Harsh lessons in influencing people
Andy Hillier
Thursday, October 28, 2010
The waiting for the comprehensive spending review is finally over but no doubt it will be many months before the true impact of public spending cuts on services for young people will be known.
The Chancellor failed to pull a rabbit out of the hat for youth services, sticking to protecting early years services and schools budgets as predicted. There will be £2bn made available for an early intervention grant but this looks likely to be spread thinly across a range of areas from early years to youth offending programmes. The government will also plough ahead with its pilot scheme for a National Citizen Service, which will benefit mainly national youth charities and outdoor education providers. Further money will be available to the wider voluntary sector through the £100m transition fund and the proposed big society bank, but nothing has been set aside explicitly for youth programmes.
The rest of the youth sector will be left to fight for a share of radically reduced local authority budgets or trying to tempt already stretched charitable trusts to part with their cash.
If one lesson has to be learned from this year's spending review, it is the need to make a more compelling case for funding. Too little was done before the election to state the case for funding youth programmes. On a national level, there was no concerted youth work campaign, and on a local level, many youth projects ignored the value of garnering cross-party political support.
A myth seems to persist within the youth sector that its programmes will be afforded protection because while the general public might not understand and value its work, our politicians do. Sadly, all too often this is not the case. The youth sector has to learn to sell aggressively the value it adds to society. And this has to happen from the smallest grassroots projects right up to the largest national charities.
Andy Hillier, editor, Youth Work Now. Email andy.hillier@haymarket