When funding was pulled from youth work, the Church stepped up. Did the government notice?

After years of cuts, Keir Starmer’s pledge to invest millions in young people will be welcomed by many. But Andy du Feu notes the Church has been plugging the funding gap for years — and it’s about time Westminster acknowledged that

Last week, Keir Starmer announced a plan to reverse the decimation of youth work services that took place under the previous government. The Prime Minister has allocated £88m to extra-curricular activities, spaces for uniformed groups, work to address anti-social behaviour and projects to boost youth engagement in areas of significant child poverty, as part of a wider Plan to Change commitment. It sounds good and should be welcomed across the board.

However, those ten-plus years of cuts run deep. By 2023, some 1,243 youth centres had closed and 4,500 youth work jobs had been lost. Local authority youth work was a sitting duck for cash-strapped councils, and the damage will not be healed by an injection of cash.

Five years ago, I wrote that youth work in the UK was having an identity crisis, hitting something of a low water mark. What was needed then – and is still needed now - is a re-orientation. We need to stop problematising young people and instead work towards building social, emotional and physical capacities and investing in preventative work.