Big Blow for Big Society

In just four months vschools had established a universal volunteering and social action initiative for every State secondary school in England. Feedback from schools and local government was universally positive and welcoming. v was extremely disappointed and concerned therefore by the Department for Education’s decision to close the Youth Community Action programme, including vschools.

v understands of course that these savings are part of the Government’s wider spending cuts, but for years political parties, the voluntary sector, teachers, the public and young people themselves have been calling for all schools to get involved in social action, so it appears the government are missing a fantastic opportunity to embed a commitment to social action at an early, formative age.

Commenting on the decision v’s Chief Executive, Terry Ryall, said, “Cutting the programme at this stage is a false economy when the start-up investment has already been made.  Any actual savings to the public purse will be minimal, indeed potentially non existent when set against the return on the investment that could have been achieved by letting the programme run as planned”.

[caption id="attachment_1238" align="alignright" width="258" caption="Proto-type of vschools website"][/caption]

As v’s Digital Manager explains, a great loss from the programme is the new vschools site which had already been tested with pupils and schools, and hundreds of schools were ready to sign up. The site would have provided a safe, secure and engaging volunteering platform for 14-16 year olds in every maintained school in England.

A number of commentators have discussed the cuts including the Independent on Sunday, Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, Professor David Blanchflower in the New Statesman and Children and Young People Now magazine, who have recently launched a campaign, ‘For Youth's Sake’  which seeks to highlight how young people’s services and projects cannot be lost without consequences.

In separate news the Office of Civil Society has asked v, as one of its strategic partners, to make a 5% saving in this current year and has capped the Match Fund at £10m rather than £15m. v will still be able to meet all existing Match Fund commitments and is considering how to make the required savings while preserving all the impressive work already under-way up and down the country and to protect opportunities for young people to get involved in volunteering and social action in their communities. v will continue to press during the Spending Review 2010 for public money to invest in young people and their futures.