Having focused on youth provision and intervention in Nottinghamshire and specifically Ashfield for over 30 years, members of Function saw a need for energetic, nonprofit work in this area. We formed our organisation to provide sensible solutions to a growing disconnect between education, other county wide provision and young people in local communities.
In 1994, a then proactive youth service set up a motor project in Kirkby in Ashfield to address disaffection and diversion from crime.
If we are to learn anything from experience, history suggests we may have an increasingly important role to play in highlighting the needs of a seemingly systemically isolated cohort of the community that appears to have very little voice and agency regarding their present and future stake in local and wider society.
Our mission derives from an understanding of an increasing number of young people who apparently have more confidence in their online version of themselves, 'don't fit' the education model provided in secondary school , 'need' pharmaceutical intervention to be a young person that 'fits in' society, an increasing number of young people that are isolated from a functional, productive relationship with their future, and increasing number of young people that are disaffected, sometimes criminalised as a result of being arguably shortchanged through their adolescence ,farmed toward targets and having their life hours stolen by well engineered social media.
Our mission at 'Function' is to recognise, to engage ,to enable a sense of agency and control with the growing number of young people that appear not to fit in a world we adults create . We aim to provide a voice, a platform and a means of advocacy for Young People and the communities in which they live.
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