Six Years as Chief Executive at YHFF

Today, almost 30% of people living in Hammersmith & Fulham are under 24 years old. 32% of those young people are living in poverty. That’s almost 17,000 children and young people experiencing poverty in their everyday lives. Complex social, cultural, educational and economic issues, combined with mental health, rising crime, anti-social behaviour and pressured services mean that growing up here can be difficult. And yet, a network of talented, heroic and passionate organisations work tirelessly every day to support children and young people who call Hammersmith & Fulham home, with opportunities to develop their own unique skills, talents and interests.

As the inaugural Chief Executive at YHFF, I have been responsible for everything from establishing HR & Finance systems as well as designing and developing our policies & procedures, recruiting and supporting our talented and committed staff team, leading our communications and marketing, and supporting our Board of Trustees with the governance of the charity, as well as our annual business planning and overall strategic direction. Whilst these duties are not unique to the role of a charity Chief Executive, they show the depth and breadth of my own development over the last six years. I have learned so much upon the way and I plan to use the knowledge gained to continuously improve mine, and the charities' performance.

As I reflected on everything that we have achieved during the last six years, I wanted to share some of the highlights with you.

Some of our highlights include:

• In February 2022, we successfully secured £350,000 from the GLA to deliver a Careers Mentoring project for 16 – 25-year-olds called ‘Ready, Steady, Connect’. The programme is now one year into delivery and has supported 40 of young people across the borough so far.

• We also successfully secured £430,000 from John Lyon's Charity for the DRIFT project, supporting transitions for children moving from primary school to secondary.

• We helped to co-produce the inaugural ‘Youth Voice and Engagement Strategy’ in April 2022 supporting youth leadership and representation and outlines our collaborative approach to strengthening the reach and impact of youth voice and embedding co-production with young people in Hammersmith & Fulham.

• We have distributed £50,000 in grants to Supplementary Schools across the borough to deliver English, Maths, Science, and IT lessons. These sessions were developed and led by Black and Asian organisations, helping to engage often marginalised young people and families from minority backgrounds.

• We have awarded £100,000 of small grants to local youth organisations through our Young Grant Makers Panel in partnership with John Lyon's Charity, helping to support often underfunded, and underrepresented local youth services, including social enterprises across Hammersmith and Fulham.

• We have played a leading role as part of the steering groups for projects addressing health inequalities across our borough, as well as tackling a lack of trust and engagement between Black residents, North West London NHS and Hammersmith & Fulham Council.

• We have continued to deliver cross-sector networks on critical themes including Inclusion, Safeguarding, Violence Reduction, Relationships between Young People and the Police. These networks helpfully bring organisations together on equal terms, to share, learn, reflect and exchange. We help organisations to share information, policies, best practice and ideas to progress on these key issues as well as develop and explore solutions to shared challenges, and seek opportunities for further collaboration. This work helps to mobilise our sector, and keep us moving forward, together.

I have also looked to the future and to our priorities in 2023 and beyond. The insights we have gained through our activities have helped us to shape our priorities about what we know is needed in Hammersmith and Fulham.

These strategic priorities are to:

1. Celebrate and champion local youth services

2. Drive investment and revenue for local youth organisations

3. Build our Membership and develop collaborative networks and partnerships

4. Campaign with young people on the issues they care about

5. Develop and support young leaders to flourish

We have come a long way since 2017. There is a lot that we are excited about and looking forward to over the next few years. We are focussed on continuing our development and our impact in the borough as we move ahead in delivering our strategic priorities over the coming years.

We are all about collaboration and believe that working together across the youth sector is the course we must take to unlock investment, and drive growth in local youth provision in the years ahead. Our approach will help us to become a consistent, credible, modern and enduring infrastructure organisation for our members, ensuring that local organistions, institutions, and young people can rely on us to provide the support that they want and need.

Thank you to everyone who has been on our journey with us so far, and I look forward to the future with curiosity, excitement, and ambition.

Gareth Dixon, Chief Executive

Young Hammersmith & Fulham Foundation

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash