Campaigners seek statutory status for youth services
Laura McCardle
Friday, August 29, 2014
A group of youth workers who recently lost their jobs due to council cuts have started a campaign to put youth service funding on a more sustainable footing.
The group, who claim they were made redundant by Bradford Metropolitan District Council in June after the youth services department’s budget was cut by 36 per cent, are calling for youth provision to be made statutory, with a legal duty for councils to link funding for the service to the number of young people in the area.
Among them is Peter Sims, a youth worker for more than 30 years, who said he is disgruntled with council bosses for seeing youth work as an easy target for cuts.
He said: “I’m determined that youth work gets recognised and that there is a framework for it. Time and time again youth workers and young people are hit the hardest.
“The only way to save it and try to make it secure is to try to ensure its place on a statutory footing, which will offer it some protection.”
Research by Unison, published earlier this month, found that more than 2,000 youth worker posts have been cut and that 350 centres have closed since 2012.
As part of their campaign, the youth workers have launched the Statutory Youth Service petition, which they will hand to children’s minister Edward Timpson later in the year.
Sims said he and his former colleagues are speaking out for other local authority youth workers who are too afraid to protest against cuts to their service.
He said: “A lot of youth workers live under the fear that if they speak out, they could be subject to disciplinary action.
“I’m released from the local authority now. I’ve been a senior manager so I’m going to use some of that knowledge to help other youth workers.”
In April, Jason Pandya-Wood, head of sociology at Nottingham Trent University and himself a former youth worker, called on youth workers to do more to promote the value of their work in the face of local government cuts.
He has welcomed the group’s campaign and commended those involved for campaigning on behalf of youth workers.
He said: “Many colleagues and friends have expressed their heartfelt concerns at the serious impact of cuts on their work – too few are able to speak out for fear of losing their jobs.
“A national statutory framework and clear funding expectations for local authorities is the only way to secure a future for youth services.
“The fixed funding formula would need to take account of a number of factors – for example, the distinctive needs of inner city Bradford compared to a rural village in Gloucestershire both present additional and complex resource demands.
“This is not an insurmountable challenge but it does encourage us to think about a formula beyond simply counting the number of young people.”
Councillor Ralph Berry, portfolio holder for children's services at Bradford Metropolitan District Council, said there have been no compulsory redundancies and that the authority will seek to avoid them "wherever possible".