Published: 11 February 2009
United stand against illogical cuts
A mass rally is being held in Coventry on Saturday 14 February 2009 to prevent £660,000 of cuts to the children & youth services in the city.
Unite, the largest union in the country, is calling on the public to fight the plans of the Conservative-controlled Coventry City Council, which could mean the closure of the remaining 14 after-school clubs and 23 summer play schemes, possibly affecting 6,000 primary school children.
The Unite march & rally will be at the Coventry Council House in Earl Street at noon on 14 February.
Doug Nicholls, Unite National Secretary, Community and Youth Workers Industrial Sector, said:
“This will give the chance for the people of Coventry to show their opposition to the cuts which will hit some of the most vulnerable families and children in the community”.
The cuts to the Children’s and Family Education Services, totaling £300,000 for the current financial year 2007/08, are coupled with the £360,000 being axed from the Youth Service over a two-year period, (2007/09).
The Youth Service gives support & advice on:
- sexual health
- drug & alcohol misuse
- community cohesion
- employment training
Unite is angry that the cash-strapped council spent £64,000 on management consultants, PWC, for a three-month review of the Youth Service, which Doug Nicholls described as ‘a flagrant waste of public money which could have been better spent on front line projects for young people.’
Proposals to ‘outsource’ the work of children & youth services to other organisations would lead to:
- ‘a dumbing down’ of the professionalism of youth & community workers
- job cuts
- the erosion of the pay & conditions of those staff that remain
It is understood that 22.6 whole-time equivalent (WTE) jobs are under threat, although, because many staff work part-time, this will translate into many more employees losing their jobs.
Unite said that no research had been done by the council on how it planned for local schools to take up the slack, if the after-school clubs close.
Unite is calling on the council’s new Chief Executive, Martin Reeve, who takes up his post on 1 April, to maintain front line services for children & young people, and enter into ‘a meaningful dialogue’ with the trade unions.
Doug Nicholls said:
“Coventry is, unfortunately, leading the country in this systematic attack on these vital services for children and young people at a time of chronic recession, as well as undermining the professionalism and qualifications of our members”.
The timing of this news is interesting as it follows the recent publication of a related article in The Source earlier this week - Ludicrous and Wasteful – concerning an Audit Commission report.
The report highlighted that it costs four times as much to put a young person through the criminal justice system as it does to keep them out of it.
However, sport & leisure projects designed to help keep teens on the straight and narrow, struggle with a funding system that is wasteful, inefficient and bureaucratic.
Michael O'Higgins, chairman of the Audit Commission, called the grants system 'a dog's breakfast', saying: “It's ludicrous that funding schemes for young people in trouble with the law should be so complicated. Major opportunities to save public money are going begging."
A young person in the criminal justice system costs the taxpayer £200,000 by the age of 16, but one needing support to stay out costs less than £50,000. Over £113 million would be saved if just one in ten young offenders was kept out of further trouble.
Individual Councils will, as is the nature of things, have funding issues from time to time (often possibly created by politically biased funding from the government of the day), BUT surely this is a case in point where central and local government have to combine central funding pots (the Justice System) with local funding pots (Y&C and education to fund services which impact on both?
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