Funding for Youth Services

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) on securing this debate. I do not think there is enough chance to talk about youth services in our parliamentary debates, so I am really glad to have this opportunity. Youth work is so important, and I am surprised not to see more Members here—there are no Members here from the Conservative party except for the Minister. It is an issue for all our constituents throughout the country.

I would like to pay tribute to some of the youth work that goes on in my constituency: Regenerate; Group 64 at the Putney Arts Theatre; Free2B for LGBTQ+ young people; the many church youth workers we have; the Ahmadiyya youth movement; the Girl Guides, Brownies, and Scouts; sea cadets; sports clubs; SW15 Music, which provides affordable music lessons; and Love to Learn, where I used to work, which provides youth work for children from an asylum-seeking refugee background. I also pay tribute to Wandsworth Council and all the youth workers, especially in Roehampton Base, for all the amazing work they do with our young people in increasingly difficult circumstances. I will focus on those difficult circumstances today.

In the 1990s, I was a youth worker. I worked for the Methodist Association of Youth Clubs, working with young people across the country. I have been a passionate advocate for youth services since then, because I saw the essential work that youth workers do to enable access to skills, mental health support, and support for families and good relationships. It can be a safe space to boost self-esteem, have fun, try out challenges and skills, and potentially help young people see a different future from the one they have around them, because they are meeting up with other young people and having a range of experiences.

Regenerate is a fantastic youth work centre in my constituency, and it describes a stool with three legs—families, school and informal youth work. We need all three of those legs, but I feel that currently one of those legs has been cut off. We have been hearing the statistics from other Members. According to reports by the National Youth Agency and the YMCA, youth services have been cut by an astonishing 73% since 2010. Annual spending has dropped by £1 billion and 4,500 qualified youth workers have been lost from the frontline. In London, over £240 million was cut from youth services budgets between 2011 and 2021, and those cuts continue. Half of young people across the country do not have access to a youth service and do not know what is available in their area. Where voluntary and community groups have sought to fill that void, there is a crisis in volunteer recruitment, which was made worse by the pandemic, with a shortfall of at least 40,000 adult volunteers.

That amounts to 14 long years of our young people being let down. There is no more damning indictment of 14 years of Conservative cuts than the closed and decaying Alton and Roehampton youth club buildings in the middle of one of the most deprived estates in Wandsworth and in London. Every day, we walk past a building where there used to be a youth club, but it is sitting there completely closed. Youth workers I have spoken to said they had built up great relationships and trust with local families that cannot be rebuilt quickly, if at all. It is going to take a long time to rebuild our youth services.

The Government cannot talk about social mobility and levelling up without also talking about supporting youth services. Not only have they failed to invest in youth services and community spaces dedicated to them, but their approach is fragmented and unco-ordinated. The Home Office funds some youth services aimed at reducing violent crime. The Department for Work and Pensions commissions some employment-focused youth programmes. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport funded some of the building of new youth centres.

There does not seem to be a streamlined strategy to look at this in the round. Add in all the cuts to local government, and there is a perfect storm of failure of our young people. There should be a streamlined strategy to ensure a base level of universal open-access youth services. Young people must be a priority; it is imperative that the Government act to prevent missed opportunities for young people to get the support they need, from which we all benefit as a society.

The real-world impact of the cuts and patchwork approach to provision of youth services is damning. Some 24% of young respondents to a recent survey by the youth charity OnSide reported that they do not have a safe space to go where they feel they belong. With nowhere else to turn, and without the guidance, encouragement and mentoring that young people crave and youth workers are excellent at providing, they are abandoned to those who do not have their best interests at heart, and often make bad decisions, lacking the support they need to stop crime and antisocial behaviour in our communities.

As the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime made it clear in a report, each reduction in the number of youth centres corresponds to an increase in knife crime. Research by the University of Warwick bears that out. It found that crime participation among 10 to 15-year-olds increased by 10% in those London boroughs most affected by youth centre closures between 2010 and 2019. Those cuts have mental health and skills costs, because they have gone hand in hand with cuts to careers advisers in schools, and they have a social cost. They have a deep economic cost, too, because youth work saves £500 million of public spending through crime reduction alone.

