Worrying about the National Youth Agency

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Over the last 6 months there have been a number of exchanges between our Campaign and the National Youth Agency, focused in particular on a meeting held in Leicester back in February. After much to-ing and fro-ing we are posting the following statement from our steering group, which is self-explanatory. Whilst we have revised the statement to take account of NYA’s criticisms of earlier versions it is very much our own perspective on events It is not endorsed by the Agency. As to where matters might take us, our reference below to a revived Advisory Group may now be overtaken by the growing talk of an Institute for Youth Work - see the NYA’s response to the Education Select Committee Report.

REFLECTIONS ON A MEETING BETWEEN IDYW AND NYA , HELD ON FEBRUARY 7TH, 2011 IN LEICESTER.

Over the last two years discussions within IDYW had raised the issue of the direction and role of the National Youth Agency. Considerable disquiet had emerged. Given the Agency’s origins as the Youth Service Information Centre back in 1964 as ‘a clearing house for the transmission of knowledge and the fruits of experience’ there appeared today to be a palpable lack of confidence in some quarters about the NYA’s ability to act as an independent and critical voice for youth work in these troubled times. To be fair such misgivings were not new. Tony Jeffs and Mark Smith were suggesting a decade ago that under New Labour the Agency was insufficiently critical of the government’s targeted, instrumental agenda. However these feelings of serious concern were exacerbated by the apparent turmoil at the Agency over the past three years – several restructurings, substantial redundancies, the loss of experienced and skilled staff, stories of sagging morale and a fundamental change in the composition and accountability of the Trustees.

In this light and given that many IDYW supporters have been involved intimately and supportively with the NYA across five decades, we sought a meeting with the Agency, which was held on February 7th, 2011. Our focus was on where the NYA stood within the profound crisis facing our work and whether its structures of delivery, management and governance were up to the mark. To take but the example highlighted at the first meeting of the Education Select Committee Inquiry into Services for Young People, was the Agency capable anymore of fulfilling a serious research brief, given the decimation of its staff and resources?

At the meeting itself the NYA was frank about the problems it had endured in the last few years, which if left unresolved would have brought the organisation to insolvency. Its funding base had changed significantly and thus its business model. Nevertheless the Chair and CEO of the organisation declared emphatically their continuing commitment to youth work. However they recognised that the NYA’s relationship with and communications across the sector were not as extensive as they used to be. The management and trustees recognised that the field were unaware to the full extent of the issues that had to be dealt with to secure the Agency’s ongoing viability.

Against this background there was an agreement that the NYA needed to think afresh its relationship to and communications with the differing constituencies across the youth sector. From our point of view, given the Agency’s stated support for youth work, understood as open, voluntary and negotiated, this seemed urgent and very necessary. At the meeting itself the NYA pondered the prospect of regular meetings with IDYW, whilst worrying about the looseness of our structure and accountability. The NYA’s fears are understandable and well placed. We are are a particular, campaigning example of what Simon Bradford dubs the the expressive, romantic tradition in the work. Certainly though we welcome the NYA’s desire to resuscitate its relationship to the field, perhaps through a recreated Advisory Group, that draws on the plurality of traditions and organisations within our work. For our part we look forward in some small way to being involved in this process. We believe this would be an important step on the way to reforging from below an authentic and critical relationship between the NYA and the field, which in turn would act as a counter-balance to the inevitable pressures on the Agency from above.

Youth & Policy and CONCEPT hit the streets

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As ever a warm welcome to the new issues of Youth & Policy and CONCEPT, both now available online. The articles in both are concerned with the present mess we are wading through and well worth your time and effort,

In Y&P Tony Jeffs gets the show on the road in his inimitable style. Pondering the incessant demand that youth work proves itself, his riposte is cutting.

