CYP Now: NYA guidance offers blueprint to revitalise youth work services
30 October 2020
Children & Young People Now have published an article on the National Youth Agency’s new guidance to local authorities on providing youth services.
London youth is quoted supporting the new guidance and noting the central importance of relationships to youth work, as well as the need to support existing services and for firm funding commitments to back the aspirations of the guidance.
Umbrella body London Youth backed the plan’s focus on all types of providers and says it is important for investment to go into existing provision as well as new alternatives. It also warned against “a danger of seeing universal delivery made possible via digital”.
“We know through lockdown many young people fell away from youth work after the initial Zoom interest – we started to see members finding innovative ways to connect in a face-to-face, distanced way through, for example, doorstep visits,” it says. “Relationships, as well as spaces to go, are at the heart of youth work, which online provision doesn’t deliver in the same way.”
London Youth says such plans are good in theory, but in practice will be competing for funding against other services that have ‘higher priority’ such as education and social care.
“Without the detail behind how this will be funded, it’s hard to see how it will be implemented, especially in the next five years,” it adds.
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