Youth Unlimited: Together We Do Enough

Craig Lloyd didn’t set out to run his own organisation. He was a Somerset County Council youth worker, managing the Taunton Detached Team, providing street based youth work services directly in the parks and on the estates where young people choose to be. The team were also running sports activities and a sexual health clinic.  What he noticed was that young people weren’t just coming for the clinic. They were coming because it was a safe space. Somewhere they could talk, be honest, and be heard. The need was obvious and it was growing.

When redundancy came, Craig still wanted to do youth work. So he and a colleague made a straightforward decision: just keep going. Youth Unlimited was born not from a business plan but from a refusal to leave young people without somewhere to turn. A third colleague soon joined and a bid to Bridgwater Town Council came in and kept things going for a couple of years. Since then, Youth Unlimited has evolved, working primarily across Sedgemoor and Taunton providing a range of youth work services, targeting the communities where young people face the greatest risk of exploitation, isolation and disadvantage and where accessing support is hardest. Be that for lack of transport, low confidence or never having left the estate they grew up on. Youth Unlimited goes to them.

In those early years as an independent organisation, Craig found himself isolated in a way he hadn’t anticipated. When he was working for Somerset County Council, there was a collective sense of being part of something bigger. When he went out on his own, that disappeared. “There was no one. I had that feeling of being completely alone.” And beyond the personal cost, isolation has a practical one too: without connection to a wider network, small providers can miss what others are already doing, duplicate effort, and lose sight of where the real gaps are.

Joining the Somerset Youth Alliance changed that. It gave Craig connection, a professional peer group, access to training, and opportunities for collaboration rather than competition. “For all of us it comes down to what will be best for young people.” That mindset has shaped how Youth Unlimited approaches its work: not as a standalone provider trying to cover everything, but as one strong part of a stronger whole.

That philosophy is most visible in Youth Unlimited’s involvement in HYPE (link to HYPE case study). Craig is clear about what makes it work. “Quite often you feel collaboration is an extra and you ask yourself how am I going to fit that in? But working with HYPE has never felt like a huge ask. The admin was dealt with. All I had to do was the delivery. That was my bit.” Organisation and administration, he says, are what make collaboration possible. Get those right, and the rest follows naturally.

The impact of that work reveals itself in ways Craig never expected. The young person who tracked him down years later to volunteer with him. The woman who told him she’d grown up on an estate, unable to connect with anyone, and the youth workers were the only people she’d talk to, and that he was one of them. He hadn’t known it at the time, he was just doing his job. She’s now running her own mindfulness business for young people.

The Alliance has also helped restore something Craig felt the sector had quietly lost. Its identity. “Lots of young people don’t know what a youth worker does. There was a time when every community had one.” Being part of the Alliance and being able to point to a collective, professional network makes it easier to make that case. It shows what’s available. It creates visibility. And for organisations like Youth Unlimited, which could be overlooked as simply a small local provider, it provides the kind of professional standing that opens doors.

Youth Unlimited could grow further, Craig knows that. But he’s equally clear about what matters more than size. “To know we’re doing enough.”