By Harrison Galliven, Local Democracy Reporter
Young people have criticised Croydon council over planned cuts to a youth engagement service that gives teens a voice and gets them involved in local decision making.
The council wants to ‘restructure’ its Youth Engagement Team (YET), but young people have said this will exclude them from playing a role in their community, and it’s claimed they weren’t even informed about the changes by the council.
Croydon council’s YET ensures that all young people living, working, or attending schools in Croydon and their families can access the services they need. While its 30 full-time employees focus mainly on supporting vulnerable young people, the team is also responsible for providing services like the Croydon Youth Assembly (CYA).
The CYA, set up in 2021 to replace the expensive Young Mayor program, gives young people a forum to have their voices heard on issues that matter to them and provides volunteering opportunities on local projects including litter picks.
However, Croydon council’s staff redundancy consultation for its YET threatens the existence of programs like these. Gabriella Brown, chair of the CYA, feels this decision will further exclude young people from participating in their community.
Gabriella, 16, said: “Money does have to come from somewhere, but this feels like such an important thing that has been doing really visibly and measurably good things for young people. It’s been making councillors look good for a long time.
“We have sub-groups and look at an issue that matters to young people. One will focus on the environment, and the other will look at mental health. We are trying to get a community safety sub-group as well.
“Broadly, we have been a separate thing still operating in the council. Whenever councillors come along to our events, they go on X and say ‘it’s so great to see these young people doing good things’.
“Now it just feels like a bit of a stab in the back because we have been doing all of this work that hasn’t required them to spend much money, or councillor input, but has achieved quite a lot.
“For example, when we go litter picking, we can say we’re from the Croydon Youth Assembly run by Croydon council. This can then be seen as Croydon council doing good things for young people.”
The CYA is run entirely by teenagers, with support from YET staff. They are responsible for helping plant over 100 trees in Croydon. Last summer, they ran a litter pick with around 30 young people.
Croydon tops the list of London boroughs with the largest population of young people. The CYA has around 30 current members, but the services the YET provides help the 90,000 other young people in Croydon.
Gabriella said: “The 29 other Youth Engagement workers are doing really important work with vulnerable young people, providing after school youth clubs, and engagement in schools. They have people telling young people what support is available to them.
“Every single young person needs engagement. I am not a vulnerable young person, but it’s really helped me.”
Croydon council says it is not cutting the service but restructuring it to provide a more ‘targeted’ approach for the borough’s most vulnerable, but the CYA has since set up an online petition, calling Croydon residents to reject the council’s proposals.
Shadow cabinet member for children and young people, Amy Foster, said: “The members of the CYA are incredible ambassadors for our borough. Their hard work means more of Croydon’s young people have a positive view of the council and better understand how it works.
“I would urge the Mayor to meet with the members of the CYA – to ensure that there is an opportunity for this decision to be scrutinised effectively, either via a cabinet meeting or the formal scrutiny process.”
A spokesman for Croydon council said: “The proposal is not to stop youth engagement work but to deliver it differently so that we are targeting those young people who most need help. As we will be focusing on preventative work with young people who are at risk, this should reduce the number of young people coming into contact with statutory services, not increase it.”
The Croydon Youth Assembly at one of its litter picks (Picture: Gabriella Brown)