Hundreds of young people will travel to Westminster on Tuesday 25 October to warn MPs that the youth service will soon be the first public service to fall under the coalition’s austerity axe.
Unite, the UK’s largest union, has repeatedly warned that that the youth service is vanishing fast in the face of massive budget cuts, the biggest to any public service. This summer saw strike action in the prime minister’s Oxfordshire constituency to defend a service lauded by him but now facing the axe.
One in five councils are reporting that ‘services for young people’ are bearing a proportionally larger share of the cuts in 2011/12.
With one million young people languishing on the dole queue, the union says that young people need more, not less, assistance to find jobs, to seek out further educational opportunities, to avoid gang culture, and to feel they have a future stake in society.
The day will include a diverse programme of speakers including young people who will travel to London from as far a field as Devon and the North West in order to lobby their MPs.
Choose Youth is an alliance of over 30 national youth sector organisations and trade unions, including Unite.
More information from Unite.
Information on Choose Youth here.
