhood Matters examines what it is really like for young people to grow up in 2026 and why, for too many of them, life is a struggle and they are losing hope for their futures.
The paper is an urgent call to arms to bring the fragmented systems that shape young people’s lives together behind a single shared vision. It renews the ADCS’s call for a long term plan for childhood and teenhood that lasts beyond funding cycles and parliamentary terms, alongside a child impact assessment for all new policy. It also sets out six high level aims for teenhood, from feeling safe and supported to having a say in the decisions that affect their lives.
Teenhood Matters outlines how this generation of young people is carrying a weight of pressures that no previous generation has faced simultaneously, from the cost of living, housing and mental health crises, loneliness and isolation to their own experiences of the pandemic and how it has shifted societal and workplace norms. In the paper, the ADCS raises concern that many of these issues are closely linked but are rarely considered together at a national level and so the disparate systems that shape young people’s lives remain fragmented.
The paper also recognises the strengths and successes of young people and welcomes new investment in children’s services, including kinship and foster care, early help, support for care leavers and a move to multi-year funding settlements.
However, ADCS warns that this progress is being undermined by an ongoing lack of national join up, the results of which can be seen in the series of recent reviews over the last year, including Alan Milburn’s review of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), the Southport Inquiry and Professor Peter Fonagy’s review of mental health, autism and ADHD. Local integration efforts cannot indefinitely make up for the absence of coherence at a national level.
The ADCS believes Rewiring the State offers a real opportunity to change this, if equal weight is given to people as well as places, and children and young people are invited to play a part in their futures.
Ann Graham, ADCS President, said: “Teenhood should be a time of discovery, of making friends, taking safe risks and working out who you are and who you want to be. Yet too many young people today are growing up lonely, anxious and losing hope for their futures. The places where they once met each other and built relationships with trusted adults outside of home and school have steadily disappeared, and online platforms and even chicken shops are now filling that gap.
“Young people have one life, but unfortunately the state continues to see their lives in small parts. A teenager might be known to their school, to mental health services, to the police and to children’s social care, yet the whole person is rarely in view. Local authorities and their partners are doing all they can to bridge these gaps, but local efforts cannot make up for the absence of a joined up approach nationally.
“How we value young people as a country has never been a more pressing question, which is why ADCS wanted to publish this paper. Young people deserve far more than a growing collection of standalone initiatives - the need for a generational plan for childhood and teenhood that outlasts parliamentary terms and puts belonging and hope at its heart is more urgent than ever. Our young people are full of promise and have so much to give to their communities and, most importantly, to themselves. It is time for government to show children and young people they are a priority and that their futures are the country’s future.”
ENDS
The Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) Ltd is the professional leadership association for Directors of Children's Services and their senior management teams in England.
