Many of Kent's youth services could be lost as Kent County Council makes cuts but John Britt, who opened The Grand in Gravesham more than two decades ago, believes it is a mistake KCC will come to rue...

Whilst I recognise that all local authorities are in tricky financial states and that “difficult” decisions about budgets follow from that, I do feel that the current path KC) is taking, specifically ceasing the “fixed term” contracts to organisations providing services to young people, is a significant error of judgement and one which they, and we, will rue as time goes on.

My personal interest in this comes from a programme I started 23 years ago in Gravesend, known as then as The GR@ND.

The GR@ND is a healthy living programme that was established in Gravesend in 2001 by virtue of a successful bid to the Big Lottery Fund (now the National Lottery).

The successful bid was created by a partnership of organisations under the banner of Health Action Gravesham (HAG).

The plan was to create a cyber café in Gravesham to focus on the social determinants of health for four distinct population groups, which had been identified by the HAG.

The “working title” for the programme was The GR@ND (Gravesham Network Development). From day one, young people were a major focus.

Whilst HAG recognised there were a myriad of other services out there which catered for the significant numbers of young people in the mainstream, those the GR@ND focused on had, mostly, already fallen through the net and were in danger of further dislocation from society.

To do this, a small, dedicated team comprising of youth workers, with support from other disciplines, worked with young people to sense-check the sort of services they felt were needed.

Over the initial period the GR@ND introduced a detached drop-in sexual health service, which pioneered Patient Group Directives that allowed a nurse to dispense contraception on the spot without reference to a doctor (as would be required at a Family Planning Clinic).

It started the Active Listening Service, which was initially supported by Charlton Athletic Football Club, in an effort to attract young people, especially young males, to discuss the life predicaments in which they found themselves (essentially this was a tier one mental health service) and it became so successful that more counsellors were needed; we started detached outreach into the villages of Gravesham, cross-referring into the services in the café when and where appropriate.

The programme was so successful in terms of meeting the required outputs that it managed to leverage in several times the original funding, which enabled it to expand and finesse the programmes it was delivering to young people and the populations they were either part of or were supported by. This included expanding the Active Listening Service into schools, a boon for those organisations.

When, in the late 2010s it was clear that “commissioned services” were coming over the horizon I worked with others in the field to create Gravesham Network Development CIC (Community Interest Company).

The new CIC successfully applied for and was awarded the contract by KCC to (continue to) deliver services to young people, eventually from a new centre in King Street.

In doing so the GR@ND, through GYG, continued to leverage in considerable additional funding to young people.

One of the key creations which came out of the GR@ND was GYG (initially Gifted Young Gravesham, later expanded at the request of the young people participating to Gifted Young Generation).

GYG championed the artistic strengths of young people and each year devised and delivered a production, at the Woodville Halls theatre in Gravesham, to showcase those talents.

The whole presentation was not just about those who participated on stage but also about the young people, behind the spotlights, who gained skills through supporting the back-stage functions.

But GYG is far more than this. It is a lifeline to a significant number of young people, it supports and enables them to remain in main-stream education if things around them get difficult, it ensures that the voices of young people in Gravesham are heard.

In 2022, GYG was the winner of a national “Say No to H8” award, in 2022 GYG was also the winner of the “Spirit Award for Positive Intervention”.

More recently, one of the GYG Committee spoke at the United Nations meeting in Brussels regarding the Rights of the Child with another a guest speaker at The Geneva Convention.

A partnership with Baroness Beeban Kidron and the 5Rights Foundation to establish a GYG Global community for young people to be heard has recently been announced.

If truth be told, the amount leveraged into the system through GYG is probably far more than the cost of the commissioned programme, something often overlooked during discussions about “finding savings”.

Yet this overall “loss” to the system is barely acknowledged as it does not feature in KCC’s “bottom line” but will, inevitably, feature in the overall loss to the system.

I am sure the other “commissioned services on fixed term contracts” would be able to cite similar successful pathways.

KCC’s failure to even acknowledge the request for the lead member to visit GYG and look them in the eye and explain the rationale behind “savings” is woeful and, I would suggest, disrespectful.

Now the decision to cease the commissioned services has been ratified, what KCC should be doing is working all day, every day to establish how these various projects can continue to work alongside the “new” family hubs if they manage to secure external funding for the work to continue.

That, though, does not appear to feature in the downsizing of service for young people.

Let’s hope at least something along those lines can be salvaged from this disaster.

In my view, and from my experience of working alongside those who are devoted to supporting young people from all kinds of backgrounds, we should be focusing on supporting the young in our society. These are the people who will, one day, be creating the wealth and continuity in our communities.

I believe young people’s faith in the current political systems is waning, this move by KCC to withdraw support for this section of society simply reinforces that perception.

In Ofsted-speak, my rating on KCC is “inadequate”.

John Britt spent more than 30 years working in the voluntary sector, the NHS and local government. Now retired, he devotes much of his time to supporting community-based organisations.