Empowering Voices: How Lived Experience Drives Meaningful Change
- whocaresconsultanc
- Nov 11, 2025
- 3 min read
I believe that when young people are not just heard, but actively involved in shaping the services, policies, and opportunities that affect them, that’s where real change happens. And sadly, the need for this is more urgent than ever.
Recent UK data paints a concerning picture of how care-experienced and marginalised young people are being failed by systems meant to support them.
Over 4,300 care leavers aged 18–20 in 2023/24 were assessed as homeless; a huge 54% increase in five years.
A UK parliamentary report found that within two years of leaving care, 39% of care leavers aged 19–21 are not in education, training or employment. And around a third become homeless in that time.
These numbers are not just statistics, they represent the lives of young people that have been disrupted, potential unfulfilled, and futures constrained. Because of this reality youth participation must be central to how we design support.
From my own experience as a care-experienced young person, leaving care felt like being given independence without the map. There was little co-production, few opportunities to truly and meaningfully influence what support looked like, and often we were treated as passive recipients rather than partners in our own lives. That’s why when it came to building Who Cares Consultancy, the lived-experience voice wasn’t just an add-on. “It’s the foundation.”
Empowering Voices: How Lived Experience Drives Meaningful Change
When young people take a seat at the table:
They bring insights about what works and what doesn’t in services that often seem removed from lived reality.
They challenge assumptions, helping professionals and organisations to design support rooted in real lives, not just policy models.
They build confidence, agency, and leadership, which strengthen outcomes across education, employment, housing, and wellbeing.
But youth participation is about more than consultation, it’s about creating opportunities. Many young people can only imagine what they’ve seen. When we open doors to new environments, creative spaces, professional settings, and policy discussions; we show them that there are other avenues, other futures, and other possibilities.
Participation creates the space for skills development, from communication and teamwork to leadership and critical thinking, equipping young people for both life and work. Through paid co-production roles, project involvement, and creative collaboration, young people can begin to see themselves not only as contributors but as future professionals. Some may even discover career pathways and employment opportunities within our own organisations and partner networks.
The mission is to ensure that young people who’ve been in care or faced adversity are not only supported to survive, but to thrive. Influencing systems, developing independence, and shaping futures they own. Through our work, including My Book of Independence and our training and consultancy services we embed co-production, trauma-informed practice, and youth voice into everything we do.
In a time when one in ten care leavers are assessed as homeless or at risk of homelessness, and many vulnerable young people remain locked out of education or work, it is unacceptable that young people continue to be sidelined or viewed as mere tokens to tick boxes.
Youth participation isn’t a “nice to have”; It’s a necessity. It’s how we close the gap on outcomes and build services that genuinely work.
If you are a practitioner, organisation or policy-maker working with young people, we invite you to shift from doing to young people to working with them. Let’s ensure their voices shape the services and opportunities they know they need. Because when we do that, when lived experience leads, we don’t just prepare young people for independence; we prepare systems to evolve, organisations to listen, and futures to grow.
Mana Gondolora
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