Positive for youth?
Charlotte Goddard
Monday, January 9, 2012
Released just before Christmas, the government's youth policy produced no festive funding treats and put local areas in charge of forging new methods of delivery. Charlotte Goddard looks at its implications
The government’s eagerly awaited youth policy paper, published in the run-up to Christmas, has been broadly welcomed by the large national youth charities. But to others in the sector, such as Sally Kosky, national officer at youth work union Unite, it sounds "the death knell for the modern youth service".
It was clear from the outset that, unlike the previous government’s major youth policy paper Youth Matters, which contained funding for a number of national initiatives, there would be no extra money for services. Today’s economic climate is different to the one back then in 2005. But there is also a distinct policy difference. The coalition government is keen to trumpet its hands-off approach, telling local authorities the outcomes that they should be achieving rather than prescribing how they should be achieved.
Positive for Youth was published on 19 December. In the same week, there were news stories about cuts to youth services in Derbyshire, Somerset and West Sussex, among other places. Services for young people have been disproportionately affected by the budget reductions contained in the 2010 comprehensive spending review. Unison claims that £200m of cuts will have been made to youth services by April. Positive for Youth, to no one’s great surprise, does not introduce ringfenced funding for youth services. It merely cites various funding pledges already made public to help families, aid parenting and enable young people to prosper in education and training.
But it does highlight various alternative methods of delivery and funding for local youth services. The paper puts considerable emphasis on joining up policies affecting young people from different parts of government, such as health, youth justice and employment, although most of the policies and commitments are already in train.
Youth organisations may lament the lack of funding ("A good checklist but no cheque" is the reaction of James Cathcart, chief executive of the British Youth Council); and the vagueness of some of the policy (a "missed opportunity", says David Wright, chief executive of the Confederation of Heads of Young People’s Services). But in general, they are enthused by the commitment to give young people "the metaphorical keys to the town hall" through inspection of local youth services, involvement in commissioning and the "youth-proofing" of local and national policy.
Indeed, listening to young people’s views is a central thread of the policy. The pledge to retain and clarify local authorities’ statutory duty to secure sufficient activities for young people is also broadly welcomed – although Wright says one of the "sadnesses" about the paper is that the guidance is not yet there. Some of the generally warm reception may be down to the extent of discussion around the paper before publication, with both young people and youth groups contributing to an extensive consultation that began last March. "The process has taken forever, but they have bent over backwards to get every view on board," says Cathcart.
Positive for Youth has also involved many of the larger youth groups in the development and implementation of its policy. The BYC is involved in developing the national scrutiny group; the Catalyst consortium, led by the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services, is working on workforce development, measurement of outcomes and social financing; and UK Youth is working with the National Children’s Bureau on brokering relationships between youth groups and businesses.
Meanwhile, the chief executives of seven charities – Prince’s Trust, Foyer Federation, Catch22, Rathbone, Barnardo’s, Groundwork Trust and Youth United – sit on the Youth Action Group, along with ministers from nine government departments, to "scrutinise and advise on" the impact of government policies on disadvantaged young people, particularly around barriers to employment.
Such inclusiveness gives the youth sector a voice. Fiona Blacke, chief executive of the NYA, says: "This collaborative approach is one we have welcomed."
But some view it as the youth sector kowtowing to the government’s agenda. Tony Taylor is the founder of the In Defence of Youth Work campaign, which seeks to promote youth work as a democratic and voluntary way of working with young people that stands apart from more general young people’s services. "The senior management of major voluntary organisations made their, and thus their agencies’, minds up that survival depended on adapting to the State agenda," he says.
"Interestingly, they have rationalised that the way forward is for their organisations to embrace the notion of youth services… This is an attractive, if disingenuous stance, as it allows these leading organisations to put in bids to deliver almost any form of work with young people, be it early intervention, family and youth social work, restorative justice, preparation for employment and training, and so on."
