Alastair Campbell: ‘Young people need more than bursts of support to build their trust’

The government’s national youth strategy makes a big promise: 500,000 young people will have access to a trusted adult outside their home over the next decade. Alongside that sits £15 million to train youth workers, volunteers and others already supporting young people.

Having been a member since its inception of the Lost Boys Taskforce, which has been campaigning on the need for all boys and young men to have a trusted adult in their corner, of course I welcome this.

In recent years, far too many young people – especially boys – have felt shut out, disrespected, unheard and all too often pulled towards the most toxic corners of the internet. It is a good sign that the government is recognising that the antidote is human connection.

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But to make this real, and deliver genuine improvement in people’s lives, we need to be clear about what we mean by a trusted adult. Young Minds, the mental health charity for young people, put it best: “A trusted adult is someone a young person chooses; someone who listens without judgment or agenda, who is simply there to support and encourage them.”

Many in my generation – I am 68 – might wonder why family is not the place for that; but we have all at times needed help and support from people outside the family. I know I have, at various stages of my life, and I speak as someone who was blessed as a child with a loving family, tries to be a loving father now, but understands that sometimes there are things children don’t want to share with their parents. And speak to any teacher, any doctor, any child psychiatrist, anyone working in the justice system and they will confirm that the need for trusted adults to whom young people can turn is greater than ever.

Lessons from the past can play a useful role here. The Labour government I worked for delivered Sure Start, which helped families with young children, especially in disadvantaged areas. I consider it to be one of the best things we did, and it still angers me that it fell victim to the austerity programme of the government which followed us.

One of the reasons for the success of Sure Start was that it strengthened the web of relationships already holding communities together. It didn’t just parachute in outsiders. It brought people into shared, familiar spaces where trust could grow naturally. It wasn’t flashy or complicated – it worked because it was all about relationships.

Trusted adult work, if it is to mean anything, has to follow that spirit. There is a lot to digest in the new youth strategy, and this is just one part of it. For it to work, that same Sure Start understanding of the human relationships required to build people up is essential. That means accepting that trust can’t be built in a few neatly packaged sessions – it needs adults who stick around, who think in terms of years not weeks. It means seeing the whole young person, not just the isolated problem that happens to land on a referral form. 

It means supporting the adults too, because you can’t expect someone to be steady for a struggling teenager if the system isn’t steady for them. It means starting with the people already in a young person’s life – the coach, the pastoral worker, the teaching assistant – rather than parachuting in new faces with a script. 

It’s about the real moments that actually shift things: the quiet conversation after a tough day, the sense of being properly listened to. And it means recognising that this isn’t solo work. Young people are shaped by networks, so the adults around them need to act like they’re part of one, never claiming to have all the answers, but always at least there when the questions are asked.

So yes – the government deserves credit for recognising the scale and the urgency of the problem. But if we want this strategy to succeed, we need a shift in mindset: away from short-term fixes and towards the slow, steady work of building relationships. That’s how you create belonging. That’s how you rebuild community. And if we get that right, half a million young people won’t just have “access to a trusted adult”. They’ll have someone in their corner – chosen, reliable, and there when it really matters.

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