Essex youth service boss upbeat despite budget cut
Laura McCardle
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Youth provision in Essex will continue to grow despite "terrible" cuts to the department's budget, the head of the service has said.
Michael O’Brien, head of commissioning, education and lifelong learning at Essex, said he has adopted an alternative approach to delivering the county’s youth services that can cope with the dramatic cuts to the service’s budget.
This week, the council agreed to reduce youth services spending from £5m to £2.4m by 2016/17.
The move means the youth service budget will have shrunk by 75 per cent over five years – in 2012 it was slashed from £12m.
O’Brien said he has developed a model that encourages the community and young people themselves to identify and design services at the county’s youth centres in a bid to increase provision.
He said the model will also help the department make savings because it encourages volunteers to deliver services.
He said: “In Essex we have salami sliced for so long. We got to the stage where I looked at it and we agreed that we couldn’t keep on.
“The cuts are terrible but we’ve got a choice – we cut, shut up shop and commission out or we could use what we’ve got more wisely.
“We came up with this model and we’re looking at our young people and our communities being much more involved in the design and delivery of youth services.
“The programme we’re developing has to make sure that these facilities are used and the sustainability behind it is working with the community to make sure they can go on.”
Under O’Brien's new model, the number of sessions provided by youth workers and volunteers at Essex youth centres has risen from 249 per week in 2011 to 422 per week now.
He also said that youth worker jobs would be protected despite the council confirming that up to 26 jobs within the youth service will be lost.
The local authority came under fire from Unite, which represents the majority of Essex’s youth workers, in October when it first unveiled plans to slash spending on the service.
It claimed the council was considering proposals that could see all 178 of the county’s youth workers lose their jobs and services be outsourced and delivered by external providers instead.
