The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and perhaps I may focus on one thing that he mentioned. He described the importance of boxing to excluded young people. A care-experienced adult approached me a while ago. He had grown up in a very abusive children’s home. There are some excellent children’s homes but his was very abusive. When he was in his mid-20s he was approached by a police officer and was told that all the other residents there had died or were drug addicts or in prison, and he was the only one who had made his way through. The reason was that he had got involved with his local boxing club, where there were men who set him a good example. He had difficulties. He was in prison for a while and became a bouncer for a while, but later he learned how to read and write, and eventually he wrote the story of his life. He has been a successful author and a successful personal trainer, but it was boxing that really helped to change his life. Building on what works is such an important message.
I am grateful to the Minister for giving me the opportunity to speak to him before this debate. What he said was somewhat comforting and I look forward to hearing more along the same lines today. I am also most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for introducing this important and very timely debate.
The summary of the conclusion of the YMCA report given by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, contained a lot of what I would like to say. To my mind, it is very important thing to ensure that a strong youth work profession with great integrity is sustained over time. It is important that youth workers stay in their practice, gain experience over the years and pass on that experience to the next generation. We should have a very sound youth work culture in this country that informs policy—I see that as a very important way forward.
I would like to impress on the Minister the need to see youth work as a profession, in parallel with the teaching profession. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, would like to see an all-qualified youth work profession with a strong institutional base, and so would I. We heard about the National Youth Agency and another agency. I wonder how well they are funded and whether there needs to be an institution run by youth workers that sets guidelines for youth workers in general. How can the institutional base of youth work be strengthened, ensuring the quality of youth work? Whatever policy is developed in this area, I hope that there will be input and buy-in from all parties so that as far as possible we have a consistent policy from one Government to the next.
The current recruitment and retention crisis in the teaching profession, with no consistent policy for developing the teaching workforce, is a tragedy. It is important to develop a common policy and to stick with it. It is also important to recognise the difficulties of adolescence. Adolescence is a hugely challenging period for young people. They need guides and good exemplars to help them through that time. I urge the Minister to look at a statutory underpinning for youth services, as so many of your Lordships have said, to ensure that there is consistent funding, to get the basics right and to focus funding in particular on developing the youth workforce.
Why is there a need for youth workers? Perhaps before that, I will mention an article by the BBC questioning the value of youth work from a research base. Leon Feinstein, a well-respected academic, researched youth work a while ago and found that young people attending youth clubs were more likely to get involved in crime and other such activity than those who stayed at home—Margaret Hodge said that they would have been better staying at home—but in that particular example he said that the qualifications and the status of youth workers was unsound and doubtful. So it really hammers home that you have to have high-quality youth workers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)
My Lords, I, too, was going to mention that research. The point was that bad youth services were what did the damage, not good ones.
The Earl of Listowel
Absolutely—that is what I was trying to communicate. It was the poor youth work in those clubs that led to the poor outcomes. Several years before that research was produced, a research report on Summer Splash activity schemes found that crime rates around the local area where there were Summer Splash activities went down during the summer because those activities were going on. So it works if it is of high quality.
When I think about the need for adolescents to have this support, I think of Anna Freud’s work. Some time ago, she wrote her paper on Adolescence as a Developmental Disturbance—the clue is in the name. She described adolescence as a period of revolt, when teenagers are trying to break out and rebel against their parents, and their peers become much more important. They undergo many sexual changes, which makes them ripe for exploitation by others but also can cause them to exploit others sexually. They are finding their identity. If you think again about the needs of these young people, many of them are growing up without a father in the home—one in five children in this country is growing up without a father in the home. Visiting young offender institutions over many years now, so often I hear from prison officers that they are the first father figure in this young person’s life.
Visiting Rochester young offender institution a while ago, where there was a programme called Lions into Foxes, I found a 30 year-old BME man talking to a group of young BME lads about how to turn from lions into foxes—how to move from being impulsive and strong to becoming wily and thoughtful before acting. I visited a young offender institution recently where there had been a serious attack on one of the prison officers overnight. I visited one area of a prison and talked to two prison officers, who said that they had not had any serious incidents for the whole year. This was what was called a PIPE—a psychologically informed planned environment—where special attention is paid to the importance of relationships with the young people. Each young person has a key person relating to them, and with those relationships comes the ability to manage their behaviour, so that they do not act in destructive ways.
