Services for young people

Memorandum submitted by Linda Jack

Introduction

I am making this submission in a personal capacity as someone who has been involved in youth work for over 30 years. I have worked in the voluntary and statutory services in urban and rural settings as a club based, outreach and detached youth worker and youth service manager. During this time I served for several years as Chair of Unison’s Youth and Community Workers’ Committee and sat on the JNC for Youth and Community Workers. I am currently Youth Policy Adviser at the Consumer Financial Education Body and recently chaired the Liberal Democrat Youth Policy Working Group.

The relationship between universal and targeted youth services

This is a perennial debate but in my view a debate that is based on a false premise - namely that it is either or. In my view it has to be both. To have a purely targeted service pathologises and can inadvertently further marginalise young people who are already marginalised. Whilst it may be necessary/desirable to work with some young people on specific issues in some cases - the aim always has to be to integrate them into the wider community and thus a universal service. A case study from my own experience - I was asked by the head of Clinical Psychology at my local hospital if I would consider running a group for young women who had a variety of issues, eating disorders, phobias, school refusers etc. She recognised that while they needed her service they would also benefit enormously from being part of a wider group. Working with Educational Welfare Officers from local schools we identified a group of 14-16 year olds we thought would benefit. The group was hugely successful - having space with other young women who had similar issues helped the group members to grow and thrive - to build their confidence and self esteem. But it couldn’t stop there - REAL success had to be when they felt able to join in with other youth provision - initially an open girls only night at the town centre youth club - but ultimately open mixed provision. If that universal provision had not been there we would have only done half a job and the young women, while having benefitted, would have remained to a certain extent, marginalised. So my point is that there is a time and place for targeted, group or issue specific provision, but its positive impact is lessened if that is all there is.

A new approach to delivering services (for example through the model proposed by CHYPS of a Youth First Mutual) which encompasses the voluntary and local authority sectors can plan services that meet the needs of ALL young people.

How services for young people can meet the Government’s priorities for volunteering including the role of NCS

Youth Services are key as conduits for young people to engage in voluntary activity - often helping in the youth club tuck shop is the first opportunity to engage in volunteering a young person gets. If NCS is to succeed it has to be rooted in the local community and hence the local provision. The danger for NCS it seems to me is that it becomes yet another top down initiative, with various hoops to jump through and that isn’t rooted in the long term relationships that are key to supporting particularly marginalised and disaffected young people. Also, when everything else is being cut it feels like an expensive luxury and is already causing widespread resentment in the sector. So, there needs to be a lot of humility in how this is rolled out and it needs to be seen as a piece of the pie rather than the pie itself - anything less is to rubbish all the excellent work that has gone on up and down the country in both the voluntary and statutory youth services over the years. I am particularly concerned about the role of V in all this. An organisation that is tried and tested, that attracts a lot of private sector funding, that is bottom up rather than top down and that has made a difference to so many young people’s lives and yet seems to be being marginalised because of petty political point scoring. NCS needs to include V if it is to succeed. It also needs to be seen as more than just a short term experience for young people - in has to be part of a progression and with the current decimation of youth services I feel it will be become very disconnected and far less effective than it could have been.

The relative roles of the voluntary, community, statutory and private sectors in providing

services for young people

One of the reasons I particularly like the Youth Mutual model proposed by CHYPs is that it is based on a co-operative rather than competitive model. Such a model can draw on the expertise of all sectors, working together to ensure that young people within a geographical area have a range of different opportunities. Duplication is reduced and choice is increased. Private sector involvement could be far more strategic. For example, many banks are keen for their staff to become involved in volunteering - rather than have an uncomfortable bank manager in a suit going into a youth club to talk about managing money - why not involve him or her in supporting the sector through their professional expertise, supporting enterprise schemes both in terms of advice and support but also ultimately through financial support! Private sector bodies could do far more for example in making their facilities available for young people to use particularly in rural areas where provision is often poor or nonexistent.

The training and workforce development needs of the sector

The Liberal Democrat policy is to have a statutory youth service and my belief is that this is the only way both to raise the status of the youth work profession and also ensure young people have access to high quality non formal education. The demise of CWDC and LLUK is worrying. There is a view abroad, especially it seems in this government, that anyone can do youth work and thus diminish the role of the professional youth worker. As someone who has worked in schools both as a teacher and a youth worker I believe the complexity of the needs of the young people I worked with and their educational needs, meant I needed more skills knowledge and understanding as a youth worker than as a teacher. Of course, there will always be a role for support and voluntary youth workers, but if youth work is to be truly effective it needs excellent leadership and a highly qualified workforce.

I often joke that I left teaching because I was interested in learning, but there is an element of truth in that. Sadly many of our young people (1 in 7) hate school and yet they are blamed when it is the school system that has failed them. If we put a lime loving plant in acid soil we couldn’t blame the plant if it didn’t thrive, yet we do something similar to young people every day of the week. Youth workers are often the only adults these young people trust as adults who are not in any authority over them and yet can work with them to maximise their learning and personal development.

The impact of public sector spending cuts on funding and commissioning of services,

including how available resources can best be maximised, and whether payment by results

is desirable and achievable

My current professional role means I am in touch with the voluntary and statutory youth sectors across the UK. On an almost daily basis I am hearing about the impact of the cuts on delivery - something that will be compounded by the rise in VAT. My personal concern is that this is happening with no cost benefit analysis or impact assessment. And this is not just about the monetary cost (which could be substantial), it is also the human cost. At a time when young people should be excited about their future, we are crushing their hopes and dreams. The correlation between offending behaviour and being NEET is well documented. There is an estimate that the cost of being NEET is around £30,000 a year - youth services have a crucial role to play in working with those most disaffected young people who, without the economic means to choose private provision, need somewhere to go and something positive to do.

A statutory youth service would help protect services both statutory and voluntary. Sadly, as we are seeing at the moment, despite the fact that most Citizens panels across the country would put facilities for young people near the top of their list of priorities, it is these facilities that are now first in the firing line for cuts. The biggest tragedy is that the rug has been pulled from under the feet of so many young people, one fears for the impact this will have on their life chances.

My fear is that payment by results may be reasonably easy for big private companies to achieve, but is much more difficult for voluntary organisations, as is already being discovered.

Recommendations:

I would direct you to the Liberal Democrat Policy Paper "Free to be Young" available here -

http://www.libdems.org.uk/siteFiles/resources/PDF/Free%20to%20be%20Young.pdf

December 2010