Young people need trusted adults, not buildings
Denise Hatton
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Youth services have long been a cornerstone in our communities, providing young people with somewhere to go, something to do and someone to speak to.
However, as councils struggle under the weight of funding pressures, youth services are being forced to bear the brunt of the cuts.
As our research showed, spending on youth services across England looks set to reach its lowest point in a generation. YMCA's analysis found that the average spend on youth services per local authority in 2010 was £7.79m, and the planned average spend for 2019/20 is just £2.45m - a 69 per cent decline.
For anyone within the sector, this news will not come as a surprise. Years of cuts have resulted in colleagues losing their jobs, programmes being removed and young people in need left to fend for themselves.
Within the context of mental health difficulties, loneliness and crime among young people increasing, wrapped up in an intense media storm, the reaction from government has been to open its wallet. However, what has been presented is little more than a sticking plaster.
While the government's investment makes a welcome contribution towards vital funding for youth services, it still leaves a substantial shortfall in spend between the allocation of £1.18bn in 2010/11 and £416m in 2017/18.
In reality, a further £250m is needed in addition to the announced £500m to meet this shortfall and restore funding to levels of a decade ago - alongside improved guidance for councils on how best to deliver funding to ensure targeted and universal support is achieved.
Worryingly, the additional funding seems focused on buildings and refurbishments. While there will be areas across the country where there is a need for extra facilities, in many places the issue is not one of availability of physical locations, but rather the resources to deliver the services that take place inside of them.
The danger of focusing the language around buildings and refurbishments is that the funding is simply used as an infrastructure investment within local communities rather than a genuine solution to the problem. Ordinarily, this would be welcomed, but many of us can point to a building in our community that was originally a youth centre but has now been repurposed for other projects or sold off.
If the government is genuine in its intent to resolve issues of loneliness, crime and mental health difficulties among young people, it must provide people and programmes not buildings in communities. We need to bring back the trusted adults who for so many young people were the positive intervention they needed to stay on the right track.
Alongside this funding should be a national strategy that unlocks the potential of buildings such as schools, churches and community centres, which would mean the announced £500m could be weighted towards increasing the amount of youth workers. This would create a youth work offer that is viable, reliable and sustainable beyond this initial funding.
Denise Hatton is chief executive of YMCA England and Wales