In conclusion, when we intervene late with young people, the costs can be huge. Last week I was talking to a provider of residential care for young people. A place in his children’s home, if you like, costs £250,000 a year—that is on the hard end, but they have many settings across the country—so if we do not get this right, the cost is huge. There is also, of course, human misery and human loss. So we need to get this right. Again, I emphasise those key issues to the Minister. I urge him to do what is necessary to make youth work an attractive profession; to ensure that there is a strong and well-funded institutional base for youth work; to try, if possible, to get buy-in from all parties in whatever strategy the Government are producing, so that there is consistency from one Government to the next; to look at the statutory underpinning for youth services; and to recognise that adolescence is a very difficult period, which was the point that Anna Freud was trying to make.
We ask far too much of teenagers, and we ask more and more of them as they deal with various things—social media and so on. We should provide them with guides and exemplars, men who they can see as good examples. As for me, if I want to think about how to behave towards women or about how to act towards work, I think back to what my father did and that gives me the guidance that I need. These young people need that kind of guide. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, who introduced the subject in a very measured way, as did other noble Lords, against an undoubtedly difficult situation. I will come to the financial situation later. This is a very important topic, and I think there are few more pressing issues facing this country than the quality of the investment we make in the personal and social growth of our young people.
I will race through my speech because, unfortunately, I have only two minutes more than every other noble Lord, and I have a lot to talk about. I will do the best I can and write otherwise. We want to make sure that young people have the opportunity to thrive and prosper in our future economy, especially to be active and engaged citizens. My department, DCMS, provides national youth policy leadership, supports youth voice and makes strategic investments to drive excellence and innovation partnerships. Direct delivery of local youth services rightly lies with local authorities and their partners. I will come to that later.
Our national flagship policy is the National Citizen Service, which has been mentioned. It is open to all young people age 15 to 17. It is designed to deliver a concentrated programme of positive activities, personal development and social action for young people. This is delivered through more than 300 organisations, more than 80% of which are from public or voluntary and community sectors. I am pleased to say that more than 400,000 young people from all social backgrounds have so far taken part in NCS, and we expect another 100,000 in 2018. It is important to note that they have given more than 12 million hours of volunteer time.
I am, of course, aware that local youth services operate in a challenging funding environment, which is why we have a track record of funding and supporting successful new delivery models. For example, Knowsley Youth Mutual is an organisation run jointly by staff and young people which was supported by the Government to spin out from the local council. Similarly, Space, formerly the Devon Youth Service, operates eight youth hubs across the county, delivering a range of open-access services, including specialists and one-to-one support. Noble Lords will be pleased to know that we are continuing that support for innovation. We are investing £40 million to support 90 innovative voluntary-sector organisations in different parts of the country. With the Big Lottery Fund and the #iwillFund, Youth Focus: North East, a youth work charity, has received £150,000 over three years to deliver 50 social action projects in 50 local communities.
During the past four years, the Office for Civil Society, which is now in DCMS, has spent more than £667 million on youth. In January this year—this goes to what the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, said; it is not just the devolved Administrations—the Government announced a further £90 million from dormant bank and building society accounts specifically to support disadvantaged and disengaged young people with their transition to work.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned youth expression, so let me turn to the support that we give to young people to have their say. We provide funding to the British Youth Council to deliver youth voice activities, including the UK Youth Parliament, the Make Your Mark youth ballot and the Youth Select Committee. We are clear that youth policy will be a central part of the forthcoming civil society strategy—which I hope will please my noble friend Lady Newlove. That will demonstrate our continuing commitment to invest in the future of young people. In preparing for that, we have gone out and listened to young people and organisations that work with them at recent events across the country.
