This year we worked with Goodlabs to evaluate the impact of NEYA for the National Lottery Community Fund.

Q: What do you think are the three biggest challenges for the youth work sector in the NE and Nationally in 2022?

A: It was very evident from early on in our evaluation that the youth sector in the North East has suffered over 10 years of severe funding cuts over more than a decade. This isn’t unique to the North East, it is a national challenge – that some refer to as a crisis. Layered on to this is the way that the pandemic affected organisations, but more pointedly, the way that it affected young people. People told us that the mental health challenges affecting young people before the pandemic have now ratcheted up another level. A lack of training and development has produced a perfect storm in which less qualified workers are trying to deal with more complex problems.

Q: What is NEYA doing about it?

A: We found that NEYA is beginning to shift the culture in the youth sector in the North East, away from unhealthy competition and towards creative collaboration. The scarcity of funding has pitted organisations against one another in unhelpful ways. Leaders are now facing up to this, talking to one another, clearing the air, and forming alliances that are attractive to funders. They have also used their grant award from the National Lottery Community Fund to invest heavily in workforce development. Over the last 2 years hundreds of practitioners have been able to access free training in a range of important CPD topics.

Q: What difference do you think this will make in the next five years?

A: One of the most interesting things our evaluation uncovered was early signs of a replenishment of the sector’s lost workforce from the ground up. Alliance member organisations are investing in young people who have been through their programmes as teenagers and aspire to become youth workers themselves. Opportunities for sessional roles, with accompanying training, are being created. Longer-term progression routes are being envisioned for them, which is all quite exciting. The development of a number of place-based alliances is also accelerating impact in communities that have previously lacked youthwork provision. This includes some much needed work in areas such as outer council estates on the edge of Gateshead and work in rural towns and villages in County Durham.

Q: What is needed nationally to support youth work moving forwards, and who needs to be involved?

A: There clearly needs to be a fundamental policy shift recognising the value of good quality youthwork, with a substantial funding settlement attached. Cutting youthwork funding is a fools errand. The downstream social costs of failure to support young people through the ups and downs of their adolescence show up in the NHS, the criminal justice system and the care system. It’s really quite surprising the HM Treasury don’t recognise that defunding youthwork is ultimately a false economy. Our evaluation didn’t really deal with the bigger political and economic picture but if we were to go there I think one of the most interesting things to consider might be some kind of devolved funding down to Combined Authorities. The likely scenario is that the whole of the North East will move towards 3 CA’s each with their own deal with the Treasury. It would be a huge missed opportunity if youthwork funding did not feature in those deals.