This game of funding musical chairs must stop
Howard Williamson
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The principle is a good one and absolutely right: early intervention in childhood, providing support to children and their families, carries the best prospect of reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors for children and young people further down the track.
Indeed, an early new Labour initiative was On Track, established by the Home Office in 24 pilot areas to reduce the likelihood of disadvantaged young people turning to crime.
The focus, however, was on five core interventions (such as parent support and training, home-school links and family therapy) and other optional ones relating to advice and guidance in family, school and community. Crime hardly got a mention. This was probably the reason why the programme was shifted to the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). There, it became a muddled supplement to the Children's Fund, originally envisaged to run as the operational arm of the Children and Young People's Unit.
A couple of years later, David Blunkett, formerly DfEE Secretary and by now Home Secretary, pressed for 25 per cent of the Children's Fund to be directed towards youth crime prevention. This provided the catalyst for much of the Youth Justice Board's youth crime prevention strategy. It enabled the development of interventionist programmes such as youth inclusion and support panels and Safer Schools Partnerships, and led to more dedicated youth crime prevention funding in 2005.
It is that money that, until just before Christmas, was under threat, just as there are current concerns about the dismantling of a dedicated Children's Fund within the new local government framework of children's trusts. However, before the new £66m of prevention funding was announced, last summer's 10-year youth strategy Aiming High laid claim to 10 per cent of those resources.
This game of funding musical chairs may not be quite so ominous as repositioning the deckchairs on the Titanic: the ship might not be going down but it often finds itself in the doldrums as the energy, expertise and enthusiasm of the crew dries up. People who have worked on these initiatives move on and everything has to be kick-started again.
If you really have a long-term commitment to reducing child poverty, combating youth crime, raising educational aspirations and achievement and promoting youth inclusion, then you have to provide stability for the workforce, cultivate a developing expertise and minimise the prospect of people constantly moving on to something else.
- Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of Glamorgan, and a member of the Youth Justice Board. Email howard.williamson@haymarket.com.
