With any luck, the long-awaited youth green paper will be published tomorrow, after being delayed for nearly nine months for god-knows-what reason.

This could be a great oppportunity for a Labour government to complete the transformation of services for children begun by the SureStart agenda and Every Child Matters - making sure that the next generation of young people, who get excellent support from birth, don’t lose all the progress they have made in their teenage years, because there’s nothing on offer after school, at the weekends and in the holidays, support for the most disadvantaged is, to use a horrid cliche, a postcode lottery, and careers advice is pretty non-existent.

And I really hope it’s going to be good, but I fear it won’t. Why do Labour governments have this nasty habit of disappointing me? This could be so popular - if you ask anyone with children or who lives next door to children on any street in any town, I’m sure at the top or near the top of many people’s list of complaints is “there’s nothing for them to do round here”. Excellent youth services are such a win-win - less anti-social behaviour, something for young people to do that they could enjoy, a chance to reinforce messages about citzenship, sex and relationships, drugs and alcohol etc which may go in one ear and out the other at school, and a chance for young people to have some fun and enjoy being young people.

So, what do I reckon will be in “youth matters”?

• with any luck, a requirement for local authorities to provide youth services. At the moment, they’re not statutory, so LAs like Tory Oxfordshire get away with cutting and cutting, and then pretending the needs of young people in the plummy villages are the same as those on the estates in East Oxford, justifying a really thin spread of the jam of funding. Dan’s got more on this topic, if you’re interested.
• less good, a system of credits, awarded for school performance and volunteering, which can be topped up by parents, and which young people can use to “pay” for activities. I am sceptical, because it will be less likely to benefit disadvantaged young people, who aren’t as likely to do well at school or volunteer, but who need the support of positive activities even more than middle-class kids. I daresay there will be a government contribution on a sliding scale to the cards of young people whose parents are least well-off, though. I also dislike this because it will bring a market into youth provision, make funding dependent on individual young people’s choices to attend each week, making the jobs of youth workers more insecure and badly-paid and the likelihood of doing intensive continuing work with young people more remote. It’ll also put pressure on youth providers to provide more “sexy” activities, which in the long term may be less valuable and impactful for young people’s development. It’ll also emphasise again the individual rather than the community aspect of excellent youth work. Frankly, I’d rather large chunks of government money didn’t go private providers, but then I would say that. Our learning from the way childcare has been rolled out is that private providers only operate in better-off areas, despite government encouragement, and that unless childcare in poor areas is heavily subsidised, it’s not viable for private providers. I’d hate to see a situation where choice for young people in North Oxford got better whilst young people on Rose Hill and Wood Farm missed out because there was no money to be made.
• finally, a real focus on diversionary activities - keeping young people out of trouble. That’s something I fully support, don’t get me wrong, but young people deserve something better than endless rounds of football and basketball, which is pretty much what the Positive Activities for Young People programme has become - great for lots of boys and some girls, not great for some boys and most girls. I’d like to see young people involved in the design of programmes from the start, and a recognition that whilst activities are great, young people should also get the chance to do nothing - chat, hang out, listen to music etc - somewhere safe and off the streets. Which is why I’ll be really sad if there’s no great investment in the infrastructure - buildings and facilities. Why can’t we have a youth club in every area as well as a children’s centre? If it has to be in schools, then so be it, although I’d thank government for recognising that school isn’t always a happy place for many young people.

If you want to know more, there was a leak of a draft to Community Care - the link is here. Oh, and I guess I’d best say that these views are my own, not YWCA’s, in case you were confused. Anyway, we’ll see tomorrow (I hope!)

UPDATE: It is out tomorrow. Trailed in today’s Observer, and my predictions are pretty spot on, unfortunately.