If the vision of Positive for Youth is to be realised, the way that youth work and young people’s services are delivered will look radically different. This is a process that has already begun in many areas, such as the Youth Innovation Zones, local authority areas testing approaches that involve all local partners to serve young people.
Children’s minister Tim Loughton has not been shy about expressing his opinion that some council youth services are stuck in a "time warp" and overly dependent on public money. "Some local authorities have already got partnerships, working with social enterprises and corporations, looking to deliver a mixture of services," he tells CYP Now. "That is what we are trying to move towards, varied sources of funding."
Delivering services at lower cost
The urgent need to find ways to deliver services at lower cost chimes with the government’s political stance, which is to shift away from state provision of services to create more of a market, with councils retaining responsibility for securing services in their area.
Positive for Youth calls on councils to work with young people and agencies to "determine which services need specific public funding and which can be secured through other routes, so that public funding is targeted primarily on young people at risk of poor outcomes". The government is, however, expanding its open-access National Citizenship Service to reach 90,000 young people by 2014 and is also looking at ways to expand the Cadet Forces.
Coffee shop chain Starbucks’ Youth Action programme is praised in the paper: 16- to 24-year-olds can apply for funding and volunteer hours from employees by pitching ideas to a Dragons’ Den-style panel. The government wants to see more of this kind of arrangement. It has funded Business in the Community, NCB and UK Youth to develop a model for brokering relationships between businesses and the youth sector. The initiative will look at employee volunteering, in-kind backing and financial support, and will aim to promote the benefits that working with youth groups can bring to businesses.
Loughton is unconcerned about potential compromise – in the Starbucks example, this might occur if young people wanted money to campaign against the spread of multinational chains, for example. "Some young people might have problems with Starbucks, but the best way of sorting out those problems is getting into a dialogue, not throwing chairs through their windows," he says. "By getting involved in the community, companies have better production from their workforce, better staff loyalty – it is good for business as well."
Social investment, where money is invested into programmes in exchange for agreed outcomes, is another potential funding model. Money from dormant bank accounts is to be used for social investment through the Big Society Bank. The Catalyst consortium is working with voluntary youth organisations to increase their understanding and readiness for social investment – something the education select committee called for in its report into services for young people. But NCVYS chief executive Susanne Rauprich emphasises that this money will be capital funding and is not designed to replace lost revenue. "It is not a fund to which you can just apply; you have to demonstrate that you are ready to work with social finance," she says.
Catalyst is also developing a social franchising mechanism to enable the spread of best practice. "If someone develops a good programme in Devon, this will allow others to use it in Cumbria," explains Rauprich. "It will provide support and advice on how projects can best be replicated." There will also be "some sort of matchmaking process", putting existing projects in touch with those looking for projects to run.
Local services would find themselves more able to access different forms of funding if they were not run directly by the councils. Rather than making cuts in youth services, Positive for Youth calls for "proposals from local authorities and their staff for new forms of delivery of youth services, including mutuals and joint venture partnerships with voluntary sector charities".
Chyps’ Wright is sceptical however that new ways of delivery will be cheaper, as local authorities still have to pay for youth services, whoever is delivering them. "What we have seen is a tremendous amount of money being taken out of services for young people and we want to see that being reinstated," he says. "If business can support youth activities that is welcome, but the money will not be reinstated through alternative service delivery."
Positive for Youth also suggests that councils might commission using a payment-by-results system, something the education select committee report came out against. "We do not believe that a system whereby local authorities withhold payment until a service demonstrates specific results is suited to the funding of youth services," it said. Certainly, services for young people have often struggled to demonstrate the impact of their work. One aim for the youth policy is to create measures and targets that will not only allow money to be targeted effectively but also hold local authorities to account for the quality of services they secure.