Introduction – Running Out of Options: Re-Modelling Youth Work. Tony Jeffs

But what sticks in the craw is that amongst those baying for hard evidence that ‘youth work works’ are privileged individuals who have benefited from sustained contact, often over many years, with a wise and mature house master or mistress or college tutor; who it goes without saying, would never envisage such roles being occupied by short-term contract workers or rewarded via a payment by results system. They know from their own experiences that all that is taught and learnt cannot be measured. That is why they are willing to spend so much sending their own children to public schools and elite universities. Therefore it is legitimate to ask the question why they seek to deny those less privileged than themselves an opportunity to access a cut-price version of the informal education they enjoyed. If it is because they think  those less rich than themselves must be denied anything but the thinnest educational gruel then they must say so; if it is in order to reduce their tax bill again they must say so; if it is to prevent the off-spring of the poor getting the jobs they think are the birth-right of their own children again they must say so.


In a slightly amended form these same questions need to be asked of high-paid public sector managers who rant on about ‘evidence based practice’ and ‘show me that informal education is important’ then spend a small fortune on activities, holidays, coaching and even counselling for their own children. The spending patterns of the rich and the managerial class provide all the evidence one needs that informal education and youth provision are important – much as a day wandering around a top public school or five minutes looking at the notice board of an Oxford college will do. Demands for evidence that such things are important for the less well-off members of our society carry more than a strong whiff of hypocrisy with them. The more generously inclined amongst us might view them as just a smoke-screen, a diversionary tactic. Whatever the judgement,those of us who cherish such things and believe in the liberatory potential of informal education,would be well advised to dismiss them as such.

Other pieces include:

Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility: Youth Work offers the way forward. Viv McKee

- following upon Tom Wylie’s argument, Youth Work in a Cold Climate, in Y&P 105, Viv pushes the case for a pragmatism, which ‘works’ against ‘grandstanding and soap-box campaigns’. For a sharp response to Tom Wylie’s caricature of ourselves  as idealist romantics, see Bernard Davies on Critical Exchanges

Youth work stories: in search of qualitative evidence on process and impact. Bernard Davies

- ironically, given Tom’s charge that we are of an old-time religious persuasion, content to tell ‘heart-warming tales told of young brands plucked from the fire, of lives turned around’, Bernard on behalf of the IDYW Campaign contributes a group of stories of practice, complemented by an interrogation of their contradictions and significance. As it is we have been granted funding by UNISON and UNITE to produce an extended and developed version of this interaction of anecdote and analysis – more news soon.

Struggles and silences: Policy, Youth Work and the National Citizen Service. Tania de St Croix

- just as the Education Select Committee Inquiry questions the efficacy of Cameron’s hobby-horse, it is enlightening to read Tania’s scathing critique of its premise and intent.

Liberation or Containment: Paradoxes in youth work as a catalyst for powerful learning. Annette Coburn

- in a challenging piece rooted in conversations with young people Annette explores the paradox of containment and liberation within youth work, arguing for ‘a border crossing pedagogy’, which could engage with the increasing compromises made around the voluntary relationship.

An Opportunity Lost? Exploring the benefits of the Child Trust Fund on youth transitions to adulthood. Lee Gregory

- being pretty ignorant about the Child Trust fund and the notion of the ‘asset-effect‘ I’m still absorbing Lee’s argument.

The editorial begins:

This edition of Concept is full of „big ideas‟ – which turn out on closer inspection to be not so big at all. Indeed, whether the Big Society, „Happiness‟ or Community Engagement, the articles in this issue demonstrate how these warm, comforting-sounding policy ideas have a function of concealing the harsh reality of economic inequality and the impact, or even the implementation, of more significant policies which exacerbate this. Nonetheless, there are always opportunities in any policy climate to respond with critical educational action.

Articles include ;

The Big Society : What’s the Big Idea Mae Shaw

Reflections on community development, community engagement and community capacity building Gary Craig

Smiling through the Depression: the ‘Happiness’ Movement Iain Ferguson

The Attack on The Spirit Level Nigel Hewlett

Just in the middle of dipping into the contents, but yet again I’m struck by how the articles  raise issues and dilemmas that need to be debated – so a reminder that our sister site Critical Exchanges is set up to stimulate discussion and we would love to post responses there to any of the above pieces.

Education Select Committee and Government At Odds?

