At the NUS we have been undertaking various strands of work in the area of youth services, including parliamentary work through the introduction of EDM 488, collaborative work with Choose Youth as well as looking at developing NUS policy in this area. We are also hoping to engage youth work students in our work and as such are writing to you to let you know that we are offering to come and visit students on youth services courses to give them an update on policy developments nationally, NUS policy in this area, run a workshop around youth services and give students the opportunity to campaign on this issue in their local area.

Our offer is to run a short workshop (40 minutes or so) with cohorts of Youth and Community Work Students. The workshop is primarily about engagement with the issue – youth sector cuts – discussing the debate between statutory services and voluntary, the definition of a quality service and its assurance. The sessions will be delivered by our Vice President Society & Citizenship, Piers Telemacque, who was elected last spring on a mandate of campaigning on youth services.

We know that when we do this kind of activity as stand-alone, essentially as an open event, and extra-curricular activity, that we normally have lower attendance – admittedly of the most engaged individuals. This is why we envisage this as being co-curricular – an activity that can happen within teaching time ideally or for example at the end of a lecture.

We hope that this project is something that you would be interested in. We can be flexible with the format the workshop takes and make changes to accommodate your particular cohort or course timetable.

Please contact NUS Policy Development Manager Alan Roberts at alan.roberts@nus.org.uk for more information and if you wish to arrange a time for us to come and visit your students.