Barnet's short term solutions - Halve the number of Youth Centres and Youth Support Workers

Short term cuts can often have long term consequences. Reading through the Council's disclosure log I came across this most disturbing response. The question asked for the "Number of youth centres and youth services staff employed by the local authority in 2012 compared to 2011 and 2010".

The response was as follows:
 

	2010/11	2011/12	2012/13
Number of Youth Centres	6	3	3
Number of Youth Support Service staff	99.3 FTE	54.6 FTE	54.6 FTE

 So Barnet have halved the number of youth centres and virtually halved the number of youth support workers. What will be the consequences of these cuts? Will anti-social behaviour rise? Will children have less opportunities to develop and thrive? 

In Barnet we have 90,400 under 19 year olds and 41,900 10-19 year olds yet we still think it is a sensible investment in their future to cut facilities and support staff to this group by half. What message are we sending about how we value of children and in Barnet it seems to be "not much".