Guidance is vital to turn youth policy into action

As expected by everyone bar the wildest fantasists, it has arrived in our age of austerity with its pockets empty. Yet the policy stance of the 98-page document is indeed positive in some critical ways: its emphasis on enabling young people to achieve rather than just preventing negative outcomes; its challenge to negative media stereotypes of young people; and its consistent focus on young people’s voice and involvement in shaping services.

What’s more, Positive for Youth retains the statutory duty on local authorities to "secure sufficient leisure-time educational and recreational activities" for young people, introduced in the 2006 Education and Inspections Act.

So councils by law still have strategic responsibility to ensure there are sufficient services for teenagers outside the school gates including youth work, whether provided by the council, voluntary or private sector. This is something that could never have been taken for granted. And the policy contains a clear articulation and endorsement of the value of high-quality youth work, over which the previous administration seemed to have some reticence.

The government has pledged to issue revised statutory guidance to local authorities on implementing this duty. This new guidance, it says, will be "streamlined and set much clearer expectations" than the existing guidance. This is no bad thing. The 2006 guidance specified a range of different sporting and cultural activities, covering a terrain so vast that it became difficult to monitor and has therefore been close to futile.

A sharper, narrower set of guidelines should encourage a clearer focus on opportunities for young people’s personal and social development, and on youth work in particular. As children’s minister Tim Loughton states in the foreword to the policy: "To help local decision-makers, we will set out our national priorities, strategic guidance on how best to commission effective services, and a programme of support."

Crucially, however, this revised guidance is yet to be developed. This is a tragedy, because the guidance is essential to turn the policy into action. Strategic commissioners need it to arm them with confidence over investment decisions. Only then can the Positive for Youth vision – that England’s 4.5 million teenagers enjoy their youth and realise their potential – be made anything like real.

The past year has already seen programmes for young people bear the brunt of the public spending cuts, with youth services decimated in some parts of the country. While we await the revised guidance, many local authorities will finalise their budgets for the coming financial year, culminating the tough rounds of decision making that have run since the autumn. The risk is that good youth projects in many areas continue to bite the dust, while other viable youth programmes struggle to get off the ground as other competing priorities win the day.

So in many ways, the guidance is more important than the policy itself. The need is urgent and the clock is ticking, but we should all stay positive for youth.

Ravi Chandiramani, editor, Children & Young People Now