Rethink urged on youth work course closure

The suspension by De Montford University (DMU) of its youth work and community development course will leave a “huge gap” in the training of “high quality” youth workers both in the Midlands and nationally, experts say.

The university, based in Leicester, says financial pressures in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with a lower intake for its undergraduate and masters (MA) youth work and community development courses, are the key drivers behind a one-year suspension of the course, which it says is unlikely to reopen.

However, key figures in youth work training argue that scrapping the long-standing course next year is contrary to the “encouraging signs of recovery” for the sector after more than a decade of funding cuts – recent initiatives include the confirmation of the new youth work apprenticeships and the launch of the Youth Investment Fund (YIF) (see below).

A loss to the sector

Abbee McLatchie, director of youth work at the National Youth Agency (NYA), describes DMU’s undergraduate and MA courses in youth work and community development as having both “historical and contemporary significance”.

The courses, which run for three years and one-year respectively, are professionally recognised by the Joint Negotiating Committee and validated by the NYA, and include modules around education and youth work, diversity, professional development and management.

“DMU holds the archives for youth and community work,” McLatchie explains, reflecting on a celebration of 50 years of the NYA held at the university in recent years.

“It’s historically significant in terms of the development of youth work training nationally and in terms of its contemporary significance. One of the key things is that their MA course runs a blended learning model – it’s one of the few learning programmes that offers that model in the country.

“There would be a real significant loss for that programme not to be available.

“The course is a well-respected national youth work training programme, so it is both sad and detrimental to the sector,” she says.

Needed more than ever

Bernard Davies, former visiting professor at the university and author of Austerity, Youth Policy and the Deconstruction of the Youth Service in England, is urging the DMU to “reconsider its decision”.

“Given the employment, mental health and other pressures on young people that the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated, this course has never been more needed,” he says.

McLatchie highlights the NYA’s Time’s Running Out report which estimates that in 2021, between two and three million children were classed as vulnerable compared with 800,000 before the pandemic. She echoes Davies’ comments on increased mental health problems among young people, as well as the current cost-of-living crisis.

“Youth work is essential to support vulnerable young people; it was designated a key worker status during the pandemic for a reason,” she says. “The value of those professionals was recognised and the impact of any programme closing shakes the infrastructure that provides quality training for people who are going to work in that space.”

At odds with policy

In a statement on the closure of the course, a DMU spokesperson says that “due to the unavoidable financial impact of the pandemic, like almost every university, DMU has had to make rapid and widespread changes to adapt”.

The statement adds: “Due to significantly lower recruitment rates over the last few years, alongside wider university measures to make savings and increase income, the difficult decision was made to suspend intake for the Youth and Community Development course for September 2022.”

The most recent NYA Annual Monitoring Report, published last October, found both the number of higher education institutions offering programmes, and the number of courses offered hit a record low in 2019/20. However, it reported that four new courses were due to start running, with a further five in the process of being approved.

The long-awaited release last month (August) of £368m from the government’s YIF, and launch of the National Youth Guarantee after the Covid-19 pandemic, means the loss of the DMU course “will leave a huge gap in the field just as it is beginning to show some encouraging signs of recovering from the cuts which devastated it during the post-2010 austerity decade and indeed since,” according to Davies.

McLatchie adds that while the YIF is designed to create and improve youth work buildings, the scrapping of vital training programmes, like the DMU course, leaves a question mark over hiring “quality practitioners” to deliver and run services from these facilities.

While DMU has insisted that the current students on the three-year course will not feel a detrimental impact from the suspension of the course, they are expected to be “the final cohort to study and graduate”.

“If the government is committed to youth work infrastructure moving forward, we need to protect programmes so we have appropriately trained and supported staff to meet the needs of young people and support policy drivers,” McLatchie says.

She adds that despite the government signing off the NYA’s new youth work apprenticeship schemes, which are expected to launch at universities in September and January, “there isn’t anything that will fill the gap” left by the closure of the DMU course.

Recent research by the Nuffield Foundation finds that university applications have reached a record high this year, following the pandemic. This, combined with new government funding, offers the potential to boost the status and influence of youth work.

Yet, youth work experts fear this welcome turnaround in fortunes could fall flat without the workforce to deliver the policy ambitions.