Former Chancellor Sajid Javid promised to plough £500m into youth work services over five years through the Youth Investment Fund in September last year as part of “post-Brexit funding package for the next generation”.
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NYA guidance offers blueprint to revitalise youth work services
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Youth Work in the 2020s conference goes online
The funding was due to be released to services in April, however, this was pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic, by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
However, speaking on the first day of the CYP Now’s Youth Work in the 2020s conference, hosted in partnership with the NYA, Leigh Middleton, NYA chief executive, said: “Young people need that funding now”.
Middleton said the sector faced a funding “black hole”, highlighting huge cuts to services amounting to more than £10bn over the last decade adding that it had also lost 4,500 members of its workforce over the same time period.
“The Youth Investment Fund would be a good down payment on the 10 years worth of cuts that the sector saw but yet we are still waiting for it. Young people need that investment now,” he said.
Opening the first day of the four-day conference, Middleton said that around three million young people were now in need of youth work services due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“That is three times more than we were seeing 10 years ago,” he said, “at a time when the youth work sector is not at its strongest”.
“Young people need youth work now more than ever. Young people will bear the brunt of the long term impact of COVID and we must do all we can to support them.”
During his speech, Middleton laid out the NYA’s 10-year plan for youth work which includes ensuring all young people have access to “quality youth work and youth services”.
“There will be a minimum requirement for at least two full-time equivalent professional, JNC qualified youth workers and a team of at least four youth support workers alongside trained volunteers, located within each secondary school catchment area.
“To guarantee access there will be additional provision of detached and outreach youth work, digitised youth work and transport where needed to access opportunities,” the plan states.
It also calls for youth work to be recognised as a “distinct form of education” as well as improved training and recruitment of qualified youth workers including:
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Recruitment and training of 10,000 qualified youth workers, through youth work degrees and apprenticeships, and a youth work curriculum, professional register, national occupational standards, qualifications and safeguarding.
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A bursary programme for entry-level training for 20,000 youth support workers and mobilisation of volunteers up-skilled in youth work and safeguarding.
Middleton said: “We've never needed youth work more and we've never needed to collaborate, and align to one another as we do now, young people have never needed us to be as ambitious for them as they do now."
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has been contacted for comment.
Youth Work in the 2020s is taking place Monday 2nd to Thursday 5th November between 1pm and 3pm each day.
Tickets to the online conference are still available. You can view the remaining sessions live, while all the sessions (including those you may have missed) will be available to view on-demand in your own time for up to three months.
