Huge drop in youth services spending per child in the West Midlands

New figures show youth services in England are spending less than a quarter of what they were a decade ago per child.

Analysis by the YMCA suggests each child is now allocated around £37 when it was £158 previously.

According to the Department for Education figures on council spending, funding cuts have seen youth services in England lose some £1.1 billion between 2010-11 and 2020-21.

In England, annual spend per head on 5 to 17-year-olds has seen a "dramatic fall" from £158 in 2010-11 to £37 in 2020-21 in real terms.

In the West Midlands overall expenditure fell 88% in real terms over the past decade.

The YMCA said its analysis shows a postcode lottery of funding variations that highlight "the localised fallout of a new global crisis".

Denise Hatton, chief executive of YMCA England & Wales, said: "In addition to a decade of funding failures, young people have spent the past two years adjusting to periods of staying at home, limited social interaction, education anxieties, and a whole host of worries like no generation before.

"Simultaneously for the sector, the pandemic meant a shift in how youth services operated, placing significant pressure on their ability to support young people through these difficult transitions.

"All young people deserve access to the services capable of empowering them to achieve a bright future.

"We cannot let location dictate these opportunities, and we must no longer expect youth service providers to remain in survival mode as their funding streams continue to be squeezed, or worse still dry up entirely. Crucial and proportional investment is needed now."

More than half of city-council run youth centres in Birmingham have closed in the last 10 years

In September 2021, our exclusive investigation into services for young people found more than half of youth centres run by Birmingham City Council had closed down in the last decade. Our freedom of information request shows from January 2011 to January 2021, 26 services were shut.

According to figures, there hasn't been a new youth centre in the city for over a decade. Young people say that they are too scared to go out in some parts of Birmingham following the death of 14 year old Dea-John Reid who was stabbed to death in 2021. They're adding their voices to calls for a new youth centre, saying that services in the city are too outdated for them.

Councillor Anntoinette Bramble, chairwoman of the Local Government Association's children and young people board, said limited funding for prevention work is being diverted to protect children at immediate risk.

She said: "Children need to be at the heart of the national recovery and we want to work with Government to invest fully in children and youth services, which is key to tackling serious violence, to help them avoid long-term unemployment, mental health problems and being lured into criminal activity, to ensure no one is left behind."