with... Jon Yates

The last 18 months have been some of the most challenging our sectors have faced. We’ve seen families devasted, professionals burned out and systems overwhelmed, what good can come from that? It’s been a heavy price to pay but increasing recognition of our public and third sector (of long-standing underfunding and undervaluing of colleagues) has rocketed and that is something to we at Capacity want to help maintain. Therefore, we’ve decided to both celebrate and stimulate this recognition with a series of events that will run from September to November this year – the REGROUP ‘Never More Needed’ series.

The full programme is still being finalised and will be winging its way to your inbox shortly, but in the meantime, I’m delighted to announce our first speaker, Jon Yates. Jon has a vast amount experience on both the commissioner and provider side of youth services, playing key roles in national policy development and project leadership with the Department of Education, founding sector leading youth organisations and now working as Executive Director the Youth Endowment Fund. Jon’s was ahead of most in seeing the potential this pandemic had to achieve something positive and his perfectly timed book ‘Fractured’ presents us as designers, commissioners and providers of public services with much food for thought as we reflect on the pandemic and its ability to unite people across all walks of life. The book and Jon’s thinking is based on the principle that ‘what unites us is stronger than what divides us’ and we believe this thinking and way of living is a great mantra for us to take into the coming years as our societies, and our sectors, start to recover.

The event will take place via Zoom on Friday 10th September at 10am, so keep it free if you can. To save you the task of cut and pasting this information across we’ll send you a diary invite over the next few days.

We really hope you can join us to in the first of this new series, I look forward to seeing you there.

Just email Chris Witterick at chris.witterick@capacitylab.co.uk to book your place