Our Impact

Here you will find a sample of our most impactful work from 2017/18. The Youth Sport Trust 2018 Impact Report shares not only our reach, but the wider impact our programmes have on young people's lives - increasing their confidence, improving their relationships and making them happier. By harnessing the power of sport and play to enhance wellbeing, boost attainment and achievement and help young people develop the life skills, we can help them thrive, be happy and healthy. To read an overview of our 2018 Impact Report please click here.

The Problem: A crisis in young people's wellbeing...

Over the past 12 months, research continued to paint a concerning picture of young people’s wellbeing. Young people were increasingly likely to be obese, to be struggling with their mental health or feeling isolated and lonely.

We found that too many young people are:

• Inactive - 82.5% of young people are not meeting CMO guidelines of more than 60 minutes of activity every day
• Stressed - 92% of 15 to 16-year-olds suffer from exam stress
• Lonely - 45% of young people aged 10-15 years old reported they felt lonely either some of the time or often
• Lacking confidence - one in five girls told us that they lack confidence
• Overweight - one in three children are overweight or obese by the final year of primary school
• Unhappy - 27% of children aged 10-15 rated their happiness as low or medium
• Struggling with mental health - one in eight young people aged 5-19 has at least one mental health disorder
• Lacking opportunity - 760,000 young people in the UK aged 24-years-old (10.9%) are not in education, employment or training.

Meanwhile, evidence shows these issues are magnified for girls, young people from BAME communities and young people facing disadvantage.

The Solution: How we're tackling it...

It was in this context that YST launched a new five-year-strategy ‘Believing in every child’s future’ which put tackling this decline in young people’s wellbeing at its heart.

Here, we set out not just our reach, but the impact our projects and programmes are having on young people’s lives – increasing their confidence, improving their relationships and making them happier. Getting young people active is only the start. The real measure of our success lies in harnessing the power of sport and play to enhance wellbeing, to boost attainment and achievement and to help young people develop the life skills which will help them to thrive, be happy and healthy.

During this last year, our charity built on its proud history of developing and running successful programmes, continued to innovate new products and pioneered new ways of working to transform young people’s lives for the better. It also saw us work to grow our influence as a leading voice for the power of sport and play and the need to tackle cuts to young people’s Physical Education.

Examples of how we worked to tackle the decline in young people's wellbeing in 2017/18 are:

• Improving mental wellbeing - 61% of young people reached through our Active in Mind programme are now coping better as a result of taking part
• Promoting healthy, active lifestyles - nine in ten pupils at our Hub Schools have tried a new sport or activity in the past three months
• Developing life skills - 95% of girls trained as Football Activators through our work with the FA felt they had developed life skills
• Boosting attainment and achievement - 96% of young people supported to become a Young Ambassador in Wales now feel better prepared for life after school, including further education and employment
• Building connections between young people - three-quarters of teachers said that pupils strengthened friendships and made new friends through inclusive festivals we delivered with Allianz
• Enhancing support networks - 22,095 teachers received continuous professional development training from us to deliver high-quality inclusive PE and sport.

Click on any of the tiles below to find out more about our work over the last 12 months.