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Having followed the comings and goings of the Education Select Committee Inquiry  I wondered if it might find itself at odds with the Coalition’s cavalier assault on youth services in general and youth work in particular. The chair, Graham Stuart came across as knowledgeable and independent, whilst Tom Wylie, former HMI and Director of the National Youth Agency had been brought in as a behind-the-scenes adviser. I was put off the scent by a chummy and uncritical last session involving the smug Minister, Tim Loughton. However, in the event, the Committee’s Report - read it in full – has been welcomed by UNITE/CYWU in the following press release as illustrating that ‘the government is negative for youth’.

MPs confirm the government is negative for youth

The government has no policy for supporting young people beyond slashing youth services and handing provision over to the market, a committee of MPs has warned today.

Unite, the country’s biggest union and the union for community and youth workers, says the findings of the education select committee confirms its worse fears – that the government does not value professional youth services and believes they are best provided for by the private sector.

Further, the select committee of powerful cross-party MPs, disagrees with the minister, Tim Loughton, parliamentary under-secretary for children and young people, who claimed that money spent on youth services, which equates to just £77 per young person aged 13 – 19, was ‘large slugs of public money’, instead praising the sector for its ingenuity in sustaining one of the longest-running professional welfare services in the country on limited resources.

The report tears into the government’s ‘only flagship youth policy’; the National Citizens Service (NCS), as it warns that the cost of funding the six week programme will far outstrip the £350 million spent by local authorities on the year-round youth service.

Unite urges the government to take heed of the committees’ call for the additional funds earmarked for the NCS be diverted back into the year-round youth services which have suffered the biggest cuts.

In its report the Committee recommends:

  • The scrapping of the government’s National Citizen Programme and turning this into an accreditation scheme for all programmes.
  • That the government publicly declare its intention to retain the statutory duty on local authorities to secure young people’s access to sufficient educational and leisure activities, which requires them to take account of young people’s views and publicise up-to-date information about the activities and facilities available,
  • That local authorities recognise that an open-access service could be more appropriate than a targeted one for improving certain outcomes for young people, or that both types may be needed.
  • The creation of an Institute for Youth Work to consider the issue of the lack of workforce development in the youth service, a move Unite has long advocated.

The union has been warning for over a year that youth services were first for the axe by cash-strapped councils. So severe were the cuts that vast parts of England will be left without youth provision altogether.

Unite national officer Doug Nicholls said: “One year into this government and this country’s world-class, constantly evolving, fifty year old youth service is on its knees.

“What a damning indictment of “compassionate conservatism”, which, in yet another government gimmick, is pretending to be ‘positive for youth’, while doing the opposite.

“Between them, the ruling parties have managed to achieve what recessions, downturns and changes of the previous decades had not – the near wipe-out of a service loved and valued by millions of young people and their families, and with it the loss of an excellent, dedicated workforce.

“What will follow behind is extremely worrying. Government’s belief that the market will provide is neglectful in the extreme. Will it really be prepared to put the resources into supporting a young person through thick and thin and into adulthood?

“One million young people are on the dole now. Hundreds of thousands more will be priced out of education. To then deny them youth and community support to keep them on the right path is a scandal.

“Government must heed the warnings within this well-balanced report and stop the cull of this service before it is too late.”
For further information, please contact : Chantal Chegrinec 020 3371 2063 / 07774 146 777 Unite press office or Doug Nicholls Unite national officer 07970 345 381

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Meanwhile CYPN has also picked up on the rejection by the Committee of the National Citizen’s Service under the headline, Cost of National Citizen Service ‘not justifiable’, quoting the Chair as saying:

“The government’s idea of using the National Citizen Service to inspire young people to engage with their communities, mix socially and build their skills is a good one.

“However, the pilots are proving to be expensive and full roll-out would be hard to justify when cuts, which the government itself calls disproportionate, are impacting existing youth services provided by local authorities. The NCS should be adapted so that it accredits existing programmes while introducing a new focus and resources into the sector.”

Given the Coalition is prone to about-turns the report offers the prospect of increasing the pressure on the government. However, responding to the report’s findings, children’s minister Tim Loughton said: “I am disappointed that the select committee has sought to undermine NCS pilots before they have even got off the ground. I agree with the committee that we need evidence-based policies to ensure appropriate and quality services, which is precisely what the NCS pilots will provide.”Loughton added that all NCS money was additional money for youth services, not an alternative and that it was down to local authorities to decide how best to deliver youth services for their communities.

