Youth Service should do more

I attended a meeting the other day which left me furious and frustrated.

It was a ‘round table‘ of the main public agencies which serve the Lichfield district area…. Police, District Council, County Social Services, Fire & Rescue Service, County Education, NHS and County Youth Service.

One of the main items of business was the growing problem of anti social behaviour, mainly involving young people sadly. The figures provided to us showed that in parts of the district incidents of ASB have increased by a staggering 250% in the last year. And the problem is spreading…. and guess what…. it’s mainly alcohol related; surprise surprise!

Burntwood Town has serious problems although the police, the youth service (at last) and other agencies have put resources in place to tackle it…. a mixture of carrot and stick in the form of young people’s activities and strict enforcement. It is having some effect.

But other areas are not getting that sort of effort. Armitage, parts of north Lichfield, even Alrewas are having real difficulties with lots of youngsters gathering and doing stuff that is not welcome mainly, again, due to drink.

Most of the rural part of my County patch hasn’t seen any publicly funded youth services for years with the exception of Whittington although I doubt that will continue for much longer. On the whole though local parish councils and the community provide some community youth provision and there aren’t big problems with bad behaviour in the main.

The same can’t be said about Fazeley and Mile Oak…. ASB and large groups of young people drinking alcohol and causing upset is a big issue there. The County Youth Service ceased working at Fazeley Town Hall 18 months ago and although 3 hours a week ’street youth work’ is done I really do think it’s just lip service. Mile Oak got a new community centre last year and at the same time we managed to find over £30,000 funding for a purpose built youth centre too.

And I’m afraid this is where my serious gripe starts about the lack of the youth service work. The construction of the new youth facility was finished well before Christmas last year. Enter, at that time, Staffordshire Youth Service to organise consultations with young people on how to finish the place inside and what activities to provide for local youngsters. It has taken an age! Even when the consultation was finally done nothing happened in response to it for weeks due to a lack of staff and youth workers. So eventually the place was kitted out in part six weeks ago but the very best they could provide was 2 hours youth work on a Monday each week. Not much and no matter how much effort I’ve put in trying to secure a decent youth provision over the last 6 months the 2 hours is it.

Actually, because I think the front line staff in the service do a good job in difficult circumstances, I haven’t ‘blown off’ about this ridiculous situation publicly…. until now. That ’round table’ meeting was what did it for me. I don’t agree with the Youth Services’ insistance that youngsters don’t want activities on Fridays and Saturdays…. I don’t agree with their stance that it doesn’t have resources to do more than 2 hours a week in one of the main problem areas for ASB in all Lichfield and I don’t agree they are playing a full part in diverting young people in Fazeley and Mile Oak away from bad behaviour.

Then it got even better! I discovered that the Youth Service is actually putting up to 4 days a week work into Swinfen Young Offenders Institution…. a central government funded facility. And do the Home Office pay for that 4 days? They do not. They can’t find resource to carry out sufficient youth work in Lichfield communities but they can subsidise the work of central government. That is what has wound me up.

So I did some investigation into budgets and what I found was very interesting. The County Council has cut back funding for the Youth Service since 2004/05. Then the budget for the whole county was about £6million whilst currently it’s £6.3million. In real terms, taking account of inflation, that’s a cut of about £500,000.

For Lichfield District it’s even worse than that. Back in 2004/05 the County spent over £484,000 but this year the budget for our area is just £400,000. Taking inflation into account, that’s a whopping cut of 25% in budget.

At a time when anti social behaviour is becoming an epidemic, when diverting young people away from it should be a priority and when other public agencies are spending more on the problem, the County are cutting costs and resources. The terrible financial position of the Labour County is now really starting to have an impact on front line services. Lichfield and the fight at against anti social behaviour are taking a real hit.

I thought at the time the difficult job would be raising the money to build and kit out the new Mile Oak Youth Centre not actually getting the youth service to use it. I was wrong…. what a waste!

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