Youth Service Cuts - A Meeting with Michael O'Brien

By Jack Swan

In the middle of a consultation just six weeks long, it's easy to panic. Sometimes, you'll latch onto things you aren't sure about, and others, you'll be paralysed and afraid to do anything until you know you've got your facts straight. Neither of these are going to help us properly understand or fight these cuts.

The Chelmsford Youth Council, understanding these problems, decided in their very first meeting after finding out about the cuts to get in contact with as many people in the know as we could. I was tasked with arranging these meetings and so, last Thursday, the youth council was delighted to host Michael O'Brien, the head of the youth service, in a question and answer session regarding the cuts.

Understandably, Michael - who is in charge of the youth service - was just as unhappy about the cuts as we were!3x

Thanks to him, we got a lot of useful advice about the consultation procedure. We raised our concerns about the consultation to Michael - such as its poor language making it difficult for young people to understand, its repetition, and its other flaws discussed in the last post - and asked him what we could do to edit it.

Unfortunately, Michael said that it was too late to change the questionnaire; at that point, some 1,500 responses had been received. (Apparently, this is far more than the council were expecting! It just goes to show the strength of people's feelings for the youth service.) Any changes to the questionnaire at this stage would render the results so far invalid, and since we're nearly half way through the consultation period, this wouldn't help us have a positive impact on the future of the youth service.

However, Michael did say that if we felt the questionnaire was just that bad, we could run our own one instead, which Cllr Ray Gooding and the other people making the final decision would be obliged to take into account.

Despite the short timescale, it would definitely be a good idea for any interested youth councils to try and create a more useful and young person-friendly questionnaire. Since that the current consultation was created over a very short timescale with no input from young people whatsoever, the teens who are filling in the questionnaire are being given the short end of the stick and it means that their views aren't being properly represented.

The best way to get their views across is to create and distribute a questionnaire which is genuinely useful - and since many youth councils have said that they're interested in running presentation days over the next few weeks to show off why their youth service is so important, these would be the perfect places to share out these revised questionnaires.

Michael also helped the youth council understand the scale of the cuts, reiterating the £235 million budget loss that the entire County Council was facing, and shared his own personal concerns of the scale of the 'savings' that the youth service had to make.

The meeting was invaluable for making sure that the entire youth council was on the same page when it came to information about the cuts, and where to go next. Michael helped us get a proper view on the issue and made sure that when we come to facing the people who actually will make the decisions - chiefly, Cllr Ray Gooding - we have all the facts necessary to put together the most powerful case for saving the youth service.

Michael O'Brien speaks with the youth council on 24/11/13

Youth service cuts - a Chat with Cllr Kevin Bentley

By Jack Swan

Nothing is gonna get done about the youth service cuts simply by sitting back and offering an opinion, so with that in mind I started the process of investigating and fighting the procedure with a trip up to Colchester.

My friend Jakub, a fellow Member of the Youth Parliament, had been kind enough to arrange a meeting with Cllr Kevin Bentley, the Deputy Leader of the Essex County Council, to discuss his position on the cuts and hopefully win him over to the anti-cuts side. Long story short, we didn't do that.

This isn't because of a failure of our skills to convince him or anything. Quite simply, Kevin presented a strong case for why the cuts need to be made, and went about doing so in a very honest and fair-minded fashion. That's not to say that I'm now convinced that the cuts are entirely okay - far from it - but I think everyone walked out of the meeting with a better perspective of the issue at stake.

Councillor Kevin Bentley was kind enough to give me time for an interivew (source)

It's all about the money

First, Kevin stressed that he regretted the cuts as much as we did. He explained that, inkeeping with the county council's needs to cut £235m, the savings had to be found somewhere - and 'unlike in 2010' there were no 'trimming down' cuts behind the scenes that could be made.

I'm sceptical of this because the youth service went through much more than a 'trimming down' on red tape in 2010: the £7m hole in the budget paid for a lot more than just paperwork. The two years that the Chelmer Gate youth hub stood nearly empty, where before it had been a thriving centre with dozens of young people in there for drop-ins or volunteering projects at any one time, showed that something much more than mere backroom stuff was lost. The chronic under-staffing for both frontline and maintenance jobs in the youth service takes just the barest of glances to realise.

