Public policy

Step back and ask yourself: How does your youth club fits into the bigger picture? For example, what is going on at a national and local level to influence the amount of money available for youth work? What is the relationship of voluntary and community organisations - like yours - with local and national government? And to what degree are the needs of young people recognised and understood by our national and local politicians? What is the Government’s strategy? What does this mean at the local level?

It is well worth understanding this broader policy landscape - of which your youth club is a part - because at its most basic level this is what will drive funding decisions nationally and locally. So armed with this understanding you can write funding bids which are more likely to chime with national or local policy and are therefore more likely to succeed.

Yvette Cooper MP visits London Youth in Spring 2010 in her former role as Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions

But keeping up to date with policy changes and changes in the law is also important as it will often have implications for the way you run your youth club. For example, changes in employment law, health and safety law or – most recently – equality law will require your youth club to review its own policy and practice in these areas. Similarly, you will need to be aware of changes to the way training is provided for youth workers, or to the way in which safeguarding checks are carried out.

All youth clubs should have a number of policies and procedures in place which will need to be regularly reviewed and updated based on an understanding and awareness of this changing policy landscape. As a group you can test yourself and check when you last updated a policy document. This assumes, of course, that you created the document in the first place – a simple measure which many members have benefited from when completing our Quality Mark programme!

The current policy landscape is dominated by the coalition Government’s spending cuts across nearly all sectors and which were set out in the Chancellor’s Budget and Comprehensive Spending Review in 2010. The Budget set out the overall level of public spending for the next four years while the Spending Review allocated spending for all areas of Government activity. Departmental expenditure in turn determines the local government finance settlement which was announced in late 2010. Local authorities can then finalise their plans which in turn has implications for the funding available from local councils for local voluntary and community organisations such as youth clubs.  NCVYS published a briefing on the Budget and a briefing on the spending review which summarised the key points in relation to young people and the voluntary and community youth sector. They have also published two reports which track recent funding changes in the voluntary and community youth sector.

As a youth club you are probably aware of the debate about the Government’s vision for the Big Society and the role of voluntary and community organisations in it. This debate is another key influence on the policy landscape for voluntary and community organisations. The vision of the big society proposes that communities will be given the right to bid to take over local state-run services. NCVYS published a briefing paper on the big society  and is contributing to the debate. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has also set up a webpage devoted to the big society debate and which includes briefings and research. More information is also available from the Cabinet Office website.

As part of the big society agenda, the Government wishes to see a fundamental shift in power away from Westminster to councils, communities and homes across the country. The Localism Bill, introduced to Parliament in December 2010, will enable the Government to push power downwards and outwards, to the lowest possible level. For example, where services are enjoyed collectively (e.g. youth services), the Government believes they should be delivered by accountable community groups (e.g. youth clubs). Local government will continue to play a vital role, representing the interests of its citizens, delivering and commissioning local services and promoting the Big Society. Central government will delegate and devolve powers to the lowest appropriate level. Local authorities will be the key player in using new delegated powers and will be enabled to devolve powers further down to the grassroots wherever possible. Local authorities will also have a crucial role to play in ensuring that day-to-day services to their communities are efficient and effective, offer good value for money and deliver what people actually want. To achieve this, the Government wants to see local government being more transparent and accountable to its citizens. It also wants to see local authorities promoting the Big Society by working closely with community groups and the voluntary sector. However, in the short term, the debate about the role of local authorities is focused on the degree to which they are cutting voluntary and community sector budgets (including budgets for those services delivered by the sector), in the wake of savings which central government has asked them to find. 

The government's youth policy is called Positive for Youth. Whilst the government is not making any new funding available for youth service provision at a local level, it does recognise the crucial role that voluntary youth organisations play in the positive development of a young person. Positive for Youth calls for new partnerships to be formed in local areas between businesses and voluntary youth organisations to provide more opportunities and better support to our young people. It also calls on Local Authorities to involve young people more in policy-making. 

London Youth has also published a public policy document. Growing from our work on gangs and serious youth violence, grounded in experience and rooted in evidence, from labour market economics to neuroscience, our first published report ‘Hunch: a vision for youth in post austerity Britain’ explores how young people become good adults.

Other Useful Links

The National Youth Agency website

The Young people pages of the Greater London Authority website

The Website for the Department for Communities and Local Government including more information about the Localism Bill

The Policy, Campaigns and Research pages of the NCVO website including information on the implications of the Localism Bill for voluntary and community organisations

The Website of London Voluntary Service Council (LVSC)

The Compact website