The prevailing narrative for some time in youth services has been one of provision, staff and budgets being cut. The reason why appears straightforward: after all, no council service is immune to the reduction in public sector spending. But other findings from the long-awaited Cabinet Office survey – the department collected the information at the end of 2013 - give a deeper insight into the current plight of youth services and suggest things are not going to get better any time soon.
With money being tight, it is inevitable that funds are increasingly being targeted at the most vulnerable young people at the expense of universal, open-access provision. Although the spending split between targeted and universal services remained largely unchanged between 2012/13 and 2013/14, three-quarters of survey respondents anticipate 75 to 100 per cent of their overall spend will be targeted by 2016.
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