Select committee chairman blasts youth sector for lack of evidence

Speaking during the opening session of the inquiry today, Graham Stuart MP said: "It does seem an extraordinary failure that you [the youth sector] can’t make a better fist at explaining the difference you make."
 
The committee had been hearing oral evidence from the British Youth Council, the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services, the National Youth Agency (NYA) and UK Youth about the need for services for young people.
 
But Charlotte Hill, chief executive of UK Youth, defended the lack of evidence available. "Lots of organisations haven’t been able to invest in researching their outcomes," she said.
 
Susanne Rauprich, chief executive of NCVYS, said earlier that it had investigated setting up a system to measure the impact of its membership organisations, but was told it would cost around £2m. "We simply don’t have £2m to spend," she said.
 
Fiona Blacke, chief executive of the NYA, added that the agency stopped producing its Local Authority Youth Service Annual Audit in 2008 – which recorded how much each council spent on youth services and the numbers of young people they reached – after the previous government pulled funding for the programme. As a result, it was no longer able to provide up-to-date figures about the percentages of 13- to 19-year-olds who use local authority youth services in England.
 
Hill conceded, though, that the youth sector needed to improve the way it collects and shares data. "We need to work together," she said. "We have to do a lot more."