Listening to Our Future: Early Findings From the Health Foundation's Young People's Future Health Enquiry

Authors M Kane and J Bibby

Published by Health Foundation, (2018)

The two-year inquiry (2017-19) aims to discover whether young people currently have the building blocks for a healthy future; what support and opportunities young people need to secure them; the main issues that young people face as they become adults; and what this means for their future health and for society more generally. Clearly, the scope of the inquiry is much broader than just youth work but the findings are relevant for anyone supporting young people through their transition to adulthood.

Engagement exercise

The exercise engaged young people living in the UK aged 22 to 26 to explore the factors that helped or hindered them in their transition to adulthood. The engagement exercise adopted a mixed methods and iterative approach including a 10-person reference panel, social media analysis, analysis of the 2017 Next Steps dataset (approximately 7,700 respondents), mobile app diaries, five workshops (80 participants in total) and four "Google Hangouts" with young people. In addition, an online survey of 2,000 young people was commissioned. The findings were then compared and contrasted with existing research evidence.