NO - Anthony Lawton, chief executive, Centrepoint
Many aspects of society require leadership. The voluntary sector can, but often fails to bring distinctive practices and values to bear. The State can facilitate that distinctive contribution. But the voluntary sector should not lead in services for young people. Not if we mean lead in the sense of set and steer strategic direction. Nor if we mean actually doing most of the youth work. Action and leadership should be distributed around people, institutions and the state, market and voluntary sectors. No single sector should be in the lead. But democratically legitimate local government has a particular leadership role in the community. The voluntary sector does not have and cannot lay claim to formal democratic legitimacy. Organisations and people from the sector - but not, please, yet more bigger intermediary and infrastructure organisations - can lay claim to other leadership roles.
NO - Brendan Loughran, county manager, education and community department, Cheshire County Council
For nearly 100 years, work with young people has been a partnership between the statutory and voluntary sectors. Initially, all work with young people was done in the voluntary sector, but the State saw the need to raise standards so legislation was drawn up. Currently, we are all working on setting up strategic partnerships for children and young people. We are trying to learn from Lord Laming's report on Victoria Climbie and have more joined-up and well-resourced services with fewer places where children can fall through the net. How would this be helped by returning to a purely voluntary-led model? It would create a whole set of good, better, best voluntary sector forums run by all the refugees from the statutory sector. No doubt this would then spawn a voluntary sector corporate performance culture so that only the Audit Commission would benefit.
YES - Malcolm Tyndall, director of marketing, fundraising and communication, National Association of Clubs for Young People
They should, but to enable the sector to do so would require the Government to take a more radical approach to funding. Too often, initiatives are created with little consultation and we have to fit in, when a better approach would be for the Government to draw on our expertise. As an example, the Department of Health recently announced a funding programme based on US approaches to teenage pregnancy, making money available for projects that fit those criteria. How much better might it have been to seek bids from the sector on how to tackle the problem and let it come up with solutions based on experience? A less prescriptive and more holistic approach is needed. We are best placed to deliver that holistic approach.
NO - Tony Harvey, head of citizenship and social inclusion, Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council
I'm 56, but can vividly remember youth club culture where the bullies took over the table tennis and orange juice was warm and watery. It was run by the good old voluntary sector. Nobody asked me what I wanted. I was part of the involuntary sector. I put up with what I was given. We segregated young people, gave them youth culture, fashion and services and then stopped talking to them. New local government offers a way forward. In Knowsley, young people report to the leadership meetings, attend area forums and are represented on the Knowsley Partnership, where representatives from all sectors make decisions about services. Why just "young people's services"? Leisure centres, health centres, libraries and other mainstream services also meet the needs of young people. Let's learn to talk to each other and then the whole community can take the lead in delivering services to young people and older people, along with disgruntled 56-year-olds like me.