Still, Kevin was not keen on the loss of services. Before youth services start to look to the private sector for funding - as Cllr Ray Gooding suggested in his radio interview - Kevin suggested that youth services first consider how they can use the facilities they have at their disposal to generate revenue to keep themselves running, in spite of cuts.

He used the example of hiring out rooms in youth centres as meeting places for companies, pointing out that the Colchester Townhouse (the youth hub for the town, where we were meeting) was empty for much of the day; he also pointed out one youth hub had managed to generate £90k, enough to pay several youth workers' salaries for a year, based purely on tea and biscuit sales. They're simple, obvious, and clearly rather effective plans.

There's an attractiveness to this idea and I think it's definitely an area that could be investigated. For example, youth councils could raise money and their profile at the same time through fundraiser events, which would help them be self-sufficient in their projects. Quite honestly it's an idea we should have picked up sooner! And by making some services pay-to-access, it guarantees that there'll be funding for them.

So far, so good; a youth service which works to fund itself has some clear upshots. On Saturday, a meeting of youth councils from across Essex will spend some of their time considering how they can raise money to cover the costs of operating and help ease some of the pressure when it comes to cutting services.

Not always

But expecting the youth service to rely on raising a full 60% of its own funding raises problems.

To start with, youth workers are expensive. They are very skilled and very lovely people who are well-trained to handle the emotional issues of young people and to help administrate and run projects. But all this awesomeness comes at a price and a reduced youth service budget means that even the most vigorous attempts at raising money through charity or business will have a hard time supporting the 150-plus youth youth workers whose jobs are on the line - and therefore, the number of projects they can help out with will be limited. Young Carers, for example, are going to be very hard pressed to raise the money needed to pay a fully qualified member of staff for a year.

And when it comes to children from families living on the poverty line, deprived of things to do for want of money, is it right that their youth service charges them to spend a night in a social centre or to access drop-in services to help them through tough times?

Kevin reassured me by saying that programs such as alternative education schemes and disability support would continue - these are 'statutory requirements', meaning that the county council has to provide for them by law. It is, at least, somewhat reassuring that these services will be provided for the most needy.

(Unfortunately, exactly what is and isn't a statutory service was unclear - rest assured, though, that I will be finding out this from Cllr Gooding and shared as soon as possible!)

What was left unsaid in the interview was how much money these statutory services would receive - whether, for example, they would take up the lion's share of the remaining £2m in the youth service's coffers if the cuts go ahead - and obviously, how much that would leave for other projects.

The Youth Service Consultation's online version is in places confusing or repetitive

Consultation woes

Kevin stressed that this lack of clarity about the future distribution of funding is because Cllr Gooding, who will make the final decision, is waiting on the results of the consultation that is being distributed across Essex.

While it's encouraging that the county council wants to get the views of young people in the shape of their youth service in the future, there's a problem: feedback on the consultation has been particularly negative. Jakub, myself, the Chelmsford Youth Council, and Emma Toal (a borough councillor in Harlow, who was formerly a youth council member) have all publically expressed our opinion that it is confusing and poorly written, especially for young people

For example, the questionnaire simply asks young people what services they feel should be provided locally, but does not ask them specifically what they think the youth service should provide - we're worried that some young people might assume that schools should provide opportunities to 'meet new friends' or 'go on adventure courses', which lessens the usefulness of the consultation. Not only this, but members of the Chelmsford Youth Council found that it took over two hours to complete the group activity version of the consultation!

Kevin was uneasy about redrafting the questionnaire but we feel that it is vital that it is rewritten so that young people can have a proper say on the future of the youth service, and he was kind enough to point me in the direction of relevant figures to help redraft it. With luck, I'll have news on the progress of this by this time next week.

I have faith for the future of the youth service. There are definitely solutions to be found and I think that, should the cuts go ahead, Kevin has assured me that they aren't necessarily an utter disaster. But they will still slash deep into the budget and it's crucial that the scale of the cuts are disputed, debated, protested, and minimised. There are a lot of bright futures riding upon it.

