Why Youth Services Keep Getting More Funding Than Women and Girls

Big money is moving again. This year, the government announced £440 million from the Dormant Assets scheme. Guess how much of that is going to women and girls? Zero. Meanwhile, youth services are set to scoop up £132.5 million, roughly 30% of the pot. That’s on top of the £630 million a year already earmarked for youth services [1], compared to around £580 million for women and girls’ services [2].

The imbalance stretches beyond government grants. In 2023–24, around 23% of National Lottery Community Fund allocations went to children and young people, while just under 12% went to women and girls.[3] These figures rely on self-reported tags, so they’re imperfect - but the disparity is real.

Other funders are jumping on the bandwagon. A coalition including The Children’s Society and Joseph Rowntree Foundation pledged £50 million from their endowments to invest in initiatives for young people. They even convened a youth panel to identify priorities: the climate emergency, youth mental health, lack of community, housing, education, and inequality. Sounds promising. But in practice, what does this money actually do?

When foundations talk about “impact investing,” they rarely mean direct grants to youth clubs or local mentors. Instead, the money flows into social investments, mission-aligned funds, community shares, or green and social bonds. Social investments - loans or equity in social enterprises - require repayment, which excludes many grassroots youth groups. Mission-aligned funds target businesses tackling climate, housing, or inequality, but transparency is limited, and a lot of the money may end up in large 'ESG' [4] -labelled corporations rather than genuinely transformative youth projects. Community shares and cooperatives can support housing co-ops or local renewable energy, but it’s unclear how much actually reaches small-scale, community-driven initiatives. And green bonds, while useful for sustainability, do not create the kind of safe spaces and mentorships that youth actually need.

Then there’s governance. How much influence do young people really have over these investments? Panels like this are mostly consultative: they can set themes, but investment committees make the final decisions. It’s easy to see why some are sceptical. Young people may feel they are shaping the future, when in reality their input is constrained within a financial framework.

Investment managers, for their part, are thrilled. It’s good PR—“we’re helping young people design the future”, and it cultivates a future market by familiarising youth with investing early. But the question remains: is this really about social impact, or just a clever way to get young people accustomed to financial markets?

Meanwhile, the impact of youth programmes themselves is mixed. Evaluations of the Youth Endowment Fund and early intervention projects suggest they are generally well-received, but measurable outcomes are limited. The Youth Futures Foundation’s systems-change work shows promise, but evidence is often vague. 

What we can be sure of is that more than two-thirds of council-run youth centres have closed since 2010. Youth funding is increasingly 'targeted' rather than universal (for all local kids), which supposedly makes it harder to evaluate (but easier to cut). Youth crime is up 4%, knife incidents by children are up 20% over the past decade, and NEET rates for 16–24-year-olds hover at 13%, near a ten-year high. 

So, why the obsession with youth services when the outcomes are patchy at best? And why are women's services being ignored, despite their chronic underfunding and outcomes that show the positive impact on their lives as well as their children's?

Well, women’s services are often framed as “niche” or reactive, while youth services are front-page “prevention,” attracting headlines, political attention, and large institutional support.

Part of the reason is visibility: youth issues are politically and media-friendly, whether it’s knife crime, NEETs, or “risky” young people. The youth sector has strong champions in large, well-resourced organisations like the YMCA, the Prince’s Trust, and sympathetic MPs and Lords. The women’s sector, by contrast, is smaller, less organised, and easier to sideline.

Funding youth services is vital. The suggestion is not that we should spend less on our children and young people. Rather, there is no acknowledgement of mothers' role in young people's welfare, and that women and girls need funding too, so why are we not getting it? Services that work to prevent violence against women, support survivors, and give women and girls the resources to rebuild their lives, save the state huge amounts of money and have a massive and visible social impact. But, as long as political narratives and institutional power favour youth services, the imbalance will persist. If the women’s sector had the same visibility, clout, and backing, we might finally see equitable funding - and tangible improvements - for both young people and women.

The bottom line is simple: funding should follow need and impact, not 'optics' and political convenience. Women’s services are just as vital as youth services. Enough with the optics. It’s time the system reflected that reality.