November EC Meeting 2019

The Labour Party’s Vision for Rebuilding Youth Services

• Signpost and connect to other organisations and services providing support to young people, including education and employment opportunities, and information, advice and counselling provisions • Ensure the active voluntary participation of young people in the specification, governance, delivery and scrutiny of services

KEY TERMINOLOGY AND DEFINITIONS

Throughout this policy paper, we have used the following terminology and definitions:

• ‘Youth’ is the developmental phase between childhood and adulthood. Typically this starts around the beginning of puberty and finishes in late teens but for many young people – dependent on personal, social and economic factors – it can start and finish much later

• ‘Youth Service’ refers to youth work delivered directly by a local authority

• ‘Youth provision’, ‘youth work’, or ‘the youth sector’ refers to all youth work delivered in an area, including local authority youth services, public service mutual organisations, youth organisations in the voluntary and community sector, and social enterprises • ‘Open youth work’ or ‘universal youth work’ refers to youth work intended for all young people in an area, open to them without “pre-enrolling”. Young people join on a voluntary basis and they have the agency to stop taking part when the time is right for them • ‘Youth groups’ refers to groups often run by voluntary providers which require young people to be pre-enrolled • ‘Youth leader’ or ‘Youth work volunteer’ refers to adult volunteers who support youth groups and youth services under the supervision or guidance of a qualified or established youth work organisation • ‘Targeted youth work’ refers to youth work that targets particular groups of young people, usually those who are disadvantaged or socially excluded • ‘Youth worker’ is a qualified professional in youth work

• ‘Statutory’ refers to obligations in statute

• ‘National body for youth work’ refers to the National Youth Agency

35