Read more

http://www.essexinsight.org.uk/ViewPage1.aspx?C=Resource&ResourceID=745  - the link to the youth service consultation

Our youth service is on the chopping block

By Jack Swan

It's a shame that the first proper blog post has to be about something negative, but hey, rule number one of writing is to hook your audience in with some conflict. So - here goes.

Last Thursday, Councillor Ray Gooding was featured in an interview on Radio Essex. What he announced came as a shock to all of us involved in the youth service: the county council is planning to cut £3m out of a £5.1m budget, or over 60% of the service's funding.

As if this 'efficiency saving' wasn't devastating enough, bear in mind that the youth service has spent three years recovering from the last round of spending cuts - before 2010, its budget was as much as £12m. Unfortunately, the youth service suffered heavily in the spending cuts that followed the Coalition coming into power, and so did the young people of Essex - not only did the youth service lose £7m worth of funding but the Essex branch of Connexions was also shut down.

(Connexions used to provide, in its own words, "Health, Money, Relationships, Citizenship, Learning, Work, Free-time, Housing and Transport". The youth service has done an incredible job trying to meet as man of those provisions as it can with less than half its old budget.)

Since the 2010 round of cuts, the organisation has been forced to rebuild with a significantly reduced staffing body, fewer facilities, and fewer resources. In spite of this, the workers and young people involved have managed to support and develop several excellent schemes.

The Chelmer Gate youth hub in Chelmsford

What has the youth service done recently?

Since November 2012, the Chelmsford Youth Council has gone from just two members to thirteen, following an intensive and proactive word-of-mouth campaign that has brought in a passionate and dedicated team who are a pleasure to work with every other Thursday.

In May 2013, the Chelmer Gate Youth Hub was opened, an event partly organised by the Youth Council, which saw hundreds of young people pass through the doors. Many more have poured through since, taking advantage of the drop-in advice services on housing, sexual health, education and careers that are provided.

Over in Colchester, even just one year after the cuts, their local youth council managed to put together a Battle of the Bands event. Dozens of local teens attended to see over 15 local acts duel it out in a celebration of "the talent, passion and huge devotion" of young musicians in the area. The event was a massive success, thrilling the crowds and bringing together the community - and it was organised by young people, with the help of the youth service.

There are many, many more events that young people have managed to organise across the county, in spite of the tight budget - but would be impossible without the services and expertise that the current youth service budget pays for.

This is leaving out the large number of other services provided by the Youth Service, such as training young people to get jobs, and providing alternative education. There's also schemes like Corner Club (for disabled young people), Plectrooms (for musicians), and Young Carers (a self-explanatory and important group).

The youth service even provides Duke of Edinburgh, the National Citizen Service, and the Prince's Trust scheme. And these numerous examples are just the tip of the iceberg! In upcoming weeks, I'll be visiting as many of these different groups as possible, to talk to members and share exactly why they feel that these services are so important.

When you put all these things together, you end up with an organisation that employs nearly 200 dedicated and well-trained staff, delivering services that in many cases are life-changing, to at the very least 5,000 young people per month.

And they're going to cut 60% of the funding for these services.

Read more:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-24399116

http://www.yourharlow.com/2013/10/10/are-all-youth-services-to-be-axed-in-harlow/

Essex Youth Service - Workers and Money

By Jack Swan

In Sunday's post we discussed the funding cuts facing the youth services, and made a whistlestop tour of a handful of the opportunities and schemes that the Essex Youth Service provides for young people across the county.

Bear in mind that the money doesn't just pay for these services - it pays for the workers who run them. Cut enough of the funding and you can only afford a limited pool of youth workers. The result? They'll either be forced to spread themselves thinly between a number of low-quality projects, or focus on a very small group of targeted projects. It's clear that, in either scenario, a lot of young people would lose out.

In defence of the Councillor Ray Gooding, he has not made any spending decisions yet. What he has done is flag up a number of possibilties for the future of the youth service. One of his proposed plans, which he spoke about on the radio, is less destructive - in the short term.

