The charity works to improve social mobility and address the mass inequality of access to youth services by working with and through a network of locally accessible youth organisations across the UK, ensuring that the youth sector is strengthened and supported, and that provision is youth-led and evidence-based.

Widely seen as a leading voice of the youth sector and, working in partnership with more than 5,000 youth organisations, the charity also delivers direct services and has established a strong reputation for delivering high-quality, large-scale skills development programmes for young people from predominantly disadvantaged backgrounds. Programmes are focused around five key areas of citizenship (including politics, history and philosophy), STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), Arts, Wellbeing (including sport, physical and mental health) and enterprise (including finance, management, business and employability).

Youth advocacy is important to the organisation, informing everything it does. It includes youth representation on the board (with full voting rights) and a national steering group of 25 young representatives, called UK Youth Voice, representing every region and nation of the UK.

In 2020, UK Youth was awarded the final Better Futures grant - £150,000 over two years for a street-based youth work programme that aims to address the high levels of disadvantage experienced by young people in Blackburn, an area of significant urban deprivation. The project will aim to reach vulnerable young people on their terms, in a space and at a time that works for them.