Youth Work Lab: Starting something new

Cuts, cuts and more cuts. We all know that the youth service, both statutory and voluntary, is being squeezed on a scale not seen for 50 years. There’s probably a youth service in your area which has had to reduce capacity or disappear altogether. We hear the constant refrain in the press that austerity has hit young people the hardest: youth unemployment is at an all-time high, as is the likelihood of young people living in low-income households (almost half a million of secondary school age young people live in poverty and poverty experienced in childhood is likely to carry on into adulthood).