Youth Work Matters: Findings from new Youth Evidence Base research

By contrast, in terms of awareness, the youth sector is something of a poor relation. However, we need to pay more attention to the youth sector’s role in ensuring young people can thrive, now and in the future.

New ‘Youth Evidence Base’ research published this week shows just how important access to activities beyond the school gates can be for young people – but also that the youth sector faces some unprecedent challenges.

• Youth services funding cut linked to increased risk of children's involvement in crime

Commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the suite of three studies was led by the policy consultancy SQW, with national youth work charity UK Youth and Warwick and Essex universities. We also worked with a fantastic youth panel, whose members provided guidance on the studies’ design and findings.

The first project examined what longitudinal studies say about the impact of weekly participation in youth clubs on life outcomes. We analysed five different studies, covering different generations of young people from the 1970s to the 2000s.

It is already well known that youth work can have beneficial effects on young people in the short term, and our analysis reveals a clear association between participation in youth provision and positive short-term outcomes relating to physical health and wellbeing, pro-social behaviours and education. Our research adds to existing knowledge by showing how these outcomes are seemingly sustained into later life; young people who attended youth clubs scored more highly in later life on several indicators of wellbeing, compared with young people who did not.

Study two – an international literature review – shows how youth activities have beneficial impacts for young people across a range of personal, social, educational, and economic outcomes. We found particularly strong evidence relating to some types of activity, namely, mentoring and summer employment schemes, although there is evidence of positive impacts for other activities, too.

Our third study used a range of data including official statistics about national and local government to understand what impact youth clubs have on local areas. From 2011-21, funding of youth provision by local authorities more than halved; between 2011 and 2019, the number of open youth clubs nearly halved. As the ‘heat map’ shows, below, there is a significant spatial variation in the scale of changes of local authority spending in that time. Against that backdrop, it is not surprising youth provision has changed in that time.

Statistical analysis of the effect of these changes on localities shows that a year after a drop in expenditure, local authorities see increased incidences of bike theft, shoplifting, possession of weapon offences, and a higher proportion of young offenders who re-offend.

We spoke with local government officials, youth workers and others in local authorities who had experienced different levels of budget cuts to youth provision since 2011. Although interviewees’ experiences vary dramatically, there were some commonalities. Specifically, they described how targeted youth work has been prioritised over open access, universal provision, and there is more voluntary and community sector involvement now in both strategic direction and service delivery.

The overarching messages from across these three studies are that the youth sector has a crucial role to play in supporting young people and this can’t be left to chance. Youth work can provide a form of early intervention, something other research has also found. While the government has made some welcome announcements recently regarding youth funding and programmes, we hope it will be something all parties build into their election pledges.

• Will Millard is associate director at SQW Limited and Jacob Diggle is director of strategy, research and impact at UK Youth