Labour plots vision for youth

The coalition’s five-year term may have passed its midway point, but robust ideas on youth policy have been distinctly thin on the ground.

Although the sentiment of the government’s Positive for Youth statement was well received by the sector, there is concern about its lack of impact on services.

Notwithstanding a pledge to make youth services statutory, ideas from the opposition have been equally sparse, meaning talk of cuts and closures has dominated the sector.

But in conversation over coffee at Westminster’s Portcullis House, Labour’s youth services spokeswoman Karen Buck insists her party’s plans are taking shape. While conceding that commitments to spending cannot be made until nearer the next election in 2015, she outlines a three-point strategy that will be central to its proposals for youth services. It involves, one, helping local authorities access cash from other agencies; two, enforcing statutory provision; and three, giving young people greater influence over services. She says it is vital that action is taken to halt the decline of youth provision at a time when young people need support more than ever.

“I think young people today are facing a much tougher set of challenges than young people a decade ago, probably several decades ago,” she says.

“The lives of young people growing up around where I live in Kilburn are frequently heartbreaking. You can see the structures that were around those young people gradually being dismantled. Youth services can and should be exactly the places that can inspire, support, and lead young people to something better. All the evidence seems to indicate that since Positive for Youth, the cuts have been accelerating. We wouldn’t tear the policy apart on an ideological basis, but at the end of the day, is it making a difference?”

Buck, who is steadfast and businesslike throughout our interview, says local authorities cannot be blamed for cutting youth service budgets because they are caught between “a rock and a hard place”, in light of growing financial pressures such as child protection and care of the elderly.

“Local government is having to do the heaviest lifting in the deficit reduction programme,” she says. “They have tended to feel that they have no choice but to cut most deeply into areas that are most discretionary and that’s a real problem.”
 
Aware that new cash is likely to be limited come 2015, Buck is keen to use government influence to get public, private and voluntary sector agencies, both at a local and national level, to invest on the basis that they will save money in the future.

The idea is not new, but Buck says it has been overlooked in terms of youth services. She will be working alongside fellow Labour MP and government early intervention adviser Graham Allen to determine ways in which government can push it along.

Early intervention savings
“We know that there are pretty clear savings around crime and antisocial behaviour if you get early intervention and practical youth work right,” she says. “It’s very important that we pilot some of that work. The challenge is that often the savings don’t accrue to the department that makes the investment, which is why local and national government has to make sure it is a high priority, and hold other agencies to account.”

Part of the battle will include challenging the perception of what early intervention constitutes, she says.

“One of our tasks is to do better at arguing the case that early intervention is not just a strategy for under-fives, because, with the best will in the world, that is what has happened. People see it very much as an early years strategy. You can provide a quality early years intervention but a child can hit adolescence and their needs change.

If you don’t have a support structure for them and they have high levels of need, you will pay the price.”

The party has already announced that it wants to make youth services statutory, but exactly how this will be achieved is yet to be decided. Buck says Labour will be more prescriptive about what local authorities should be providing and is developing ways of ensuring this is delivered.

“We would want youth services to be on a firmly statutory footing, knowing that there is not going to be unlimited money,” she says.

“Exactly what that model of services is going to look like will be different in different areas.” The next step is to determine what “tools” would be used to set out levels of provision across the country.

“Clearly we have to hold people to account,” she says. “But we want to use measures that are not excessively bureaucratic and demanding. You can’t weigh down statutory agencies with demands. At the moment, if there’s a balance between excessive intervention and an inadequate level of monitoring and scrutiny the government seems to be on the wholly inadequate side of the equation. I don’t want it to