My speech on Cuts to Youth Services

Today I was delighted to be invited to speak at a conference at Thanet College that included a section on the planned cuts to Youth Services. I was asked to speak in opposition to the proposed changes. The whole day was a great success and I am glad I got the opportunity to speak to the students. A copy of the speech I gave is below:

Speech on cuts to Youth Services:

Thanet College: 23rd January 2012

Good afternoon everyone.

Thank you for inviting me to come and speak. And thank you Angela for coming over from Kent County Council and Becky from Thanet Youth Council for this important meeting. 

It's pleasing to see so many young people getting involved – and that simply reflects the importance of the subject and the strength of feeling in the community about youth service cuts. 

The majority of people agree that public expenditure needs to be controlled and that it is necessary to have cuts - bearing in mind the world economic situation and the economic forecasts.

The difficulty is to make cuts that work in the long term and that are not just a knee jerk reaction.

To make cuts work sensibly you need to:

1.      Prioritise your expenditure so that you cut areas that don’t matter as much so as to preserve what needs preserving.

2.     Consult carefully and listen to the feedback.

3.     Remember the principle of "spend to save".

4.     Take care to avoid "unanticipated consequences".

By these standards, the Kent County Council plans and the way they were consulted on do not fit the bill. To be sure the County have produced loads of paperwork. But lots of words – at times quite misleading words - do not amount to a proper policy.

I find some of the statements in the Council papers produced by County on this issue to be highly questionable. There is a clear political slant to some of the arguments being brought out, and as I mentioned it is in danger of being misleading in parts.

There is an expression - "we are not as green as we are cabbage-looking" which means we are not as green or naive or simple-minded as to believe everything that we are told.

We are not fools. We know that it is ridiculous to pretend that cutting youth services means a better service - especially when the new structures do not make sense.

Last Friday the results of the consultation were presented to Kent County Councillors. There were more than 700 responses, and many of the responses highlighted the importance of the facilities. One respondent stated:

“Once a facility has been lost it will never be replaced. Work with voluntary organisations but keep the structure and safeguard the buildings”.

I completely agree with this sentiment because the physical building plays a key role in delivering services above and beyond youth work activities. This is also a false economy. Other Councils that have tried this policy of closing down youth services have been forced to back down due to the negative effects and reopen the facilities. Overall this 'saving' has ended up costing much more over time.

The proposals for Thanet that we should only retain Quarterdeck in Margate and so take away direct Council funding for Concorde and Artwise in Ramsgate also fails to take into account local considerations. It is unfair to expect young people from Ramsgate to travel to Margate, and without their own centre young people from Ramsgate will be negatively affected.

The voices and opinions of these young people should have been listened to right at the start. Kent County Council made the proposals, and then suddenly found out that there were local considerations that needed to be looked at. We have a situation here where essentially a group of middle aged politicians who benefitted from free education and youth services are only too ready to deny these benefits for the next generation.

There is also a worry that the new proposals could open the door to unqualified, inexperienced voluntary or private sector groups. While another worry is that by commissioning out these services it could lead to deprived communities being exploited for profit by the private companies that have picked up the County contracts.

Kent County Council has said that they will look at the whole proposal again in consultation with the local Councillors, and I feel that this is an important point that I will return to at the end because we have to chance to influence their decision.

We are not fools - we know that in spite of the spin about the results of the consultation - the overall public view is that these changes to youth services are no good.

And that is not surprising given that little attention seems to have been given to the likely consequences of these cuts.  Never mind the "unanticipated consequences" because we can see very clearly what the likely effects are going to be. There is enough research - which obviously fits in with common sense - to show that cuts in youth services will have bad consequences. It is not quite that "the devil makes work for idle hands" - but it is pretty obvious that if there are fewer youth facilities people will hang around on streets instead of engaging in purposeful activities. Some might be diverted into antisocial or even criminal activities, and attraction to gangs, guns and knives may increase.

More important is the point that young people need support. We have enough problems in Thanet without adding to them. We have a high level of general unemployment.  We have a high level of youth unemployment. We have some poorly performing schools in Thanet with dilapidated facilities. We have a huge problem with substandard housing and not enough homes. Most importantly we have high levels of social deprivation.

