Ever since the first ones were set up by philanthropists, youth clubs have sought to provide children with experiences not available to them elsewhere. The Waifs’ Rescue Agency and Street Vendors’ Club, which opened in Sunderland in 1902, was one of the pioneers. From its earliest days, competing ideas about what kind of service to offer had to be negotiated. Was the point to rescue and reform young people at risk of getting into trouble? Or to create opportunities for recreation and support for those unlikely to find them otherwise?
Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party sees crime prevention as the priority. It has promised a Young Futures programme, modelled on New Labour’s Sure Start, as a way to reduce knife crime. After 14 years in which youth services endured some of the harshest cuts of any public service, and with concerns about young people’s social and emotionalwellbeing running high, any pledge to invest in teenagers is welcome. But the results of a survey by the National Youth Agency are a reminder that, while youth services can play a role in supporting young people at risk from violence, they should not be viewed solely through a criminal justice lens.
The chance to have fun was what older teens told researchers that they want from youth clubs, along with new friends, increased confidence and skills. Looking back at his own experiences, Efe Obada, the American football star who grew up in foster care in London, echoed this. He said the relationships he had formed at a local club, both with peers and a youth worker who became his friend, gave him a sense of belonging and helped him to “make that transition from teenager to adulthood”.
For most young people, school is the place where they become part of a same-age cohort and find friends. Some schools also manage to create opportunities for extracurricular activities and the out-of-hours association (trips away, sports matches, evening concerts) that goes with them. The Guardian reported recently from one London secondary that has trialled a 12-hour day. But other schools have cut back on after-school activities as a result of funding cuts and the demands of the curriculum. This means that while wealthier children still have chances to try things out and make friends with pupils from different schools, children from less well-off backgrounds are less likely to.
In a key 1960 report on youth services, Richard Hoggart, who went on to run the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, and Leslie Paul, who founded the Woodcraft Folk, wrote that: “Recreation can be as educative to the adolescent as play is to the infant.”
After 14 years of Tory-led government that forced a massive retrenchment of local, council-run services, many of the spaces in which such recreation used to take place have shut. The social democratic vision of a service for young people that could help strengthen bonds of community, and counter exclusion, has not been sustained. The loss has been great. Schooling is crucial, but teenagers have needs besides formal education. They deserve more from the government than they have been getting.
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