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.
