Government must back youth work rhetoric with investment

In a recent letter to CYP Now, Janet Batsleer, chair of the Professional Association of Lecturers In Youth and Community Work, rightly draws attention to the damaging impact the changes in university funding and the austerity measures in public finance will have on youth and community work courses. It is particularly unfair that social workers in training receive funded bursaries, but youth and community workers do not.

My first youth work post was at Luton Youth House and one of my greatest sources of pride was seeing how many of our young people went on to train as youth workers. Only recently my daughter met one of them, who when he worked out who she was told her, "Your mum changed my life". My fear is particularly for young people like that, huge assets to the youth service, but now potentially excluded from an achievable route into the service. The closure of courses up and down the country is potentially devastating, particularly to those potential students who want to, or can only, study near home.