Building belief changes futures
When you spend time working with young people, it’s easy to focus on the practical things they need: careers advice, qualifications, work experience and knowledge of different pathways.
Those things are all important. But over the past two years, through our Partnerships for People and Place 2 (PfPP2) programme, we’ve been reminded that before any of those things can truly make a difference, something else must come first.
Every young person needs someone who believes in them.
That’s why I’m so pleased to see the publication of the independent evaluation of PfPP2 by City-REDI at the University of Birmingham.
For everyone involved in delivering the programme, the report is encouraging because it confirms what we witnessed every day in schools across East Birmingham.
The evaluation found improvements in young people’s confidence, optimism about the future, understanding of career pathways and ability to make informed decisions about what comes next. It also identified ongoing one-to-one mentoring by a trusted adult as the programme’s defining strength and the mechanism through which change occurred.
That finding resonates deeply with us.
At Loconomy, we’ve never believed that preventing young people from becoming NEET is simply about providing information. Young people can access information online in seconds. What many need is someone who listens without judgement, helps them challenge limiting beliefs, broadens their horizons and supports them to see opportunities they may never have considered.
That’s exactly what our Coach Mentors set out to do.
Week after week, they build trusted relationships with young people, helping them explore aspirations, understand different pathways and develop the confidence to make informed choices about their future.
Reading the evaluation, I was particularly struck by the evidence that many young people finished the programme with fewer perceived barriers to achieving their goals. More than half reported that nothing was holding them back from their ideal job by the end of the programme, and far fewer believed they weren’t “clever enough” or that opportunities weren’t available to people like them.
Those changes matter.
When young people begin to believe that opportunities are within reach, they become more willing to explore, ask questions and take positive next steps. That shift in mindset is difficult to measure, but it can have a lasting impact on education, employment and life chances.
I’m incredibly proud of our Coach Mentors, whose dedication, patience and professionalism made these outcomes possible. I’m equally grateful to Birmingham City Council for commissioning the programme, to City-REDI for carrying out such a robust independent evaluation, and to the schools, employers and partners who worked alongside us throughout the programme.
But most of all, I’m proud of the young people themselves.
They embraced new experiences, challenged their own assumptions and were willing to think differently about what their futures could look like.
The evaluation provides a strong evidence base for early intervention through trusted mentoring and coaching. It also reinforces something we’ve long believed at Loconomy: meaningful change begins with relationships.
When we invest in young people’s confidence, aspirations and sense of possibility, we’re not simply helping them prepare for work.
We’re helping them believe in what they can become.
None of this would have been possible without the dedication of our Coach Mentors – Karen Gaze, Mashkura Begum, Akila Sharif and Ajminara Begum – whose commitment and belief in every young person made this programme what it was. I would also like to thank Sue Groves, whose work in helping to develop our coach mentoring model has been instrumental in shaping the approach that PfPP2 is built upon.
