The National Youth Agency - Youth services

Youth services

In 2006-07, the provisional local authority (Section 52) youth service expenditure was £432m and the estimated expenditure for 2007-08 is £440m.

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(Source: DCSF Departmental Report 2008).

In 2006-07 the average (median) local authority youth service spent was £84 per head of its 13-19 population - an increase of five per cent (£4 per head) on 2005-06. The expenditure on the13-19 age group continues to vary widely with a current range of over £200, down to £37 (excludes the figure of £636 for City of London, and the unconfirmed figure of £309 for the next highest spending authority).

During 2006-07, authorities reported contacting over 1.2m 13-19 year olds, over a quarter (28%) of the 4.4 million total youth population for those authorities. A similar number of young people (1.2m) were reported as contacts by 139 authorities in 2005-06.

The average (median) authority contacted 28% of its 13-19 youth population, half a per cent more than the previous year. Ninety services met or exceeded the 25% contact benchmark(65% of 138 respondents).

The median average participation rate was 17%, above the 15% benchmark. Eighty-six services met or exceeded the 15% participant benchmark (62% of 138 respondents).

(Source: England's Youth Service 2006-7, National Youth Agency, 2008).

In 2003, 36% of 11 to 15-year-olds said they had been involved in youth clubs during the past year (rising to 40% for young people aged 13 and 15).

(Source: 2003 Home Office Citizenship Survey: Top-Level Findings From the Children's and Young People's Survey, Home Office 2005).

In 2005/06, 15 of the 33 youth services inspected were judged good or outstanding, 11 were adequate, and seven inadequate. This is an improvement on 2004/05, where of the 31 services inspected, only six were judged to be good or outstanding. Youth services make the strongest contributions to the Every Child Matters (ECM) outcomes 'making a positive contribution' and 'being healthy'.

(Source: Building on the best: overview of local authority youth services 2005/06, Office for Standards in Education, 2007).

In 2005, 360,000 children and young people aged between 6 and 25 were members of the Scout movement; the Guide movement had a combined membership of 477,000 for those aged 6 to 25; the Boys' Brigade and Girls' Brigade have memberships of 57,000 and 26,000 respectively for children and young people aged 5 to 19; the Clubs for Young People (CYP) organisation has a membership of around 400,000 young people; the National Federation of Young Farmers' Clubs has a membership of 21,000 young people aged between 10 and 26 years. In 2004, the YMCA had a membership of 85,000. In 2004/05, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme had over 138,000 new entrants.

(Source: Social Trends, No. 37, 2007).