Last week the Parliamentary Education Committee Inquiry into services for young people saw its first meeting with four representatives from the youth sector. Three were the Chief Executives of the NYA, NCVYS and UK YOUTH, Fiona Blacke, Susanne Rauprich and Charlotte Hill respectively, whilst the fourth was Liam Preston, Young Chair of the British Youth Council. The performance of the quartet has been criticised on the CYPN Forum, following the Inquiry Chair’s blasting of the sector for its alleged failure to provide evidence
If you’ve got a moment [or two hours], have a butchers. What do you reckon? We’re keeping our powder dry!
We embedded the video originally, but it’s a pain as it starts as soon as folk visit the site irrespective of what they want to do. Thus it can be accessed easily here
By and large, despite the efforts of stalwarts like Howard Williamson, English youth work tends to be ignorant of, even antagonistic to the European dimension. However this video made on the back of a major conference in Flanders isn’t a half-bad crack at making the case for a voluntary, young-person-centred practice.
What do you think?
IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK 
I am fuming after watching the select committee inquiry – it took me a couple of days to get through it because I had to have a few breaks to calm down and stop shouting at my computer screen. These people are meant to be representing our sector – they were a joke. Liam from BYC was ok when he got a word in edgeways so I’ll leave him out of my criticisms but the others were shocking. They seemed to be highly intimidated by the situation and the questions, and at first I was thinking ‘that’s understandable and I would have been rubbish if it was me’… but then it occurred to me that representing the youth sector is THEIR JOB! It’s what they’re meant to be there for! They are in very senior positions, probably very well paid. And no question came out of the blue, they were basically the questions asked in the initial consultation – didn’t it occur to any of them to prepare some answers?
Especially, didn’t any of them foresee they might be asked for evidence of impact? Even if they are too far from the field to gather any stories or case studies, what about the last 9 years where we’ve all been tapping recorded and accredited outcomes into computers – er, was the point of that not to have ‘measurable’ evidence? I’m not saying they should have reported the evidence uncritically – but to not even mention it was bizarre.
Apart from how generally incompetent the whole thing was, when they did speak they seemed to compete to be hyper-critical of their own sector and welcome any Tory ideas. Only large voluntary organisations record and evaluate impact and ‘a lot of organisations are not so good’ (Susanne Rauprich). ‘We would welcome payment by results’ (SR). We can’t evaluate our work unless we have millions of pounds to set up bureaucratic management information systems (SR). The National Citizen Service is welcomed as “a good idea” (Fiona Blacke) and ‘there’s nothing wrong with the (NCS) programme or the project as it stands’ (SR). A lot of youth services are not what young people want (SR). It’s one thing to be honest – but this was a trashing of youth work by the people who have been given an opportunity to speak up for it.
The worst bit was when the committee chair basically told them they were rubbish and they laughed and kind of agreed. I suppose it was nerves – but it just left an impression that they didn’t really care. Where was the passion for youth work? Where was the defence? Where was the enthusiasm?
I hope some actual youth workers and actual young people get a chance to speak to the inquiry. Nobody can mess it up more than this lot have.
Incidentally if anyone else, like me, can’t watch it on ‘silverlight’ it’s also available on media player:
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=7510&player=windowsmedia
Grrrr. Better go and calm down again.