Youth Services

Natasha Irons Excerpts

Thursday 15th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Natasha Irons (Croydon East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the long-term funding of youth services.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for this debate, Members for supporting it, and all the organisations that have provided material for today’s contributions.

This Government have stated that they are on a mission to break down barriers to opportunity, to ensure that every young person in every part of our country gets the best start in life and has access to the tools they need to thrive. As has always been the case, a young person is shaped not just by what they do in a classroom or what they hear in the playground, but by the community they grow up in and the stake they have in it. That is what youth services are. They are a safe space outside school, and the place to broaden horizons and build meaningful connections with the outside world.

As an elder millennial with baby-boomer parents, I know that every generation believes that theirs has had it the hardest, but in our day we at least had the luxury of living our most awkward and vulnerable years without the glare of social media. At least we had the opportunity to fail, to be odd and to learn who we were before we presented ourselves to the world. Whether it is the impact of covid, the cost of living crisis or trying to prepare for a world of work that is constantly changing, our young people are facing unprecedented challenges in a country that, for too long, has not invested enough in their wellbeing.

As a result, in England one in five children and young people now have a probable mental health disorder. The number of emergency hospital admissions for children aged five to 18 due to a mental health crisis increased by 65% between 2012 and 2022. Incidents of youth violence remain at high levels, with 3,000 knife crime offences last year involving a child. The Office for National Statistics reports that 16 to 24-year-olds are now the loneliest group in our society, and the Good Childhood report states that the UK’s children and young people are the “unhappiest in Europe”.

This damning picture of what it is like to grow up in this country should shame us all, because, as they say, it takes a village to raise a child. What has happened since the 2010 spending review, which saw funding for youth services pitted against services with greater statutory protections, is the systematic dismantling of the network of support that used to keep our young people safe. The village has been replaced by a patchwork of voluntary organisations, with fewer and fewer council-run youth services bidding endlessly for one-off pots of funding that will inevitably come to an end.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. She points out the extraordinary cuts in the funding for youth services—over 70% under the last Government—with 50% of centres lost. Can I take this opportunity to say that some centres have thrived and that continue, such as the Sulgrave youth club, which has its centenary next year, and that is thanks to long-term support and funding, but also to private philanthropy—

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is an experienced enough parliamentarian to know that that was a very long intervention.

[Natasha Irons]

My hon. Friend is quite right: there has been a 73% decline in funding for youth services. I congratulate the organisation in his constituency on its centenary.

[Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend also recognise that there is also a funding crisis in Scotland, with the Scottish Government starving local authorities of the funding they need to provide these vital services? This is not just in England; it is a UK-wide problem, and the SNP Scottish Government are certainly not making it easy.

[Natasha Irons]

I understand that MSP colleagues are considering bringing in a youth Act in Scotland, which is quite innovative, and perhaps we should try to emulate some of its provisions.

With the closure of over 1,000 youth centres, one in eight local councils now has no youth centres in its area. The workforce crisis has seen youth workers often stuck in low-paid and insecure work. The voluntary sector, which now delivers 80% of youth work, faces its own funding crisis, with 25% of voluntary youth organisations having less than six months of cash reserves.

Despite those challenges, organisations across our communities are stepping up to rebuild the village around our young people. Nowhere is that more evident than in Croydon, the town I have the privilege of representing in this place. In Croydon, organisations are working tirelessly to provide the support that young people need: Redthread, which is working in Croydon university hospital to offer young people caught up in youth violence a way out; Reaching Higher, which aims to support and champion young people across school, community and home; Croydon Drop In, which offers free confidential advice and mental health support to young people and families; and Croydon Youth Consortium, which is driving collaboration across local youth charities, so they avoid competing against each other for the same limited pots of funding. Croydon is leading the way in giving our young people a stake in their community.

However, due to impending budget cuts and reorganisation, Croydon, which is London’s youngest borough, is on the verge of losing its council-run youth engagement team. The team provides a critical link between the council, the voluntary sector and vulnerable young people across the borough. It provides outreach, runs youth hubs in hard-to-reach areas, and oversees Croydon’s youth assembly. To put it simply, Croydon’s youth engagement team has saved lives.

