MPs confirm the government is negative for youth
23 June 2011
The government has no policy for supporting young people beyond
slashing youth services and handing provision over to the market, a
committee of MPs has warned today (Thursday).
Unite, the country's biggest union and the union for community
and youth workers, says the findings of the education select
committee confirm its worse fears - that the government does not
value professional youth services and believes they are best
provided for by the private sector.
Further, the select committee of powerful cross-party MPs
disagrees with the minister, Tim Loughton, parliamentary
under-secretary for children and young people, who claimed that
money spent on youth services, which equates to just £77 per young
person aged 13 – 19, was 'large slugs of public money', instead
praising the sector for its ingenuity in sustaining one of the
longest-running professional welfare services in the country on
limited resources.
The report tears into the government’s ‘only flagship youth
policy’; the National Citizens Service (NCS), as it warns that the
cost of funding the six week programme will far outstrip the £350
million spent by local authorities on year-round youth service
provision
Unite urges the government to take heed of the committees’ call
that the additional funds, earmarked for the NCS, be diverted back
into year-round youth services, particularly those which have
suffered the biggest cuts.
In its report out today the committee recommends:
- The scrapping of the government’s National Citizen Programme
and turning this into an accreditation scheme for all existing
programmes.
- That the government publicly declare its intention to retain
the statutory duty on local authorities to secure young people’s
access to sufficient educational and leisure activities, which
requires them to take account of young people’s views and publicise
up-to-date information about the activities and facilities
available.
- That local authorities recognise that an open-access service
could be more appropriate than a targeted one for improving certain
outcomes for young people, or that both types may be needed.
- The creation of an Institute for Youth Work to consider the
issue of the lack of workforce development in the youth service, a
move Unite has long advocated.
The union has been warning for over a year that youth services were
first for the axe by cash-strapped councils. So severe were the
cuts that vast parts of England will be left without youth
provision altogether.
Unite national officer Doug Nicholls said: "One year into this
government and this country's world-class, constantly evolving, 50
year old youth service is on its knees.
"What a damning indictment of "compassionate conservatism",
which, in yet another government gimmick, is pretending to be
‘positive for youth’, while doing the opposite.
"Between them, the ruling parties have managed to achieve what
recessions, downturns and changes of the previous decades had not -
the near wipe-out of a service loved and valued by millions of
young people and their families, and with it the loss of an
excellent, dedicated workforce.
"What will follow behind is extremely worrying. Government's
belief that the market will provide is neglectful in the extreme.
Will it really be prepared to put the resources into supporting a
young person through thick and thin and into adulthood?
"One million young people are on the dole now. Hundreds of
thousands more will be priced out of education. To then deny them
youth and community support to keep them on the right path is a
scandal.
"Government must heed the warnings within this well-balanced
report and stop the cull of this service before it is too
late."
ENDS
For further information, please contact Chantal Chegrinec on 020
3371 2063 / 07774 146 777 Unite press office or Doug Nicholls Unite
national officer on 07970 345 381