The government will continue to publish data showing how much is spent on young people’s services at a local level. The Department for Education has commissioned the Centre for the Analysis of Youth Transitions to develop standards for evidence that can be used to measure the effectiveness of specific projects, and Catalyst to develop a framework of outcomes for young people, including resilience and confidence growth, and tools that can be used to measure progress in these outcomes. Finally, the Young Foundation and the National Youth Agency are working on a "calculator" to measure the financial return of youth interventions.
But many youth workers feel that working towards outcomes runs counter to the aims of youth work. "As ‘outcomes’ have become predetermined though performance and results-led regimes and prescriptive commissioning arrangements, there is concern that youth participation will be mere tokenism," says Graeme Tiffany, vice-chair at the Federation for Detached Youth Work. "And if a profit motive enters the equation, there is likely to be further pressure on workers to engage in programme-led rather than negotiated practice. Detached youth workers especially will tell you ‘what works’ depends on the individual, the community, the context, the culture and a commitment to democratic ways of working."
While others have welcomed the policy paper’s vision, there is some concern about how the vision can be made real. If local authorities are to be given a free rein, who will make sure young people get what they are promised and that councils are delivering on their statutory duty? Chyps’ Wright says: "It is important that someone in the local authority is made responsible for securing and delivering the work. In the past, this has been the principal youth officer, but over the past 18 months or longer, we have seen a diminution of that role. You need to have someone sufficiently senior who will make the work happen."
Although the Secretary of State for Education has the power to intervene in inadequate youth services, it seems that local authorities would have to be making an almighty mess of things before that happens. If there is a problem, they can get support from other councils or the Children’s Improvement Board. Where there is "significant" failure, ministers might ask the Children’s Improvement Board to help the council improve. "Critical or enduring" underperformance, it says, "may" need statutory intervention, but usually ministers would raise concerns in writing, visiting the area or issuing an improvement notice.
Naming and shaming local authorities
According to Loughton, young people will play a key role in holding local authorities to account. Young people in every local authority will regularly inspect youth services and their findings will be published. "If we are told local authorities are just paying lip service, I shall name and shame those who are not taking projects seriously," he says.
"This is not just a 98-page policy document – I want every youth association to be able to wave it at the leader of the council to say: ‘You are not coming up to scratch for Positive to Youth.’ This is a real piece of ammunition for young people to use to make sure they are getting a greater say."
He says the Department for Education is working on a mobile app, so people can report on where things are youth-friendly. "We want to involve young inspectors and secret shoppers to publish that information."
Young people, however, are not so sure about this role. The British Youth Council’s Cathcart says: "There is a vagueness about the statement of when the government will intervene. Is that our job? If we went to the government with six local authorities and said they are failing, the local authorities might question the basis on which we are naming and shaming – should that not be a role for Ofsted?"
Generally, however, the government’s assertion that it is "passionate" about involving young people in policy and delivery seems to be borne out. The British Youth Council is to help establish a national scrutiny group of young people who will advise directly on young people’s needs and investigate the impact of government policy on young people and their families. CYP Now’s Manifesto for Young People, published in July, called for such a scrutiny group to be set up. "There will be a list of things young people want to bring to the government and a list of things the government wants to bring to young people," explains Cathcart.
The CYP Now manifesto called on the government to publish a workforce strategy encompassing paid staff and volunteers by the end of 2012. But the policy paper states that the government wants any professional development to be sector-led, with the Local Government Association representing public sector employers and the Catalyst consortium developing models for the voluntary sector.
The government is funding Catalyst to help groups of youth charities form "training partnerships". The idea is that smaller organisations that alone might not have access to funding for training staff are given the opportunity to make realistic bids for funds, benefiting from collective strength. Seven such partnerships have been formed thus far. Clubs for Young People leads one, for example; Oxfordshire Children and Voluntary Youth Services leads another. "We are also developing a pathway for volunteers, entry level to Level 4, which brings together different initiatives such as volunteer training and accreditation," adds Rauprich.