He is suggesting that the council hands over the running of many of these youth groups and services to the voluntary and private sector, with funding distributed by local youth strategy groups rather than a large central organisation.

 Norfolk County Council enacted a similar scheme in 2011, by devolving nearly all spending power to 'youth advisory boards' where young people, councillors and workers meet to allocate funding to different projects. These appear to be the same as the existing youth strategy groups in Essex, which work very well provided they have sufficient scrutiny, input, and enthusiasm - and money!

Theoretically, this could mean that most clubs can continue operating, but would have some worrying impacts: it would mean that many youth workers would have to perform their capacity in a purely voluntary role.

Youth workers with Councillors Kay Twitchen and Ray Gooding (source)

Youth workers: the backbone of the service

Norfolk County Council continues to employ some youth workers centrally but since they scrapped their youth service most workers have to be provided on a voluntary basis, and this could be the same in Essex.

Given how difficult this job can be - handling the emotional issues of some young people is no easy task - this will place our youth workers in a daunting situation of significant emotional investment, outside of work hours, for minimal pay.

Moreover, in the long term, parceling out the budget in this way leaves no central funding for training new youth workers. Where will we be a few years down the line? No matter how well-meaning the volunteers, handling complex emotional issues is something that requires well-trained workers - and that in turn requires investment on a wider scale, rather than by the competing interests of cash-strapped local strategy groups.

The Colchester Youth Strategy Group has funded a scheme for training new workers but the question rests (sadly enough) on the costs and benefits - not only is it taking a significant chunk out of their allotted money, it is worth investigating whether two or more local authorities paying to train youth workers delivers comparable results to if it were done centrally. When I get the chance to talk to figures such as Michael O'Brien (head of the youth service) and Cllr Ray Gooding, important questions like these will be asked.

These are some of the economic arguments to retain the youth service. It is, at the end of the day, an argument about money - the Council has to make £215m of cuts, and these have to come from somewhere. Mr Gooding is entirely right when he says that we're in "unprecedented times". But stripping something as vital as the youth service down to a skeleton is not the way forwards.

A Blog is Born

By Jack Swan

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a blog project like no other.

Across the UK, hundreds of young people aged 11-19 are taking part in 'youth voice' - a series of projects which give teenagers the ability to discuss the things in the community that affect them, and to be a force for change. Youth councils, regional assemblies, and the UK Youth Parliament all exist to provide a link between decision makers and the young people. And they do a lot of important and incredible work.

Join any of these organisations and you'll meet a lot of inspiring people, have a lot of fun - and see that there is a lot of work to be done! Every year the Youth Parliament runs a different national campaign, whilst on the lower levels there are always councilors to meet with, promotional activities to attend and so much more.

This blog will give you a snapshot, a cross-section, of what it's like to get involved with youth voice. Don't think that my experiences are representative of everyone; some do less, some do far, far more (and it's those people that I have the most respect for). To try and get some variety in, I'll throw in the odd report on what friends of mine are doing in Essex, London, Hertfordshire, Coventry, Newcastle, Norwich and wherever else I hear something incredible worth sharing. I might even get a few guest writers in now and then for first-person reports of the action!

What else can you expect of this blog? To be sure - I don't know yet. As best as I can I'll deliver weekly updates from the Chelmsford Youth Council, along with reports of all important activity of the Young Essex Assembly, UK Youth Parliament, and National Scrutiny Group. Alongside this I'll be reporting of progress in talking with councilors regarding the impending cuts to the Essex Youth Service (stay tuned for a full report on this). Somewhere amongst all the excitement, I might just throw in a few odd ramblings here and there about youthfulness and inspiration and how to live life to the maximum. If you're lucky.

Stay tuned for what I hope will be an exciting, inspiring and well-written chain of events that will give you an idea of how the youth voice system works. And by all means, take part too! Vote, comment and check out the good work that I'll do my best to publicise.

Ahmed, myself, Emma and Kirsty at the 2013 Leeds Annual Sitting