As part of our impact report blog series, Ella Espinoza-Smyth Programmes and Partnership Advisor, Co-op Foundation, talks about the Co-op Foundation and Young Scot’s latest project on loneliness and youth people and the barriers young people experiencing loneliness are facing.
To find out more about Young Scot’s impact please read our Impact Report 2019/20.

The Co-op Foundation are old friends of Young Scot. Our latest collaboration, a major project on loneliness and youth people, involves the same need to shift established perceptions. Ella EspinozaSmyth, Programmes and Partnership Advisor with the Co-op Foundation, sets out some of the barriers:

Lots of adults think that young people can’t be lonely. It’s the most social time of their lives, not to mention social media. Young people are never alone! Or so they think

The reality is very different with young people reporting significant problems with social isolation despite being constantly connected.

Social media can overcome many problems of isolation. At least for those who do have smartphones,’ says Ella. ‘But it is no substitute for being in the same physical space as other people.

Friendships are fundamental to all our lives. There is a lot of interest, rightly, in supporting young people’s positive mental health. But what attracted us to this project is that it applies a lot of sound theoretical thinking to finding very practical solutions.

Innovative and sensitive pilot work from Brannock High School, North Lanarkshire, and the Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, Perth and Kinross, have explored many of these issues.

As the project moves on to its next stage, Ella sees the role of funder to be a delicate balance.

If it doesn’t seem too much of a paradox, we are both hands off and hands on. We have a long relationship with Young Scot, so we are happy to let the project run. We know Young Scot will deliver, and we have always been impressed by your commitment to co-design.

But we also like to be involved in the learning from projects. Being part of a dialogue with means that we can see where the project might be going. We can plan for the next stage. Also, the experience of one project might influence other initiatives we are involved in.

We have organised seminars where several of our funded projects can come together and share experiences. It is fascinating to see crosscurrents and patterns emerging from very different work.