THE NATIONAL LEADERSHIP NETWORK

by Susanne Richards

Introduction

For a long time, I believed that leadership was a natural personality trait: that you were either born a leader or you weren’t. But if you spend any time with care-experienced young people, you quickly realise that their leadership isn’t the problem. Opportunity is.

Care-experienced young people navigate systems and processes that most adults are lucky enough to never have to encounter. Social workers, reviews, orders, children’s hearings – the list, unfortunately – does go on. All set up to make decisions that shape the lives of young people who are subject to them, but which are rarely shaped with them. This doesn’t show a lack of readiness; it is proof of adaptability and insight. Yet too often, these same young people will be invited to “have a say” in the latest consultation, while the real power and decision-making ability stays firmly elsewhere.

And when young people aren’t paid for their contributions to these discussions, it sends an unmistakeable message: your experiences are valuable enough to use, but not to recognise, to appreciate, or to even renumerate. If we are serious about genuine leadership, a move away from this tokenistic youth voice is essential. Leadership is not harnessed in a feedback form or a focus group, it grows when young people are supported, trusted, and compensated for their expertise. If we are experts by lived experience, that means we should be treated in the same way other – ‘professionals – are for their expertise. Otherwise it is simply rhetoric.

It’s not about capability

I’ve been reflecting on the language we hear used to describe care-experienced young people, and how deficit based it can be: “hard to reach,” “vulnerable,” “non-engaging.” Consistently labelling young people in this way only reinforces the idea that they do not have what is takes to be leaders, that is requires some kind of polished confidence or stability that care-experienced young people are assumed not to have. Let me stress that this is not the reality.

If anything, care-experienced young people are already demonstrating leadership skills long before they’re ever invited into leadership spaces. They are forced to navigate change and uncertainty, advocate for themselves, manage relationships with multiple professionals and make decisions that impact their lives in ways that most young people never have to. So, if the real issue isn’t capability, what is it? It’s access. It’s opportunity. It’s trust. It’s the structures around our young people in care that are not designed to elevate voice, but often to suppress it.

The opportunity gap

Believe me, there is no shortage of consultations, surveys or focus groups involving young people. Organisations love to talk about youth voice and participation. But more often than not, that’s where it ends, with a form, a quote, a one-off meeting. Young people give their views over and over again, we say thank you, and then everything carries on exactly as it did before.

We are missing power. We are missing decision-making authority. Room to shape the agendas. Long term roles instead of one-off invitations. Clear pathways for progression and influence. Many care-experienced young people will never be presented with any of these opportunities, not because the are not capable or are undeserving, but because they simply do not exist. Leadership comes from being part of the process from the beginning, not being asked to approve the final version. If we want real leadership, we need to redesign the room – not the young people trying to walk into it.

Paying young people for their time

This point really can’t be overstated: if you don’t pay young people, especially those with care-experience, you exclude them. Many young people are juggling education, work, caring responsibilities or financial pressure. Asking them to contribute for free assumes they have the time, resources and stability to do so, and that unfortunately isn’t always the case.

Payment for their time isn’t a nice gesture, its recognition and fairness. When adult professionals are paid and young people aren’t, it becomes painfully clear whose voice is being treated as expertise and whose is being treated as charity. Paying young people for their time shows them that their insight has value in a real, tangible way.

Creating space for leadership

Care-experienced young people are often subject to more scrutiny, more risk assessments, and more assumptions about what they can and can’t handle than their peers. This protective instinct comes from a good place, I’m sure, but it can also end up limiting opportunities and ultimately restricting autonomy.

Leadership doesn’t grow in environments where every move you make is questioned. Young people need adults who trust them, clear expectations, space to be flexible, and a sense of emotional safety. Most importantly, as we all do, they need the chance to try and fail without fear of being judged. Without these foundations, we cannot expect confidence or leadership to develop. These asks aren’t extraordinary either, they are the basics of any healthy leadership environment.

Co-production: not just a buzzword

The word co-production gets thrown around a lot, and in practice, it means something very simple: working with young people, not on behalf of them. It means involving them from the start of the process, not consulting them at the end. True co-production happens when we share power rather than protect it.

When given the freedom to, young people can shape agendas, make decisions and have honest conversations. This requires roles that have real influence and long-term involvement.

In my experience, when young people are genuinely involved, the work is richer, more grounded and frankly, more effective. Young people spot things and have ideas that professionals can often miss. They bring clarity, originality and lived understanding. That is leadership.

The leaders are already there

So what I am saying is, care-experienced young people absolutely have the skills, the insight and the potential to lead. What is missing is a system designed to recognise that.

If we want to change that we have to:

· Pay young people for their expertise

· Stop treating lived experience as optional

· Open up real leadership pathways

· Trust young people with decisions

· Remove the unnecessary barriers that keep them out of the conversations

· Build structures that don’t just listen to young people, but act with them

The care-experienced community doesn’t lack leaders.

It lacks the opportunities those leaders deserve.

And it’s time we changed that.

---