Civil Society Strategy sets out plans to remake youth work landscape

A raft of changes to the way local youth services will be provided have been unveiled in the government's Civil Society Strategy.

The strategy, Building a Future that Works for Everyone, includes plans to review statutory youth services guidance for councils, and give the National Citizen Service and uniformed youth groups a bigger role in local provision.

After a government commitment to produce a new youth policy statement was dropped last November, the strategy represents long-overdue attention on the youth work agenda by policy makers.

However, concerns remain around how services will be funded and whether the strategy's proposals will offer tangible, long-term improvement to young people's lives.

Here, youth work organisations and experts outline the key issues the strategy needs to address in order to be successful.

Review of statutory youth work guidance

Among the most welcome measures is the launch of a review of statutory youth services guidance for councils, the first re-evaluation since 2012.

This promises to give "greater clarity" around the expected standard of local youth provision and offer a clear vision of what good support for young people should look like.

Currently, under the Education Act 1996, every English council should "so far as reasonably practicable, secure for qualifying young persons… access to sufficient educational and leisure-time activities which are for the improvement of their wellbeing".

Although this was backed by the 2012 review, since then the definition of "sufficient" has become open to interpretation, due to a reduction in government grants to councils that has seen youth services spending cut by £400m and hundreds of youth centres close.

National Youth Agency chief executive Leigh Middleton wants to see fresh guidance reflect what the strategy refers to as the "transformational" impact of youth work.

He also wants the government to ensure that any improved guidance is accompanied by effective resourcing.

"Adequate isn't really good enough for our young people," says Middleton. "The offer should be as aspirational as possible.

"We need to be clear what we want for young people as a long-term driver to ensure that services are adequately resourced and funding is sustainable."

The Local Government Association also wants ministers to have "a realistic discussion about how this should be resourced given the financial context", says a spokesperson.

A commitment to providing specialist support to help young people develop, backed with funding for training, should also be a priority for the new guidance, says Paul Oginsky, chief executive of Personal Development Point and former government youth policy adviser.

"More clarity can only be a good thing. In its simplest form, I would like to ensure young people have access to two types of opportunities: one is leisure facilities and activities, and two is developmental programmes. The second of these requires investment in staff training," he says.

Distributing dormant bank account funds

In January, the government set aside £90m of £330m from dormant bank and building society accounts to help improve job opportunities for disadvantaged young people.

The strategy adds more clarity on how that money will be dispersed, with a pledge to create a new independent organisation to oversee distribution.

This new organisation will "harness the experience of grassroots youth workers, business and other local services to build a strong partnership of support around each young person", says the strategy.

While new money is welcome, many in the sector would prefer to see the government commit to providing sustained funding for wider youth provision.

Children England policy and campaigns manager, Chloe Darlington, says such "isolated pots of money" are "no replacement for sustainable, reliable funding for councils and universal services".

Similarly, Oginsky says: "Although £90m is a good start, it will spread quite thinly across the whole country."

UK Youth's head of membership and policy, Kayleigh Wainwright, hopes the new organisation listens to the sector and ensures this pot is spent on long-term initiatives.

"With the establishment of this new body, we hope these funds go to the young people who need it most through programmes that create sustainability within the youth sector to ensure longevity and, ultimately, support more young people into employment," she says.

NCS influence set to grow

The influence that the government's flagship youth social action initiative, the National Citizen Service (NCS), has in local communities looks set to grow.

The strategy wants to look at ways to ensure the NCS is "fully embedded" into the wider youth sector.

Already the NCS Trust, which runs the initiative, is taking action to ensure it can better link up with local youth providers, including councils and charities.

The trust is to launch a new procurement process next month that will see the role of regional managing partner removed in its South West, North East and London operations. This will see the NCS take direct control over managing local contracts and liaising with its partners and follows a pilot in the South West, which boosted the number of providers the NCS works with in the region by 50 per cent.

NCS Trust chief executive Michael Lynas hopes the new arrangement will improve both the number of local providers it can link up with and the quality of that relationship to ensure NCS is used as one of a number of "pathways" to improve young people's lives.

"It is what is happening in various parts of the country currently where that sense of pathways is working really well. We want to make sure that is happening everywhere in the country," he says.

The NCS dominates central government youth spending, accounting for 95 per cent of the £667m spent by the Office for Civil Society between 2014/15 and 2017/18 on youth programmes.

Sharon Long, strategic director at Partnership for Young London, urges ministers to ensure all local youth services are also supported financially.

She says: "No one is going to turn down resourcing for young people, but people want to know how this fits into everything else that is going on.

"For example, so that young people can do something like NCS and then come back from it and volunteer in their local youth groups or get additional mental health support."

Expanding uniformed youth groups

Uniformed youth groups should play a greater role in local youth provision in areas of high deprivation, says the strategy.

The Scouts Association has welcomed this stance and says that it has already made a commitment to expand into deprived areas as part of its own five-year strategy, which was unveiled in May. This details how it plans to almost double the number of units in such areas from the current tally of 600 to a total of 1,100 by 2023.

A Scouts Association spokesperson welcomed the government's backing for the role of uniformed groups in local youth provision, but hopes it is backed by extra investment.

"We have been working with the government to explore how it can support us to open more sections in areas of deprivation and are hopeful that the announcement in the new Civil Society Strategy signals a commitment from the government to invest in uniformed youth groups," she said.

Youth United Foundation, which represents uniformed youth groups, has developed a mapping tool to assist its members target areas of deprivation in which to expand.

However, foundation director Samantha Hyde warns that such an expansion is not without challenges, such as countering a perception that uniformed groups are "a solely white middle-class activity".

"That is simply not true," she adds. "Our cadets and uniformed members come from all backgrounds, ethnicities and faiths, and it is those young people who inspire the next generation to ensure this continues."

Giving young people a say in shaping youth policy

Young people need to have a "meaningful" say in how youth policy is formed and services are delivered, says the strategy.

The government hopes to achieve this through the setting up of a "civil society youth steering group" within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to oversee the development of youth policy.

Also within the DCMS, a national young commissioners and inspectors group will be set up to involve young people directly in commissioning and evaluating national youth programmes.

Additionally, a pledge is made to "build systems to ensure that young people" have a role to play in delivery.

Youth policy consultant James Cathcart says for these groups to offer young people a genuine say, they need to be a "two-way dialogue - not just a one way consultation, but a means to hear young people wanting to inform and influence new policy".

British Youth Council chair Anna Barker says the relationship between policy makers and young people at a national and local level needs to be based on "honesty and respect" if the proposed groups are to succeed.

Barker wants them to be set up so "young people can give their opinions honestly in a safe and kind environment where they are listened to".

She adds: "They need to also steer away from tokenism where young people just come in, give their opinion and leave."

How young people will be recruited and whether they will be independent of government are important details to consider, says Cathcart.

Barker adds that through local youth councils, there is already a cohort of young people with the skills and experience as independent advisers ready to help form policy and develop services.