#147 - Buying back our children.

The Action Factory Podcast - Youth Work that Lasts a Lifetime.

Welcome to The Action Factory Podcast, and it’s great to be back! After a long hiatus due to moving house, I want to talk about how we might save our council a few million pounds.

My name is Michael Dawson, and I developed a universal, principle-based framework for youth work teams. During the design of the Solutions Toolkit, I’m often asked about my experience. It’s broad and covers most sectors, but I’ll always refer to three fantastic and revolutionary projects that I was lucky enough to have been involved in.

In today’s episode, I want to talk about one of them. It was a project where I jokingly used to say that, in private industry, we would all be driving Mercedes.

Why?

Because, based purely on the financials, we were saving city councils millions of pounds a year. We did this by keeping young people at home instead of in the care system. In fact, (after recording) I found a fascinating article in The Guardian by George Monbiot that confirms exactly what I’ve been saying.

If you’re a City Council influencer, we could easily do this again in a new and modern way.

In this episode, I’ll describe our service and what we did. Sadly, it’s a kind of rise and fall of the most cost-effective service the City Council ever created.

Although I found the article below after recording, I think you’ll find it interesting:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/18/child-care-cost-year-wealth-funds-councils-britain-residential

Oh and the Simpsons of course

Finally, if you’re a youth work team who would be interested in building team consistency, better confidence in crises, and offering better outcomes, you might want to check out my webinar below.

WATCH THE FREE WEBINAR