As for our campaign we need to  utilise the report positively, whilst at the same time delving deeper into its ideological agenda, not least its abandonment of a commitment to the ‘voluntary’ relationship between worker and young person. Having skimmed its contents, it’s time for a more careful read!

TT


Youth Work in Troubled Times

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Find below the challenging and wide-ranging programme for a British Educational Research Association Youth Studies seminar, Youth Work in Challenging Times for Young People.

BERA Youth Studies SIG Seminar

Youth Work in Challenging Times for Young People

University of East London, 11th July 2011

10.15 Arrival coffee and tea

10.20 Welcome and Introduction

10.30 Paper 1 Janet Batsleer

Manchester Metropolitan University

Youth Work Prospects: Back to the Future?

11.00 Paper 2 Martin Allan

Radicaled

Why young people can’t get the jobs they want?

And, what can be done about it?

11.30 Paper 3 Paul Adams

University of East London

Global Youth Work in the Current Climate

12.00 Paper 4 Saqib Butt

University of East London

Can Youth Work Subvert Extremist Narratives?

12.30 Buffet Lunch / Networking / Posters

1.30 Paper 5 Jon Ord

University College Marjon – Plymouth

The Rise & (Fall?) of Managerialism in Youth Work

2.00 Paper 6 Graeme Tiffany

Institute of Education

Explaining the difference we make: an eternal paradox?

2.30 Paper 7 Michael Whelan

Brunel University

The role of youth workers in tackling street violence amongst young men in the UK- what the evidence says.

3.00 Tea & Coffee

3.15 Roundtable discussion

4.15 End of the seminar

Tendering, Targets and Youth Work: A Health Warning

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As workers try to come to terms with the targeted world of commissioning and tendering they need be imbued with critical caution. Why? The two following case studies produced by Bernard Davies for the National Coalition of Independent Action provide painstaking evidence of the contradictions faced by community projects and workers in the present climate.

Short-term funding to meet external targets: one youth work project’s experience

Summary

This case study sets out a youth work project’s experience of accepting funding to work with young people in ‘hotspots’ for crime and anti-social behaviour. The project team resisted the focus on negative behaviour associated with the funding and set out their positive view of young people in their funding bid. They believed they could negotiate realistic targets with the youth service and give feedback to help the youth service see what worked and what didn’t. Their bid was successful and they decided to accept the contract as the money would help fund work that they were already doing using their local knowledge and experienced staff. They provided initial monitoring information that included quantitative information and case studies with contextualised accounts of the challenges faced by young people.
However when the contract was extended by six months, the youth service tried to impose more stringent monitoring arrangements. The project leader was told that she had to evaluate their work in a way that she believed didn‟t value the actual work with young people. She was able to do some negotiation such as continuing to complete monitoring returns in arrears in order to capture the project‟s responsiveness to young people‟s ideas. The project met its targets but the project leader and youth workers felt that they had ended up ticking boxes for the youth service rather than working together to enable young people to set goals, build self confidence and change the community‟s perception. Lessons included the value of submitting a bid on your own terms, the need to look carefully at what is negotiable and who you are negotiating with, and the need to consult young people about where and when they want to work with youth workers.

FULL REPORT HERE

Localism in action? A case study of a small community project’s experience of a local authority’s tendering process

Summary
This case study sets out how bidding for a contract to run a local estate’s youth provision put an unnecessary strain on a small community organisation and contributed to delaying the project by 12 months. The case study is a detailed example of how the organisations that make localism a practical reality – small community projects – are made vulnerable by tendering.
The case study highlights four pitfalls of the tendering process, which have important lessons for both local authorities and organisations bidding for contracts:
1. The tender documents and in particular the contract were too complex and were inappropriate for a small community organisation.
2. The tendering process was long, complex, unpredictable and inconsistent.
3. The local authority commissioners assumed that they already knew what was needed and expected the community organisation to adopt local authority policies, priorities and approaches. The tender brief did not take any account of the organisation’s local knowledge and independence.
4. The tendering process stretched the staff capacity of the community organisation.

FULL REPORT HERE

Youth Work check list pinched from youth work online

The Cooperative Revolution?

