Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what additional support his Department is making available to charities over the summer for young people who have had their education disrupted due to the covid-19 outbreak.

The government fully recognises the difficulties Covid-19 has imposed on charities and in particular those charities that support young people and has taken a number of actions to mitigate these.

On 8 April 2020 the Chancellor announced a £750 million funding package for charities. This included £360 million of targeted funding for charities unable to furlough their staff due to the provision of vital services. In addition, part of this package included an open fund aimed at smaller charities and social enterprises working with vulnerable people affected by the crisis in England delivered through the National Lottery Community Fund.

One example is the £16.5m Youth Covid-19 Support Fund established by my department. This fund supported 551 grassroots youth clubs, uniformed youth groups, and national youth and umbrella organisations, helping to mitigate the impact of lost income during the winter period due to the coronavirus pandemic and ensure that services providing vital support to young people remain open.

In addition, the National Citizen Service continues to provide adventures away from home and skills for life and work for tens of thousands of young people every year. It has an established network of c.120 suppliers, more than three quarters of which are charities. It directly and indirectly supports c.10,000 youth sector jobs and provides vital support to young people. This summer, that has included two-week programmes focused on life skills, employability, and social action alongside the Changemaker programme, where young people volunteer in their local communities.

With specific regard to disrupted education, out-of-school settings, such as youth clubs, supplementary schools and extracurricular clubs – including those that are charities – can currently offer provision to all children, without restriction on the reasons for which they may attend. It is the government’s priority that these providers can continue to deliver face-to-face, high quality activities and tuition to all children and young people.

These settings have continued to be open throughout the pandemic, for vulnerable children and children of critical workers in particular; and we have provided updated guidance for these settings to support them to operate as safely as possible.