The limited statutory protections in place for council-led youth services mean that Croydon council can shut the service down without running a proper consultation; without asking key partners, such as the police or the NHS, how much they rely on the frontline knowledge the team offers them; and even without consulting the borough’s young people properly, having approached only 31 of them in the process of drawing up its plans. The council claims that some of the services will be retained by inviting the voluntary sector to put in bids to run them, but they cannot replace the consistency, institutional knowledge and co-ordinating role that the youth engagement team provides. As one mother, whose son attends the New Addington youth hub in my constituency, put it:

“The staff do such a good job at making everything seem conversational and natural... We’ve had pop up services through charities. But with the youth club, they’ve been able to spend time with a consistent staff team and build relationships with a professional and diverse staff.”

I welcome the Government’s commitment to the wellbeing of our young people: their work on a national youth strategy that puts the voice of young people at its heart, and their plans for the young future hubs to tackle the complex causes of youth violence. But I urge them to back up that investment with proper statutory protections for youth services.

It is time to stop the erosion of youth work. It is time to introduce statutory sufficiency benchmarks to ensure that no matter where they are, no matter the community they grow up in, all young people have the right to youth work, with measurable minimum expectations. As outlined by the National Youth Agency, that would not only give youth services the priority they deserve, but provide stability to the youth work sector, giving it the long-term structure needed to invest in proper pay, training and support for its workforce.

It is not just a moral mission to provide these services for our young people; it is also a practical one. As the Government’s own data shows, young people who receive youth work support as teenagers are happier, healthier and wealthier. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates, for every £1 invested in youth services, we save between £3.20 and £6.40 in wider costs to society. For many, youth work provides a trusted adult; a guiding hand on to the next step when the next step feels impossible.

I would like to end by sharing the story of Rania. She is a young woman who, like many across our country, left education full of potential but was paralysed by fear. She battled deep mental health struggles, loneliness, isolation and a crushing sense that she was “not enough” for the working world. Rania got in touch with the King’s Trust. She began to work with Charlie, a youth delivery lead who did not just help her with her CV and job applications; she listened, she believed and she walked her through every moment of doubt. Rania went on to apply for three NHS roles and was offered all of them. She is now proudly working as a band 2 healthcare assistant. As she puts it:

“With the support provided, I hardly recognise myself. I still can hardly grasp how much Charlie’s support has impacted me and motivated me to achieve my goals.”

That is the power of youth work.

At a time when hundreds of thousands of young people are struggling to find a future, it is youth workers like Charlie who are quietly pulling lives back from the brink. If we are serious about ending the youth unemployment crisis, if we are serious about the future of our young people, and if we are serious about breaking down barriers to opportunity, then we must get serious about the long-term funding of our youth services.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Natasha Irons]

I thank the Minister for her response. It is amazing to hear about the extra funding going in, and the Government’s approach to ensuring a long-term sustainable future for our youth services. It is a different approach from that taken by the previous Government, who ripped apart that network. Given the themes of today’s debate, and the piecemeal, patchwork approach taken by the previous Government, it is great for us all that this Government are taking such a different approach.

I pay tribute to Members from across the House—although obviously not those on the Conservative Benches, because they could not be bothered to turn up. I will not name everybody individually, because I think we had over 26 contributions, but I would like to highlight some of the key themes that came up, including the need for a long-term strategy, which the Minister spoke about, and the need for statutory back-up. None of us wants a repeat of previous years and the mistakes of the previous Government, who took away support and the cover that youth services provide. We need to give them statutory back-up. The Minister is putting extra investment into this space; I urge her to really back up these services with the statutory protections that they deserve.

I will end with an African proverb:

“If a child is not embraced by the village, it will burn it down to feel its warmth.”

If we do not learn the lessons of the past, we will continue to see the mental health of our young people decline, and their experience will continue to be the unhappiest in Europe. No one who attended today’s debate wants that to continue, so let us learn the lessons and have long-term sustainable funding for our youth services.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Very touching.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the long-term funding of youth services.