So will Positive for Youth live up to its name? The government has committed to publishing an audit of progress at the end of 2012, which will show how far the policies and promises made in it have been enacted. The sector will be interested in how much the statutory guidance turns out to ensure protection for the provision of youth services, and young people will want to know how much of a difference their input is making to local and national policy. "We will be waiting to see if promises are kept," says BYC’s Cathcart. "Young people will not be forgiving about politicians who don’t keep promises – they remember Nick Clegg and tuition fees."
YOUTH POLICY KEY PLEDGES
- National scrutiny group of young people to be set up by the British Youth Council to help "youth-proof" and influence central government policies. The national group will link to local groups of young people auditing youth services; every council is expected to have a participatory youth body.
- Youth Action Group to bring together ministers from nine departments with national charity chief executives to discuss the needs of the most disadvantaged young people.
- Statutory duty retained on local authorities to secure sufficient leisure-time educational and recreational activities for young people. Government will consult on revised guidance on this duty early this year, to clarify the range of activities referred to and encourage a range of delivery models such as public sector mutuals.
- Set of measures to track positive outcomes achieved by local authorities to be published annually by government. These will include for the first time the percentage of 16- to 18-year-olds saying they are satisfied with their lives.
- Workforce development for those working with young people to be driven by the Local Government Association and voluntary sector consortium Catalyst. This will include devising qualifications pathways for volunteers.
- Framework of outcomes for young people to be developed by the Catalyst consortium, becoming an "industry standard" for services to achieve and guide investment decisions.
- Brokerage service for businesses and youth projects to be developed by Business in the Community, the National Children’s Bureau and UK Youth at national, regional and local level.
- National Citizen Service for 16-year-old school leavers to expand by 30,000 places this year, with the aim of expanding to 90,000 young people in 2014.
YOUNG PEOPLE'S VIEWS ON THE POLICY
Dara Farrell, 18, chair, Kent County Youth Council
It’s important that young people are involved in decisions that affect them, but I do feel the government has missed the opportunity to go a stage further and ringfence the funding for youth services, as well as applying greater pressure on local authorities that are finding young people a soft target when seeking to make savings.
It’s important that young people were involved in putting together Positive for Youth. But a policy document won’t solve all the problems facing young people. However, it does start the process of finding the so-called lost generation. We are often told that "we’re all in this together", but we feel more "in it" than others – with the tripling of tuition fees, scrapping of the education maintenance allowance, the future jobs fund, building schools for the future and the child trust fund, and local authorities engaged in large-scale dismantling of youth provision and careers services.
Positive for Youth needs to bring young people and their services back from the brink.
Chris Pike, 18, Oxford University undergraduate and youth associate for the National Youth Agency
The Positive for Youth strategy contains many promises that make me feel positive about the future of youth provision. It’s a pleasant surprise to see that the government does actually understand a lot of the issues young people face.
It’s excellent that it is continuing to invest in things like UK Youth Parliament and putting money into the National Citizen Service. My fear, however, is that services like these often help children who are already confident, outspoken, and going in the right direction: at the same time, the government is cutting provision for youth workers.
These are the services that help the most disadvantaged and vulnerable young people. I hope the genuinely good ideas that the strategy presents can actually be implemented given the current economic climate – otherwise, we risk ending up with a lost generation of young people.
Rachel Easton, 19, chair, UK Youth Voice
I attended the Positive for Youth summit where we had the chance to pick this paper to pieces. This shows that the government is getting young people involved in decision making and acting on their views and ideas.
After all the cuts to youth services, it is great that there is funding for the UK Youth Parliament; this is a real positive. I think National Citizen Service is the best idea for young people – it will enable them to gain valuable skills for the future. The skills, opportunities and experience that I have gained through UK Youth Voice and as a young trustee of UK Youth are amazing and I wish every young person could have experienced what I have while volunteering.
I like the way that the summary outlines "your role", showing young people that it is their responsibility to be "positive for youth", as well as the responsibility of the government and society.