Archived decisions

Contact: Malcolm Rittman, County Youth Officer, Tel: 01962 846370

1. Summary

1.1 The paper summaries `Transforming Youth Work - Resourcing Excellent Youth Services', launched by the government in December 2002. The document sets out the strategic role and the specification of a sufficient local authority youth service. The paper highlights issues for the Hampshire County Youth Service.

2. Background

2.1 In March 2001 the Department of Education and Employment published `Transforming Youth Work - Developing Youth Work for Young People'. The document outlined the government's vision for the Youth Service, highlighting successes, challenging weaknesses, and clearly setting out objectives for the Youth Service. The document recognised that a successful Connexions Service is dependent on the provision of high quality youth work.

2.2 In December 2002 the government launched `Transforming Youth Work - Resourcing Excellent Youth Services', which was produced collaboratively with a number of key partners.

2.3 Resourcing Excellent Youth Services describes how youth services should be modernised. It allocates funding for youth work through local authority budgets, as well as further grants for training and project development from the Transforming Youth Work Development fund.

3. Expectation of local authorities

3.1 The government expects local education authorities to take the lead in ensuring the provision of a sufficient Youth Service, which promotes the social, moral, cultural, emotional and physical development of young people and prepares them for adult life and citizenship. The delivery of youth work is expected to involve other partners and the provision of opportunities for young people to be involved in the governance of services. Where a local authority fails to carry out its duty properly the Secretary of State has the power to intervene to make such provision as may be necessary.

3.2 A specification for local authority youth services is set out in the document with the strategic leadership role being:

· The duty to provide a Youth Service

· The development of an approved youth plan

· The contribution the Youth Service can make to other government priorities

· A local pledge for young people

· Meeting national standards of provision

· Duty of care and health and safety requirements

· Mainstreaming equal opportunities, diversity and community cohesion

· Support from and investment in voluntary and community based youth work

· The youth work curriculum

· Targeted provision

· Local authority planning and delivery of substantial increases in the resource and activity levels

· Clearly designed quality assurance processes

4. Youth Services

4.1 The document identifies the unique contribution the Youth Service makes to the personal and social development of young people. It outlines the values of youth work and acknowledges the diversity of approach, the range of providers and venues for delivering youth work.

5. Resourcing the youth service

5.1 The government is committing more funding to youth work and to encourage that local authorities spend to invest in this important work. A new structure for local government funding from 2003/04 has identified a separate youth and community sub-block within the Education Formula Spending. The sub-block also includes funding for Adult Education and Student support. The sub-block will be distributed based on the numbers of 13-19 year olds and local needs and has been calculated at £8.693M. Current Youth Service Funding is 4.2M.

5.2 In addition, the government is continuing with the Transforming Youth Work Development fund. Until 2006 Hampshire's allocation is £224,200 per annum. A further £170,000 has been allocated to Hampshire for 2003/04 to meet the duties under the Special Education Needs Disability Act 2001 for improving access to facilities.

6. Measuring performance

6.1 The document sets out standards of youth work provision, which youth services are encouraged to work to in the context of their total resource allocation. The standards include 10 objectives and a number of targets for youth services to achieve. These targets are in addition to the contribution youth services are expected to be make to Connexions and other cross cutting and education targets.

6.2 The monitoring of the performance of youth services will take place through Ofsted inspections. Youth services are expected to improve quality assurance processes including the adoption of self-assessment processes.

7 Hampshire County Youth Service

7.1 Resourcing Excellent Youth Services reinforces much of the work the Hampshire County Youth Service has been engaged in, developing and aspiring to over the last few years. The targets are attached in appendix 1 and set a challenging agenda for the service, especially in relation to the level of available core funding. The assessment of the performance of the Hampshire County Youth Service against the targets is part of the proposed Youth Service plan. An audit and full assessment of performance against the targets will need to be completed as part of the process of determining local targets for Hampshire.

7.2 The plan sets high expectations, and in order to achieve these the service will need to:

1. Increase the number of young people with whom it works

2. Increase the level of nationally qualified staff

3. Increase the number of local projects

4. Improve the core funding base to meet the objective of a sufficiently funded service

5. Improve data collection and quality assurance arrangements.

8. Recommendations

8.1 The Youth Panel to advise the Executive Member for Education to adopt the `Transforming Youth Work - Resourcing Excellent Youth Services' as the aspiration for developing future youth provision in Hampshire.

Section 100D - Local Government Act 1972 - Background Papers

The following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

N.B. The list excludes:

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act

Transforming Youth Work - Resourcing Excellent Youth Services.