- Conference
- 2021 Virtual Special Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 25 March 2021
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that youth services play crucial positive and preventative roles across the UK, and the work youth workers and youth support workers do provides huge value to the lives of young people. Youth services help young people into employment, training or education; they help with potential mental health issues; and they help prevent alcohol or substance abuse, crime and anti-social behaviour.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, youth workers have demonstrated how vital they are, continuing to provide services to vulnerable young people in often challenging circumstances. The importance of the role was finally given some recognition when youth workers were given key worker status earlier this year, something they had been calling for since the start of the pandemic.
Conference notes that since 2010, youth services have suffered huge cuts. Research published by UNISON in 2019 revealed that since 2010, 940 youth centres had been cut. We know from previous UNISON research that between 2010 and 2019, �400m was cut from youth service spending, and 4,500 youth work jobs were lost between 2012 and 2019. A generation of young people are already suffering as a result.
The Conservative government is to blame for these cuts, and we now need a strong campaign to force them to give us back our youth services. Along with the lost jobs and youth centres, there are significant obstacles to reintroducing youth services. Many local authorities have re-structured and no longer employ specialist youth workers, and some universities have stopped providing the JNC youth work qualification. Retiring youth workers are therefore not being replaced. The youth work workforce needs to be re-built.
Conference believes that the future of youth services must lie in universal, open access services. Within this, specialist provision and access should be ensured for particular groups � for example girls and young women, young LGBT+ people, young Black men and women, and young disabled people. These services should be provided within a universal service and monitoring of uptake will be essential.
Major reinvestment will be needed to reintroduce and reinvigorate youth services.
Any local partnership delivery bodies that are created must be properly representative, with strong voices for trade unions and young people.
It is vital that the JNC youth work professional qualification is protected, respected and valued by employers. Further and broader pathways to that qualification should be developed, including apprenticeships, to ensure that people from all walks of life can become qualified youth workers.
This conference calls on the Service Group Executive to:
1)Continue to campaign for youth services to be re-built, based on reinvestment, universal services and promoting the youth work professional qualification;
2)Continue to campaign for services that have strong focus on the needs of young people covered by the equalities groups;
3)Submit a Freedom of Information request to local authorities to establish the current situation in terms of numbers of youth workers, levels of qualifications and how many remain employed on JNC terms and conditions.