Youth Work - Cinderella Services at the Cutting Edge

For years services for young people such as the Youth Development Service have been Surrey's Cinderella. Budgets have been cut, with staff posts left unfilled and then frozen.This year a re-organisation at the top takes away the Youth Development Officers who lead the work in each Borough and District and further managers, replacing all thirteen posts with just four operations managers to run youth work for the whole county.

The underlying Tory-inspired "logic" is that this will be all right, because in any case there's going to be a huge reduction in the services that Surrey provides for its young people. By 2013-2014 there will be 30% less money than in 2009-2010, with £6m cut from the current £18.4m budget.

They plan to do this through the 'Transformation Project'. By means of 'co-production', the theory is that as yet undefined partners and agencies will provide services more cheaply and effectively than Surrey County Council could.. Good, targeted services will be commissioned for those who need them, whilst the statutorily required 'universal offer' of activities for all young people will be demonstrated to still exist, but will not generally be provided - or paid for - by Surrey County Council.

The County Council admits that this approach is "somewhat untested, but at the cutting edge of public sector reform". They say "In accepting a co-production solution to meeting the needs of Surrey citizens, the council will be deciding to deliver services in a very different way. There may be huge organisational change in the integration of teams of different professionals and maybe the council will cease to employ professionals who work with young people at all."

That would indeed be a transformation, and not one that Liberal Democrats want to see attempted in the context of hurried and savage cuts.