A head for business: UK Youth chief executive Anna Smee

Glancing over Anna Smee's career history, you could be forgiven for thinking that she gained the role of chief executive of UK Youth without having any previous experience of youth work.

Before her appointment, the economics graduate spent three years as director of ventures at social innovation think-tank The Young Foundation, where she was responsible for supporting social enterprise and social investment.

Prior to this, she spent four years as director of Hundred Consulting, working with private equity companies and venture capitalists.

But behind the scenes, Smee had been actively supporting youth organisations and for some time has contributed to a number of influential pieces of work, including the Framework of Outcomes for young people by the now disbanded Catalyst consortium, and Impetus-Pef's Ready for Work report.

It was the combination of Smee's head for business and passion for youth advocacy that led to her taking over at UK Youth last December, after the departure earlier in the year of first former chief executive Charlotte Hill in April and interim chief Dominic Cotton in October, both to the government's social action initiative Step Up To Serve.

At a time when strains on finances are putting increasing pressure on youth organisations to generate new forms of income, Smee's experience of business should come in useful.

"Organisations in the youth sector have gone from being reliant of local government grants to suddenly having to run two businesses - the income generation and maintaining the quality of delivery on the ground," she says.

"Coming from the private sector background, I think that's an extremely tall order.

"In the private sector, you think about if something is going to make money, but in the charity sector it's always 'will this have a positive impact?' And then, after that, 'will it balance the books at the end of the year?'"

Smee is concerned that few in the youth sector have been given the support and training to manage the new way of working, and worries that the pressure to survive will have a detrimental effect on their primary aim - supporting young people.

"We're seeing that impacting everybody in our network - particularly around education and training - they typically don't have any training for the youth workers," she explains.

"That's going to have a knock-on effect later on because if you're not training youth workers now, what happens in five or 10 years' time?

"The quality is inevitably going to be impacted and it impacts particularly on open access (youth work)."

Social investment

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given her previous experience, Smee says she is "hugely in favour" of social investment as a way of supporting the sector, but admits that it's not the secret recipe for survival.

"I'm realistic that some organisations will never be financially sustainable - that's why they are charities and we need to allow them to get on with their job," she says.

"It's a very hard job. Their customers are the youth workers and young people who have no money, so they will have to set up another business to generate the funding.

"I think that's a slightly unrealistic expectation."

Instead, Smee agrees with a sentiment expressed by minister for civil society Rob Wilson, who in December told CYP Now that developing an evidence base of best practice and demonstrating impact is one of the most important things the youth sector can do.

It's an issue that she says is "hugely important", but that should be left to youth organisations to decide how they best do that, rather than foisting a uniform model upon them.

"The important thing is for each organisation to find a way that produces information and doesn't impact on the work they do with young people," says Smee.

"That all sounds very straightforward, but it's easier said than done."

Part of the solution, she says, is "demystifying" the notion of measurement.

"It's about being very straightforward with organisations," she says.

"Knowing why you exist, what you're trying to deliver, what the steps are to achieve it and regularly measuring the impact - it's generally that simple, that's the kind of information they (funders) are looking for."

UK Youth has adopted - "before I joined", quips Smee - the Catalyst consortium's Framework of Outcomes for young people to gauge the impact of its work. But, despite her support for evidencing, Smee believes that not everything needs to be measured.

"It's also important that there's a need to learn and sometimes we have to put money behind unproven things to see if they work," she says. "And there are some things we all know are having positive impacts so we should trust our gut."

Young voices

Looking to the impact she hopes to make as chief executive of UK Youth, Smee has one clear aim - to help young people have a voice, particularly those, who she says, have "fallen through the cracks".

"My big priority is around making sure that young people have a seat at the table," she says.

"Giving them a voice, and the skills and confidence they need to use that voice effectively - that's by encouraging them, supporting them and empowering them to be part of society."

Smee believes that the way to do this is by using traditional youth work principles and advocating open access provision.

"We have to go to young people on their terms, where they feel safe and happy, and talking about their problems in a way that matters to them," she explains.

Linked to this, Smee thinks there is a "huge opportunity" around votes at 16 - although her admission is one that surprises her. "If you'd have asked me 10 years ago, I wouldn't have supported it, partly because my friends and I weren't engaged at all," she says.

"Having spent more time in the sector meeting more young people and seeing what happened in Scotland, I think there is a hugely valuable opportunity for us to show that young people need to be engaged."

Empowering young people

Smee expects that responsibility for empowering young people will fall to youth workers and organisations like UK Youth, believing that there is little motivation for politicians to push the matter.

"Our job is around showing young people what's possible and it's up to them to put their hand out and seize that opportunity," she says.

"Many young people just don't believe it will make a difference, they feel like it's a drop in the ocean.

"We need to help them realise they can be extremely influential if they work together."

Youth work has an important role to play in this process, adds Smee, by equipping young people with greater political knowledge, regardless of whether the voting age is lowered over the coming years.

"Our education and training team have already been asked to go into schools and deliver that training or train more teachers to do it," she says.

"As schools hold more budget, we're seeing more schools request youth workers."

However, Smee is adamant that youth work and education should remain two distinct entities.

She is a firm believer that "no one size fits all" when it comes to young people and thinks that the support mechanisms around them should reflect that.

"Delivering in a school environment is very different to delivering outside and I think we need to be outside of that environment to actually engage them," explains Smee.

"Some young people are going to take against 'the system' and I think it's a real shame that they miss out because that (school) environment isn't working for them.

"Outside, they feel like they've opted to be there with people who trust and respect them. They're treated as equals."

Anna Smee CV

• Smee studied economics at the University of Southampton from 1996 to 1999
• She was director of Hundred Consulting between 2008 and 2012
• She gained a master of business administration from London Business School in 2009
• Smee was director of ventures at The Young Foundation from 2012 until last November