A Statutory youth service proposal: Multi-professionally located to build on the past yet equipped for the future

Austerity at its worst has left young people socially isolated, mentally ill and disempowered by their adult peers. The claim to making youth work a protected statutory service is growing momentum. The Civil Society Strategy praises the transformational impact of youth work on working with the most disadvantaged young people. However, the Youth Violence Commission goes one step further suggesting a statutory youth service is an essential preventative measure to tackle youth violence and gangs.

With such momentum and cross-party support, sufficient thought must be given to what form a statutory youth service could take to build on existing infrastructure, rather than propose a rebuilding programme on the scale of Albemarle, maybe repurposing the 1000 closed Sure Start buildings could be the answer. This paper proposes a statutory youth service based on embedding lifelong informal education to avoid gaps in transition between life stages and public services, extending the reach of the Sure Start initiative through family community hubs. This offer would be a process curriculum with political education and praxis at its heart. It would be OFSTED inspected, measuring the quality of inputs rather than outputs with local organisation determined by local youth panels making decisions on local priorities.

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