The North East in particular has seen this play out in real terms, with a 76 per cent decrease in local authority spending on youth services in Northumbria alone during this period.
As well as the negative impact this has had on young people and communities; with many young people in our region simply never having heard of a youth centre or experienced an engagement with a youth worker.
We are facing a current and increasing crisis in regards to recruitment and retention of staff at all levels. Many youth workers have left the sector following the years of austerity, either for more secure jobs or simply because the projects they worked on ended and in some cases the organisations that employed them closed. Finding qualified staff is a challenge. As the pipeline of new people coming into the sector narrows it does not address the numbers who are leaving or have already left. The number of institutions delivering youth work degrees has reduced significantly in recent years – we rely on Sunderland University as the only provider in our region.
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