How are young people going to be affected by the Budget cuts?

Since the new coalition came in to force in UK Government I have been wondering to myself what effect it would have on young people?

With this government looking to reduce the budget deficit with an aggressive strategy on spending it is only natural that services that affect young people will be hit in some way. With the government cutting budgets for vital services like the Police I am worried for youth services.

It’s not only services for young people that are backed by government spending that we have to worry about. It is also industries that young people with talent want to get in to like media and art that will more than likely be affected to.

Yes the government need to sort out deficits and save money where they can but they also need to think of the long term and the effect it will have on today’s young people who in ten, twenty years could be running this country themselves. Not only that but what will employment rates be like? And will young people be given the chance to exceed and fulfil their potential?

I strongly advise anyone to keep to their eyes open and their ears to the ground on where cuts are going to be made and to really engage with this process.

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Politics

Politics is everywhere at the moment. Wherever you look politics is a hot topic. I’ve always been fascinated with Politics and trying to involve young people where possible in to politics, getting them interested and getting them talking about politics. There has never been an easier or better time to get young people in to politics than the world we live in today.

Barack Obama has made politics cool again in the process of making history as the first black American President. Barack has really captured the imagination of the world who followed his campaign right through to inauguration through papers, TV and the Internet. People who wouldn’t usually talk about politics are talking about Barack Obama, people of all ages, races and backgrounds know who Barack is.

Closer to home in the UK the big political debate of the week is what to do to stop walk outs by UK staff of various companies up and down the country which was started by a contracting company who wanted to use an all foreign staff force at a UK Oil Refinery. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has harped on in the past about British Jobs for British People but who is to blame in this situation? Are the staff right to walk out? What should Gordon Brown be doing about it, if anything? These are all questions which young people should be debating and engaging with.

Then we can move on to things like The Credit Crunch how could Gordon Brown have handled it better? Should the taxpayer be bailing out the Banking system? All of these are serious and huge issues with big implications but it doesn’t half make politics interesting. Then we have other issues on local levels like should London have been more prepared for the snow? Again it comes down to politics.

I think schools and councils should be doing more to encourage young people to think about and talk about politics. I personally encourage any of you reading to get in contact with your school or local council and see if there are any ways locally or nationally in which you can get involved like becoming a Youth MP or joining discussion and panel groups.


Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Does Anything Really Change?

Does anything really change? Last week it was discussed in the news whether funding for youth related projects and schemes had actually made a noticeable or quantifiable improvement to the lives of young people or not.

It is hard when you read the headlines over the weekend of murdered teenagers to actually imagine that funding is helping but how do you gauge the national and overall success of a project when you have stories like this to contend with?

No matter how much good is done the news outlets will always highlight sensational and extreme news of the minority of young people committing crime. This will in turn lead people in to thinking that this is what young people are up to across the country.

Although we all hate figures, statistics and having to measure success I think in some cases it is needed. If you as a government are going to invest millions of taxpayers pounds they have to know they are getting a return for their money. It is hard to stop extreme cases like we have seen on the weekend but what needs to be done is to make sure that these stay isolated and minority events, it is when these incidents become the norm is when we have failed. One teenager dieing is far too many but you can’t stop wanting to better or to improve things as we only lose when we stop trying

These events need to remind us that no young person is safe and we all need to be doing are all to make sure every young person leads a safe life. We can’t rely on funding or education to solve the problems we all need to take an active role within our communities to make sure we are all safe.

When every young person has the same access to funding, education and support is when we will be able to judge change properly and see real change on a national basis. Success with young people is only temporary and we can never afford to forget it. That is why we need continual funding and continual monitoring for the improvement of young lives in the UK. Just because a project has been successful for a young person and changed their life it doesn’t necessarily mean that if support was pulled away that they would continue to be a success.

It may seem like nothing changes but it is a much better world than if funding and support was to be taken away from youth projects and programmes. Just remember that just because you may be reading the same headlines every year it doesn’t mean change isn’t being made or happening.

Do you think anything is changing in regards to the success of support for youth related projects and programme? We here at Talented Young People would love to know your views and you can share them by joining in our topic of the week by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=457

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com