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State of Play
State of Play
YMCA knows that youth services play a crucial role in the development of young people’s confidence, resilience and social skills, whilst creating fun spaces for children to be themselves.
These are critical spaces which for too long now have been drastically underfunded.
YMCA’s latest State of Play report highlights that this narrative remains unchanged. Local authority funding for youth services has seen its biggest annual cut in almost a decade. The amount spent on youth services has fallen by a staggering 10% in a single year.
Over the past 14 years, this has meant that funding for youth services in England and Wales has been cut by 74% in real terms, a loss of £1.3 billion since 2010-11.
What’s the state of play in your local area?
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Everyone deserves a fair chance to discover who they are and what they can become.
See how your local community has been impacted
A renewed ambition
This year’s report comes at a seminal moment for the future of youth services in both England and Wales.
In England, we recently saw the publication of a new National Youth Strategy drawing on the insights of over 14,000 young people. While the commitment to a place-based approach to funding was welcome, time will tell how well this new strategy will allow local authorities to fund youth services.
In Wales, policies and strategies are several steps ahead. The Welsh Government plans to introduce a statutory framework for youth work which will place a duty on local authorities to ensure the provision of youth work. This is encouraging but without further funding, youth work offers may be difficult to enact.
As both England and Wales undergo significant transformations in the approach and value of youth work, YMCA’s report seeks to serve as what we hope is a baseline for funding moving forwards.
What’s the state of play in your local area?
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Find out more about your local area and its funding of youth services with our interactive map.
For the last six years, YMCA has charted the decline of local authority funding of youth services since 2010-11.
Read the report to find out what the state of play is this year.
YMCA’s recommendations
- Sustained revenue funding for universal and open-access youth services. The Government should provide ring-fenced revenue funding for universal and open-access youth services for all young people, all year round.
- A strategic vision for young people. The Government should develop a strategic rights-based approach to youth work in England as seen in Wales, working with young people about the services offered and a plan to ensure we deliver the principles and practice of youth work to all young people, from all walks of life.
- A clearer statutory duty on local authorities to deliver youth services. The terms are not currently clearly defined, leading to wide variation between local authorities regarding their youth services provision
Idris “I always have fun when I attend YMCA and it makes me feel really happy. It has helped me as I can take positive memories away from my time here and when I am feeling low, I can remember that I have Monday’s youth club to look forward to.”