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Having cast my vote long ago for the Platt Chapel Community Centre, ‘reclaiming and creating a diverse community space in Manchester’  on the grounds that I’m a Lancastrian and Hazel O’Keefe makes me laugh, I’ve been perplexed to keep getting e-mails from the Cooperative Society addressed, ‘Dear Revolutionary’! Now when I was a nipper nearly 60 years ago my mum used to send me with a book of coupons to the local Co-op [ pronounced 'Cawp' round our way] for a bit of this and that – well, to be honest for a loaf of sliced bread and some spuds. In those days the Cawp didn’t do fresh veg. Neither did they stock copies of the ‘Communist Manifesto’ on the shelves. None of which, I must say, bothered me at the time.  Decades on, though, the Co-op’s gross misuse of the notion of revolution does ruffle my untidy political feathers. But, ever pragmatic, no umbrage taken and presuming the Co-op has its tongue in its cheek,, find below details of a series of promising seminars being run by the Co-operative College in early July.

- Opportunities for Mainstreaming : ideas for the future of co-operative education, Monday, July 4 in Manchester.

- Education and Young People : ideas for the future of co-operative education, Tuesday,  July 5 in Plymouth.

- Co-operative approaches to teaching and learning : curriculum, pedagogy and ‘co-operative schools, Wednesday,      July 6 in London.

Fuller details to be found on these Brochures for Co-operative Regional Events or contact Ceri Smith at yourstoshare@coop.ac.uk for the first two gatherings and Tom Wood at t.wood@ioe.ac.uk for the London event.

A significant speaker at two of the meetings is John Schostak from the Manchester Metropolitan University, mention of whom allows me belatedly to post his thoughts on whether cooperatives challenge or collude with the status quo. Certainly a number of youth workers within our campaign – some now redundant-  have been discussing whether to form co-operatives as a way of  resuscitating a democratic and emancipatory practice.

CO-OPERATIVES : FIGHTBACK OR COLLUSION

Is the proposal to set up mutuals or co-operatives in the context of public sector cuts anything other than collusion with the cuts?

There are real dangers here. In my view there is a concerted attack on the concept, the nature and the existence of the ‘public’ to the benefit of private ownership. It is only in the ‘public’ sphere that people can voice concerns, make demands, debate issues, engage collectively in decision making and thus in action to make a difference. That is, it is in the public sphere that democracy is able to exist. In the private sphere, only ‘owners’ are able to make decisions, all others as employees must simply follow them. That is, in the private sphere, democracy can be excluded. The public sphere has been consistently eroded over at least three decades as privatisation after privatisation has taken place, employees safeguards removed, trade union rights to strike constrained and civil liberties reduced by legislation. Today, it can be argued that an even greater attack on the public sector is taking place than in the early 1980s.

In the context of this, does a mutual, or co-operative offer a solution?

Yes, I think there is. The co-operative society and mutuals can be considered to be a sector that is distinct from both the private and public sectors. Its global history gives evidence of its resilience and sustainability throughout whatever political contexts and economic crises that have taken place over the last 150 years or so. Although many co-operatives and mutuals are hierarchical in terms of organisation all have the principle of sharing the proceeds of work. Where State Public Sector organisations are essentially ‘top down’; co-operatives begin as ‘bottom up’ organisations. It is here in this mutual self organisation that I think there is a political force that is worth nurturing. Democracy only means something if it is in the hands of people who can act together freely and equally to work and create a community of mutual benefit. It is through working together freely and equally that people both learn and practice democracy as the basis for the good society. A co-operative or mutual founded upon principles and practices of democratic organisation is in my view the most powerful counter to increasing privatisation. Each co-operative creates and adds to the public sphere that is essential to democratic politics. The larger that sphere, the more effective it can be in shaping national, even global, politics. At the present, the largest sphere of influence is without doubt private patronage by billionaire contributors to political parties because there is no effective countervailing sector now that the State Public Sector is being slashed.

