Opening public services would 'squeeze' youth work, academic claims
Neil Puffett
Friday, December 7, 2012
Youth services will be cut back even further if charities and private organisations are given the green light to take over local authority youth services as part of the open public services agenda, an academic has warned.
Moves to allow third sector and private organisations to take control, outlined by government last year, are yet to take off.
But 14 voluntary sector organisations including Volunteering England and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, recently told ministers that the sector “stands ready to make a greater contribution to the government’s open public services agenda”.
Henry Tam, director of Cambridge University’s Forum for Youth Participation & Democracy, and former deputy director at the Department for Communities & Local Government, told CYP Now that youth work would suffer if it is opened up to profit-motivated organisations.
“Youth services have always been a Cinderella service. Relatively speaking there is not that big a chunk of money in it,” Tam said. “If any private sector body thinks they can cream off from that, it will just squeeze services even more.”
He added that in situations where prospective providers cannot identify potential savings, providers could attempt to “wrap up” youth services with wider contracts, such as troubled families provision.
“The youth element would be squeezed even more,” he said. “For youth services there cannot be anything positive at all out of it.”
The letter to ministers from 14 voluntary sector organisations provoked an angry response from the National Coalition for Independent Action (NCIA), which accused the group of offering to implement government plans to “privatise public services, and encourage volunteering as a substitute for statutory services”, without the full support of the sector.
Peter Holbrook, chief executive of Social Enterprise UK, one of the signatories, argued that social enterprise and charity involvement in public services is not privatisation.
“When it comes to who delivers the UK’s public services, the debate is no longer simply public versus private,” he said.
“The government is increasingly turning to social enterprises and charities, organisations that, when delivering public services, have an altogether different agenda to private companies who have shareholders to satisfy.”
He added that social sector organisations have a “social mission, not a money mission”, often designing services with users and staff.