Perhaps I may tackle head on local authority cuts. It is true that local authorities have decided to prioritise their spending elsewhere. The Government make more than £200 billion available to local authorities, but we believe that difficult decisions are best made at the local level. However, that does not mean that we have not been aware of that, and I have explained briefly some of the areas on which central government has spent money in addition—as I mentioned, in my department alone, that has amounted to £667 million over four years. There is also other cross-government spending—I could go through that in detail, but I do not have time. Of course, local authorities are still doing a good job. It varies, but, in 2018-19, they still spent £460 million on youth services.
Of course, we are looking not just at spending amounts but at great examples, two of which I mentioned, of how local authorities and youth organisations are developing new and innovative models for delivering youth services for benefits. We are looking at the youth sector as part of the civil society strategy—I am afraid that I cannot promise that it will be before the Summer Recess, but it will be out in the summer and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, will not have long to wait.
My noble friend Lady Newlove talked about the OnSide Youth Zones. We recognise some of the brilliant examples across the country of new models. OnSide is providing large, state-of-the-art youth clubs—unlike perhaps those in which the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, discoed. In partnership with councils, businesses and philanthropists, they are a good example of what can be done. We are proud that we as a Government have invested £20 million in the establishment of some of the first youth zones through the Myplace funding; they are currently in receipt of £2 million through the youth investment fund.
The noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Griffiths, and my noble friend Lady Newlove talked about youth offending, gangs and knife crime—I think that practically everyone did. We recognise that the causes of crime and violence are complex and often tied to local factors. We are investing £80 million, in partnership with the Big Lottery Fund, to ensure that young people have opportunities to develop the skills they need and the resilience that can improve their life chances. The Home Office recently announced an £11 million early intervention youth fund to support youth groups and community organisations in the prevention of crime and violence.
The issue of statutory provision was mentioned by several noble Lords. It is true that local authorities have a statutory duty to secure access to sufficient services and activities to improve young people’s well-being, so far as is reasonably practical. I recognise that this is a challenge, and we are aware of divergent views on this subject. I cannot say more at the moment, but suffice it to say that we understand the issues behind this statutory youth service and we are considering it.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about youth workers and how important it is that they are recognised, valued and possibly even fully qualified in order to ensure the consistency of high-quality youth work, and for the reason mentioned—that a bad youth service is worse than not having one at all. We obviously recognise the importance of having well-trained, professional youth workers for the delivery of high-quality services. We expect that all organisations will take seriously the need to ensure that practitioners working with young people have sufficient training and, more importantly, understand the responsibility of safeguarding the children and vulnerable adults they work with. Safeguarding, particularly, is a responsibility for all organisations in the sector, no matter how large or small, and that should be simple and non-negotiable. The Charity Commission—and DCMS has responsibility for the Charity Commission—is there to ensure that the highest standards of transparency and safeguarding procedures are in place, and it has definitely gone up the Charity Commission’s agenda.
The noble Lords, Lord Judd and Lord Addington, talked about sport and its role. I absolutely agree with the points raised on the power of sport to engage young people. We want people to get out and do sport—or to undertake activity more generally. Activity is more important, in some ways, but sport makes activity enjoyable for a lot of people. It is good for your health, it is good for mental well-being, it keeps people out of trouble and we absolutely support it. The Government’s Sporting Future strategy, published in December 2015, sets out how important it is for all children to have a good experience. That extended the age range for which Sport England, which is one of our arm’s-length bodies, is responsible, to cover children from the age of five, in order to have a greater impact across the whole of a person’s sporting life. We have also developed a new Active Lives: Children and Young People survey, which builds on the existing, adult-focused Active Lives to cover children between the ages of five and 15. This survey was launched in September and will provide a world-leading approach to gathering data on how children engage with sport and physical activity, with the first results expected this December.
I finish by saying that Sport England will be investing more than £194 million between 2016 and 2021 into projects focusing on improving children’s capability and enjoyment of physical activity. We absolutely agree with the noble Lords on that. I hope I have shown that we have taken meaningful action at a central government level, not just relying on local authorities to do their statutory duty. We have a strong record of delivery on that; it is one that recognises the undoubted challenges but does support change. We are going to build on our achievements in that, and we intend to deliver yet more for our most important generation. I am looking forward to the civil society strategy in the coming months.