On top of this we have unprecedented attacks on young people. EMA has been cut, tuition fees trebled, future jobs fund cut, the highest youth unemployment since records began, and now cuts to our youth services.

Against this background I confidently predict that without properly resourcing these youth services we will see some increase in crime and anti-social behaviour.  But more significant is the likely increase in mental health problems, addiction, and depression. And this will put extra burdens - and therefore costs - onto Thanet District Council, Kent County Council, the Department for Work and Pensions, the NHS and so on.  So the "savings" for Kent County Council will actually translate into costs.

There is an equally compelling way of looking at the balance between costs and benefits and the consequences of cuts.

A decade ago ministers in the Treasury set up an innovative scheme with a new approach to public expenditure.  This was the Invest to Save scheme.  The idea was that spending money should be seen more as an investment rather than a cost.  Kent County Council obviously sees the youth service as a cost. More sensible would be to see it as an investment. Leaving aside the need to avoid the problems I've spoken about earlier, the reason councils put money into the youth services is that they are an investment in our young people - who will turn out to be self-assured, self-confident, better educated, and more highly motivated as a result of the purposeful activities in youth centres.

If you want an example of what happens when you don't invest you need only look at the County's record on child protection.  By cutting costs the County Council let down vulnerable children and when OFSTED carried out a spot inspection they discovered that well over a thousand cases had not even been allocated a caseworker. This has resulted in the County now having to spend much more money to clear the backlog and make huge improvements in their children’s services department.   

So I am highly critical of the way the County are approaching the review of the youth service. I fear that history will repeat itself.

But it gets worse.  The youth service cuts are but part of a wider exercise which attacks services to the community in Thanet.

Every week I volunteer at the Millmead Sure Start in my ward at their youth group for 11-18 year olds. It is sustained with community funding, and it does a lot of good because it provides somewhere for young people in Dane Valley to go and hang out. We need more of these services not less.

And this is the problem because if you have read the papers recently, it looks likely that we will lose all our qualified teachers involved in the various Sure Start centres.

These Sure Start cuts are going to affect many of the families whose young people use the youth service. So we have a situation where the younger children have their facilities downgraded while their elder brothers and sisters face a downgraded youth service. Vulnerable children could be put at risk as they are abandoned by those that they have built relationships with. And all this against the background of Thanet's social deprivation I mentioned earlier.   

This leads me to priorities. It makes me angry to see these plans for cuts in the youth service when the County waste so much money on senior salaries, generous pay offs and all the rest of it.  There are plenty of other examples of waste in Kent.

So you must be asking, how we can go about changing things?

If you, like me, think that the County Councillors are making a mistake then we need to protest.  I'm not suggesting that we set up a Tent City like the protesters outside St Paul's Cathedral but we do need to make our views known through petitions, demonstrations and so on. It is often those that shout loudest that get the most.

The biggest problem I can see is that there are no County Councillors to represent our generation. If we are not represented at this level then how can we expect the decision makers to take note of what we want?  It is no wonder that they do not identify with the needs of youth. It is up to us to make our views known - and if we feel strongly enough we ought to be prepared to play our part in the local democratic process. In other words, join a political party - and even though I am a Labour man I don't mind what party you join just so long as you join one of them. Or even get involved as an independent person. There is no point in moaning or complaining if we are not ready to play our part. 18 months ago when I finished university I decided that I wanted to get involved and to help influence the priorities of my community. Just this morning I chaired a meeting of a local group of volunteers that has been given £32,000 to use in our community. We want to prioritise helping young people and the unemployed, and so help them to gain qualifications and opportunities to unlock their talent. This was the reason I got involved because I wanted to change things and represent our generation.

So that is my challenge for all of you to get involved and help make a difference.  This isn’t about age or position it is about each one of us taking responsibility. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t because you are too young. You have a voice, and now is the perfect time to stand up and use it.

Thank you for your attention, and thank you for giving me the chance to talk to you.