That is why I am involved in discussions with the Co-operative College in Manchester about projects that contribute to the building of a co-operative sector in education through the establishment of co-operative trust schools. Democracy begins with the young! And alliance with youth work would be attractive. The co-operative strategy seems to me to be one of building alliances and support networks. Currently there are approximately 100 co-op schools with another 100 on the way. When you think that this combines with co-ops in health, business, finance, community work…. it starts to be a force to be reckoned with. And if instead of ‘representative democracy’, there is free and equal participation in decision making by members of the co-operative community, then politics gets to be re-owned by people, not politicians and their billionaire masters. Co-ops then are a fight back, not a collusion.

John Schostak, Dec 2010

Standing up for what you believe in : Gil Scott-Heron

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You will find here a brief video of the late Gil Scott-Heron, described by Gwendolyn Brooks as:

Chance-taker

Emotion voyager

Street-strutter

Contemporary Spirit

Untamed Proud Poet

Rough Healer

He is His.

In the moving interview this remarkable, flawed and complex artist argues that if you complain, but do nothing, you should shut the fuck up.  This minds me of William Morris’s nineteenth century proposal, to do nothing but grumble and not to act – that is throwing one’s life away.

Either way the challenge is to throw off  the stifling pillow-case of passivity and stand together for what we believe in.

If you don’t know his work here is an example – Work for Peace

and you can listen to his final album, I’m New Here

and read a touching obituary, within which Gil is quoted as saying, “If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you’re supposed to help them. Why wouldn’t you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person.”

Save Strathclyde Community Education Course

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We’ve only just picked up the desperate news that the Strathclyde University Community Education course is facing the  axe.  Howard Sercombe writes:

The short story:

At 10am Tuesday 10th May, the staff team at the University of Strathclyde was delivered with a decision from the Dean that the Community Education course (youth workers, adult educators and community developers) at Strathclyde will be closed.

The core reason is that our publications are not high enough status.

We are fighting this.  We want every academic, every practitioner, every  student, all of your friends, all of your family, any networks, across the world to email in. We want a thousand emails saying this is not a good idea. Jam their email boxes. Let every colleague or student or constituent know.  This is an attack on us and our profession. It isn’t even about money, they say: its just that we aren’t high status enough.

So act now. You don’t have to say much. Just that the course is good, is valuable etc, or even not about the course but about this field of practice.  If  you are in networks of various kinds, get them to email too. Time to stand up and be counted.

The relevant addresses are:
Dean: anthony.mcgrew@strath.ac.

Faculty Manager: l.dougall@strath.ac.uk

Principal: j.mcdonald@eee.strath.ac.uk
with a copy to campaign headquarters ce-cld@orange.net so we know what is going  on.

Continue reading →

Charging for Citizenship

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Becoming a citizen might have its costs, dependent on who you are, where you live…? As for the Field Studies Council -  why is this outfit an expensive option? Your better insights welcomed.  Ta to Sue Atkins for the link.

While you’re musing, don’t miss Tania’s critique of National Citizen’s Service in the latest Youth & Policy.

Question in the House

Tessa Jowell: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office which National Citizen Service pilot projects charge participants to take part; and how much each such project charges per participant. [54974]

Mr Hurd: 12 providers are running National Citizen Service (NCS) pilots in 2011. The NCS pilot programme aims to test a range of different approaches to the delivery of the core NCS programme. One of the dimensions we are seeking to test is the impact of levying a small charge on participants. Half of the 2011 pilot providers are levying a charge for participation while the other half are not. Those providers levying a charge offer a range of discounts and bursaries, and are required to ensure that financial cost is not a barrier to participation for any young person who wishes to take part. The maximum charges by NCS provider are shown in the following table.

Pilot provider Charge? Maximum charge (£)
Bolton Lads and Girls Club Yes 20
Catch22 Yes 50
Challenge Network Yes 50
Connexions Cumbria No —
Field Studies Council Yes 95
Football League Trust Yes 50

Privatisation and the Big Society

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Good on the National Coalition  for Independent Action for producing two new papers designed to get us all thinking about what privatisation means for charities and community groups and how the ‘big society’ and localism damage independent action.

Big market: how localism and the ‘big society’ damage independent voluntary action (2011) PDF, 4 pages

Voluntary action under threat: what privatisation means for charities and community groups (2011) PDF, 4 pages

Compulsory reading for voluntary youth organisations – if you’ll excuse the paradox!