New initiative to support young people has launched in Salisbury

Launching this month, the YOU Network is a new initiative, coordinated by the Salisbury City Council Communities Team and a steering group involved in its creation, bringing voluntary groups and professional organisations together to share skills, knowledge, information, and good news stories to support young people in our city.

The YOU Network started as a discussion at the annual Youth Provision Forum networking meeting which led to a consultation with young people in the city in early 2024. Since then, a group of volunteers and staff linked to youth clubs, sports clubs, charities, and local councils have worked hard to create a framework for providers to sign up to, while retaining their own approach to working with the young people they know and care about.

Current members of the network include The Up Market Bus Shelter Youth Club, Impact MMA, Buzz Action Foundation, Rise:61, Wiltshire Creative, The Bridge Youth Project, and Salisbury City Council-run Youth Clubs, along with a few organisations working in association with the network while they establish new youth provision in the city, including Level Up Salisbury and Salisbury Cathedral.

All of these groups come together under a set of shared values – Sarah Gregson, Head of Community Services for the City Council and coordinator of this initiative said, “Our values came through collaborations and understanding what we already do well across the clubs, drop-ins, and activities network members deliver weekly. We are all committed to being inclusive, reliable, listening to young people, being proud of them and staying connected to improve our work.”

Want to get involved? New providers working with young people aged 11 to 19 can join the network at any time. Parents and young people can look for the logo to know which organisations are involved or find the list of members on the City Council website YOU Network page, here.

Membership is free and gives access to signposting information, guidance on minimum standards, access to peer support from across the network, and brings members together to look for ways to address training needs. YOU will also be collaborating on a series of free training and skill-share sessions open to all staff and volunteers connected to their work with young people. Anyone who is interested in the YOU Network can find out more via the Salisbury City Council or All Together Wiltshire websites, with links to a downloadable information pack and registration form.

Robin Imeson, Director of Rise:61, said, “The YOU network is going to help youth organisations in and around Salisbury to do their work a lot better. It can be a bit lonely sometimes been a youth worker, so networks like this are really important for the workers and their mental health, by just meeting people who are doing a similar thing and have similar passions. I’m really excited about the launch.”

Jonathan the Jester, Lead Facilitator at Buzz Action Foundation, added, “It’s really important that youth organisations talk and communicate. We’ve learned that we can put on events that have a minority interest, and, through networking, you can make them viable by reaching out to all the different people that are interested…That’s the importance of networking and that’s why I’m part of the YOU Network.”

Suzanne Wilson, a coach at Impact MMA, said, “We have a lot of kids that have struggled with both physical and emotional difficulties, and they’ve used martial arts, and the sense of community that they get from martial arts, to overcome those struggles. They also find other people who were going through the same things, and having someone to identify with is so important.

“Being part of a network will help us reach out to more people and it’s an amazing chance for us to point to other places where kids can go. Being part of a community, especially somewhere that’s more rural, like Salisbury, is so important…and I think that is what the YOU Network is going to help provide.”

Sherwin Uban, also a coach at Impact MMA, echoed this, saying, “A lot of our members simply want to feel like they are part of a group. Not everyone at Impact are fighters or want to fight. What they actually just craved is just being part of a group, a community, a family. Being part of the YOU network means that if people don’t want to do boxing, then we can at least point them in another direction and vice versa.”

James Babb, Founder and Director of Level Up Salisbury Kick, said, “The YOU Network a fantastic opportunity for us because everybody involved in the network has shared vision. As we’re new a new organisation, there’s a lot of knowledge that’s available to us through the network, a lot of lessons we can learn and lots of support. I am very passionate about collaboration, and I think together we can do a stronger job to support the youth in the most powerful way possible.”

Cllr Jo King, member of the steering group, said, “For many years, since I was a youth worker myself, I have known that alongside activity groups which meet across the city, there is a need for safe spaces for young people; they themselves have identified this.

“Since being part of the Youth Forum for the City Council, I have pushed hard, as have others, for this dream of safe spaces for young people to become a reality. Much work has been done to create the YOU Network, and I believe it will be a project which will bring spaces to be available for young people where they can just simply ‘hang out’!

“A few months ago, I spoke to some young people in the Market Square and asked them if there were places identified for them to meet with each other, would they use it. The answers were overwhelmingly ‘yes’. So, the You Network is the fulfilment of that ‘yes’.”

For more information on the YOU Network, click here!