Analysis: Practice - Youth services - Is work best delivered onstreets or in centres?

Derbyshire County Council says it has tripled the number of young people it has engaged over the past five years by cutting the number of youth centres it runs and redirecting resources to detached and mobile youth work (YPN, 7-13 February, p4).

In the present climate of tightened youth service budgets, redirecting money from costly buildings to frontline youth work is likely to be an increasingly tempting prospect for local authorities. But Graeme Tiffany, an executive committee member of the Federation for Detached Youth Work, argues that detached youth work alone is not necessarily money well spent.

Political gain

"In some areas, senior youth work managers have employed detached youth workers in areas where there has been political gain from doing so," he says. "And detached youth workers are going out into the streets and selecting easier groups to work with, because they have to meet their outcomes."

Tiffany argues that worthwhile detached youth work has to be directed by an objective analysis of young people's needs, rather than being motivated by the need for the quickest and easiest gains.

Sacha Kaufman, co-ordinator of the Camden Detached Project, insists that detached youth work in the London borough has stayed true to these principles. "We don't do rapid-response detached work," she says. "What we provide is part of the core work of the youth and Connexions service, which gives us a broad base to do targeted work with."

The project receives its core funding of 152,000 from the local authority, which funds a team of 10 workers, the equivalent of five full-time posts. The team spends two nights a week in areas with high levels of social housing and crime, as well as areas with gaps in youth provision.

While the team performs well on the number of young people it contacts, Kaufman acknowledges that the nature of detached work makes it difficult to hit targets relating to accredited outcomes.

South Tyneside youth work officer Steve Southern believes it is essential to invest in youth centres to give young people a sense of progression. In South Tyneside, the bulk of local authority youth service money is spent on building-based youth work, while external funding is put into outreach and detached work. "Once young people have a bit of work done on them by detached workers, they feel more comfortable going into youth clubs," Southern says.

More choice

Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council also puts most of its resources into youth centres - 90 per cent - which provides 19 youth centres serving a population of about 17,000 young people.

Stockton's community education manager Marc Mason says a large network of clubs provides more choice for young people. "The importance of having so many different clubs is that every young person has a chance to go to a youth club near their home," he says. "But there's also evidence that if you make a big club with more facilities, young people are more likely to travel to it."

Oldham Youth Service is already moving in this direction. Its head Pam Griffin plans to close seven small youth clubs within walking distance of a building she would like to convert into a much larger centre. The plan would require capital investment of 1m, as well as increased annual running costs of about 20,000.

The youth service currently has 22 full-time youth workers providing centre-based work, and four detached workers. "Some young people don't want to come to buildings or don't know about them," says Griffin. "Having workers on the streets provides an extra contact point for young people and provides us with a more flexible, shorter response time."

But Griffin has her sights set on large youth centres for their potential to bring different groups of young people together and provide better services through economy of scale. "Instead of having seven small centres, I can get the resources into one centre that's open seven days a week, with a programme of activities available to everyone," she says.