Instead of letting down yet another generation of young people, Labour has a plan. Young Futures will be a new cross-Government national programme aimed at giving Britain’s young people the best start in life. Each community will be offered a Young Futures hub, which I cannot wait to see opened in my constituency. They will bring together mental health specialists, youth workers and neighbourhood police officers to finally give young people the start in life they deserve but have been missing for far too long.

There is a serious crisis in youth work, caused by years of cuts and of not valuing youth work, youth workers and young people. That has stopped young people achieving their potential. Youth work reduces crime and enables access to skills, engagement in education, good relationships and whole-family support. It improves mental health, physical health and, yes, happiness. Action must be taken to value and invest in youth services.

At the end of my speeches in this Chamber, I normally say to the Minister, “Please can we hear your plan?” However, I do not believe that he will have a good plan, so I can only hope for a Labour Government to start changing our youth service investment as soon as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

I will certainly come to that in a minute. It pre-empts the rest of my speech, but I am happy to take that intervention, as I have reached that point now. Many hon. Members have raised issues of antisocial behaviour and crime. There were interesting points about addiction services; I will raise that with colleagues in the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care.

In partnership with the National Lottery Community Fund, we are providing £22 million to youth organisations to deliver additional hours of support and positive activities for young people in areas where they may be at risk of antisocial behaviour. We have already invested £3.7 million of the million hours fund, supporting more than 400 youth organisations. We are also continuing to invest in the #iwill fund, to create around 60,000 opportunities for young people to make a difference in their communities through social action.

We recognise that some young people need additional support to reach their potential. That is why we are investing in dedicated programmes, where youth workers build that trusted relationship with a young person, helping to steer them along the right path. We have put £2.5 million towards disadvantaged children and young people accessing green spaces.

[Fleur Anderson]

I welcome all funding for youth services, but will the Minister accept that this is a piecemeal, project-by-project approach rather than a place-based strategy that asks what young people in one area have access to? A more joined-up strategy for youth services is required.

[Stuart Andrew]

I will come on to further work that we are doing. The hon. Lady is right, which is why I am listening to those areas that have joined together and are working in the same direction, rather than trying to find different pots of money and struggling. There is that local strategy, and I am interested to learn from those areas where that is working well, and see what we can do to roll out something similar in future.

Our summer jobs programme, which we will launch this year, will also support 2,600 young people at risk of becoming involved in youth crime, alongside the UK Year of Service, which will also provide meaningful work placements for those at risk of falling out of education, training or employment. I have met some of the young people who have been involved, and it has been so inspiring to see how their lives have completely turned around. In addition, we have invested £60 million in the Turnaround programme, which improves outcomes for up to 17,500 more young people on the cusp of entering the youth justice system.

I recognise that we have to do more in working with our workforce. I am glad that so many people have raised that. We are funding the National Youth Agency to maintain and improve youth work qualifications and to provide guidance on issues such as safeguarding. We work with it on the attractiveness of the career, but I recognise that there are challenges. When youth workers want to start a family, it becomes challenging financially for them to sustain that career. These are areas that I will be keen to continue to work on. It is why we are also continuing to fund bursaries for those who would otherwise be unable to undertake youth work qualifications because of cost. We have already awarded more than 2,000 bursaries, with a further 500 expected this year.

With all that said, to deliver the services that young people want and deserve, central Government, local government, and community and voluntary sector organisations—as well as the young people themselves—all have to work together on this. We need that collaboration in order to ensure that high-quality experiences are accessible for young people, no matter where they live or what their circumstances are. I can assure the Members here today that cross-Government work does happen. In fact, just yesterday I chaired the latest inter-ministerial group on youth, and I particularly wanted us to talk about giving youth a voice in relation to policy decisions and encouraging colleagues in other Departments to do what we have done. Whenever we talk about youth provision, whatever it may be, I always ensure that there are young people around the table, because this middle-aged, grey-haired man does not really know what they want today. I hope that I have been able to show that I am as passionate as other Members here today about increasing access to youth services and improving the outcomes for young people, because I recognise its value. I have seen it for myself, and the positive impact that it makes.

I conclude by saying thank you to everybody who does so much to support our young people in this country.