Creating Systems Change via Youth-Led Commissioning

Executive Summary

Funded by the Youth Futures Foundation, the Connected Futures (CF) Partnership in the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) was established to address the barriers to employment faced by young people with Learning Disabilities (LD) and/or Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASC) in the Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham, and Nottinghamshire (D2N2) region through youth-led, placed-based service commissioning and delivery. Currently, only 1.8% of working-age people with LD and/or ASC in the region are in employment—significantly below the national average of 4.8%. This group remains one of the most overlooked in employment policy and practice.

Launched in 2022, the partnership brought together a wide range of stakeholders, including local government, voluntary and community organisations, service providers, and employers. In 2023, the partnership set up the Youth Voice Ambassador (YVA) programme, whereby they employed five young people with LD and/or ASC as Youth Voice Ambassadors (YVAs) to lead the partnership’s commissioning process to improve employment opportunities for their peers.

Government organisations and practitioners increasingly recognise the importance of involving service users at every stage of service commissioning, development, and delivery. For example, in England, public involvement is a core principle in health and social care, grounded in the belief that lived experience is vital for designing effective and responsive services. The UK Government also promotes “collaborative commissioning”, where service users actively co-design services, make decisions, and contribute to delivery.

Although research on user-led and youth-led commissioning is growing, there is still limited evidence on the leadership role of young people with LD and/or ASC in these processes. This study contributes to address this gap by taking as a case study the YVA programme developed by the partnership to understand how youth-led commissioning works in practice, the unique value it brings, its wider impact on inclusive service design, and its potential for systems change.

Key insights

The research identified eight key principles for commissioning to be ‘authentically’ led by young people with LD and/or ASC. Youth-led commissioning is about:

1. …more than consulting young people
2. …transferring power to young people
3. …involving young people in every stage of commissioning
4. …adults and institutional actors acting as enables providing support, guidance and resources
5. …trusting and valuing young people, their lived experiences and their abilities to effect change
6. …adapting the process of commissioning to the needs and pace of young people
7. …transparency over the funding, resources and scope for institutional actors to effect change
8. …young people having control over budget and resources