Youth minister calls for innovation over the 'easy option' of cuts
Jess Brown
Monday, August 3, 2015
Minister for civil society Rob Wilson tells CYP Now that local authorities are "set in their ways" and have been too quick to cut youth provision instead of developing the evidence base to support service investment.
In the past three months, minister for civil society Rob Wilson has courted his fair share of controversy. Just hours after Wilson was re-elected to his Reading East constituency in May he was reported as getting embroiled in a social media spat over homelessness policy. He hit the headlines again last month with the release of official documents that showed he had made a series of small travel expenses claims – one for just 9p to cover the cost of a 350-yard car journey.
Also in July, Wilson – who had kept a low profile between his appointment as minister responsible for youth services in September 2014 and the general election – told a House of Commons debate that he was "very disappointed" with council cuts to youth services. His comments put the blame for cuts to youth provision squarely at the door of local authorities, despite the £500m drop in government funding since 2010.
But it is a line he sticks to when meeting CYP Now to outline his priorities for the future.
Youth service funding
"I cannot tell you how disappointed I've been with how some local authorities have managed budgets and taken the easy option of cutting youth services," Wilson says.
"If they thought about youth services in a strategic way, they could think about how to deliver them in a different way."
He says evaluating the beneficial impact of youth services can help persuade authorities to spend more money on youth work. Evidence, Wilson says, can also make the sector more innovative, and push it to think differently about how it delivers provision that meets the needs of the times.
"I think one of the problems over the years is that the youth sector has been set in its ways," he says, adding that evidence "unleashes a vitality that the sector needs".
In the past, Wilson has opposed a statutory obligation for councils to spend a "minimum" amount on youth services. Such a measure - backed by many in the sector as the only way of ensuring youth services are protected from further cuts - did not make it into any of the main political parties' election manifestos.
Wilson says he does not see a difference between the current obligation on councils to spend an "adequate" level of provision, and introducing a "minimum" legal requirement.
"Adequate, minimum, you can dance around the head of a pin on what is adequate and what is minimum. But you've got to let people on the ground make the decision about that," he says.
It isn't about spending more money, he contests, but thinking in a more "strategic, clever way" and doing things they have not tried before.
"They need to get their head up and look around for best practice," he adds. "You don't need to do everything the same old way. As a local authority you have the license, certainly from me, to do things differently.
"Local authorities should know what's going on in their local area. They should be able to provide services that are adequate to their local area, and if they can't do that then you wonder what the hell they are doing," he says.
Centre for Youth Impact
A key component in Wilson's ambitions for a more evidence-based and outcomes-driven youth sector is the Centre for Youth Impact (CYI). Launched in September 2014, the CYI worked with three early adopters - London Youth, the Foyer Federation and Brathay Trust - to gather evidence on what works. Wilson says the centre has become a "leading voice" on the importance of delivering high-quality youth services, and how to evaluate ways in which it is achieved.
"We're committed to supporting the centre and it has done pretty well," Wilson says. The department will fund it for a second year, with the amount to be confirmed in the autumn spending review. But Wilson says he hopes the centre will be able to support itself in coming years.
"I'm keen to ensure there's a long-term future for it, but also that it becomes self-sustaining over a period. If it is valuable to the sector - and I think it will be extremely valuable over time - then it's important that the sector helps to fund it."
Wilson says he will be encouraging the CYI to widen its reach and work with other organisations. While it has got off to a "good start", he says that the progress now needs to accelerate.
"Now it needs to look more widely to the sector as to how it's going to be supported on an ongoing basis," he says.
Wilson adds that the centre will go through a review of the first year as part of its learning process, before deciding how to go forward with its second year.
National Citizen Service
The National Citizen Service (NCS) youth volunteering programme for 15- to 17-year-olds has been one of Wilson's focal points over his 10 months in post, and he has big plans to expand it.
So far 130,000 young people have completed the programme, but Wilson says he wants to see at least a million go through NCS by the end of this parliament. He also wants to see a "wraparound service offering new opportunities coming out at the other end".
Wilson says he wants to "embed the idea of social action into people's lives from their school days, so we get a much more compassionate society where people are volunteering and giving throughout their lives".
This is an area on which he is particularly passionate, and he says a key part of what his department is doing is ensuring young people get the opportunity to develop themselves. "Young people get a lot out of it in terms of character, independence, confidence, grit and determination," he says.
Youth participation
The lack of a co-ordinated approach to youth policy since its transfer to the Cabinet Office from the Department for Education in July 2013 has been a consistent criticism. Wilson recognises this needs to be addressed, and says putting youth social action at the core of the department is one way it can do that.
"My priority is to make young people a centrepiece of the Office of Civil Society," Wilson says. "When the responsibility for young people moved to the Cabinet Office two years ago, it didn't move to the centre of any of the things that we did. I want to move it right to the centre of what we do, so we can embed this philosophy in people's lives that they're giving to others.
"I just want to see a more compassionate country where we are giving more, volunteering more, taking part more in our communities. It is the original Big Society message, but young people have to play a centrepiece within that."
Another Cabinet Office initiative Wilson says is driving changes in the youth offer locally, is the Delivering Differently for Young People programme, which has funded 10 local authorities to design new ways of providing youth work.
He says the department will provide £200,000 to fund a second round of the programme, working with different councils to rethink how they deliver services.
REACTION TO THE GOVERNMENT'S YOUTH AGENDA
David Simmonds, chair of the Local Government Association's children and young people board "The overall reduction in spending on youth services reflects the budgets that have been set for local authorities. But the level of engagement among young people remains high, and there are good examples of innovation with local authorities making their money go further. The question I would have for the minister is, 'what conversations are you going to have with the Treasury about it?'"
Howard Williamson, Professor of European youth policy at the University of South Wales "I support the broad principle of the National Citizen Service (NCS), but my concern has always been the unit cost. David Cameron says resources for NCS comes from a different place than the funding given to local authorities, but it is still a sour message as bog standard youth services are being cut back."
Bethia McNeil, director at the Centre for Youth Impact "We're very pleased that the centre can continue to strengthen its relationships and progress our collective understanding of evidence and impact in youth work and services for young people. We saw in the pilot phase that early adopters and their networks really took ownership of the space that the centre has created for conversation and collaboration. We want to continue this, working with a next phase of early adopters. Alongside this, we want to test out new thinking and practice in how we understand the difference we make as a sector, and learn from it."
Alison O'Sullivan, president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services "We recognise the minister's concern (about cuts to youth services), but governments have historically refused to identify general youth services as statutory and on balance we think that has been appropriate. Demand for statutory children's services have grown substantially in recent years and local authorities have made tremendous efforts to cope with these demands and save children's lives despite the financial context. We would welcome a deeper conversation with the minister on how these issues connect."