The Risks of Neglecting Youth Work: Why Prevention Is Our Safest Bet
Written by Elisa Garbil – 03.07.2025
Youth work stands as one of the most powerful yet underutilised tools we have to support young people in a rapidly changing world. At its core, youth work is an educational, relational, and voluntary practice that helps young people between the ages of 11 and 25 develop confidence, resilience, and life skills. It’s rooted in values of empowerment, equality, and inclusion, and is built on trusted relationships between youth workers and young people.
For many, youth work is more than a program; it is a lifeline. It supports those facing the most complex challenges, such as poverty, exclusion, mental ill-health, school disengagement, violence, and discrimination. It creates safe spaces for expression, opportunity, and connection. Despite this, youth services across the UK have been decimated by a decade of severe funding cuts. Local authority spending on youth services in England alone has fallen by more than 60% since 2010. Thousands of youth centres have closed, and countless youth workers have left the profession due to insecure funding and job loss.
This disinvestment has not occurred in a vacuum. Its consequences have spread across our schools, health services, justice systems, and communities. As the safety nets of youth work have frayed, more young people have found themselves slipping through the cracks: into poverty, loneliness, and risky situations. The question we now face is stark: not whether we can afford to invest in youth work, but whether we can afford the mounting risks of failing to do so.
Understanding the Core of Youth Work and Why It Matters
Understanding the core function of youth work is essential to understanding what is being lost. Youth work is not simply an extracurricular activity. It is a non-formal educational framework designed to support personal, social, and emotional development. It meets young people where they are, be it on the street, in a community centre, a school, a park, or online. Through voluntary engagement, it empowers young people to make decisions about their lives, develop confidence, regulate emotions, and build supportive peer and adult relationships.
Importantly, it provides tailored support to groups who are often excluded or marginalised, young women, LGBTQ+ youth, those from BAME communities, disabled youth, care-experienced young people, and those living in poverty or unsafe home environments.
The youth worker’s role is both professional and profoundly human. Through long-term, trusting relationships, youth workers create safe spaces where young people feel seen and heard. They support them in building self-worth, identifying aspirations, and connecting with their communities in positive ways. These relationships are often sustained when other services, be they educational, clinical, or social, fail to reach or engage a young person.
Youth Work as a Proven Preventative Tool
Youth work is not just relational: it is preventative. It helps address problems before they become crises. Research commissioned by the UK Government, including longitudinal studies and systematic reviews, has found that youth work participation is linked to improved school attendance, higher educational attainment, better physical and mental health, and reduced involvement in crime or antisocial behaviour. In short, it works.
When youth work is in place, young people thrive. When it’s not, we see the consequences. A study conducted in London found that the closure of a youth centre in a given area correlated with a ten percent increase in youth crime, particularly drug offences. The removal of safe, structured activities and support created space for harmful alternatives to emerge.
At the same time, NHS mental health services, already stretched to breaking point, have seen surges in demand, especially from adolescents. Youth workers, who frequently support young people’s mental wellbeing before it reaches clinical levels, now find themselves overwhelmed or entirely absent from the areas they once served.
The Financial Case for Investment
The costs of inaction are not just social, they are economic. Youth work is among the most cost-effective public interventions available. A 2022 analysis conducted by Frontier Economics and UK Youth found that every pound invested in youth work saved £6.40 across public systems, including the NHS, criminal justice, welfare, and education. Youth work lowers antisocial behaviour, substance abuse, and NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) rates, issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged youth and place significant burdens on public infrastructure.
The benefits are long-term. Young people who engage in youth work go on to become healthier, happier, and more economically stable adults than peers with similar backgrounds who did not have access to these services.
Tackling Poverty at Its Roots
Poverty, too, is both a cause and consequence of youth work’s erosion. Many youth programs have historically targeted communities with high deprivation levels. In Scotland, initiatives like Generation CashBack and the CashBack for Communities Youth Work Fund have reached thousands of young people in Scotland’s most deprived areas, delivering tangible improvements in confidence, behaviour, and wellbeing.
These efforts are vital in breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty. Yet, such programs are increasingly vulnerable to budget cuts and political short-termism. Poverty, as many youth workers point out, is not merely an economic issue but a denial of children’s rights. It restricts access to education, mentorship, and extracurricular opportunities. Youth work reclaims these rights by offering dignity-based support rooted in equality, trust, and person-centred development. This rights-based approach is critical in ensuring all young people, regardless of background, can thrive.
Building Equity Through Inclusion
Youth work also plays a crucial role in promoting equity and inclusion. In research conducted by YouthLink Scotland and the National Youth Agency, young women from working-class backgrounds consistently reported a lack of access to mentorship, career networks, or mental health support. Many shared that they didn’t feel entitled to professional opportunities or were unaware of them altogether.
BAME youth, similarly, reported exclusion or cultural misunderstanding in schools, making informal and culturally aware spaces provided by youth organisations all the more important. For LGBTQ+ youth, who are often disproportionately affected by mental health challenges, bullying, and social isolation, youth groups frequently represent the first space where they feel safe and affirmed in their identity.
Adapting to Crisis: Lessons from the Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the role of youth work in crisis response. As schools and traditional services closed, many youth workers adapted quickly: delivering food parcels, moving programs online, conducting check-ins, and supporting mental health virtually.
These responses were often locally led and personally tailored. They filled critical gaps in service delivery, especially for those most isolated. For some young people, the only adult who maintained contact with them throughout lockdown was a youth worker. The sector’s agility and community trust became vital assets in public health resilience.
A Shift in Strategy: Where Do We Go From Here?
Despite all this evidence, youth work remains chronically underfunded. Political and economic decisions have consistently favoured reactive services, those that deal with immediate crises, over preventative ones like youth work. But this approach is flawed. It creates a cycle of escalating costs, both human and financial. Without early intervention, problems become more entrenched, more damaging, and more expensive to fix.
Recent policy movements offer glimmers of hope. The National Youth Agency’s 2024–2029 strategy sets out an ambitious vision: to expand the youth workforce, embed youth work in schools, healthcare, and justice settings, and ensure high-quality provision in every community. In Scotland, the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan identifies youth work as a key lever in addressing the root causes of inequality. These strategies must be backed by long-term funding and cross-departmental support if they are to succeed.
Conclusion: Youth Work Is Not Optional – It’s Essential
The need is not just practical, it is moral. Youth work is not an optional extra. It is a public good, a human right, and a social contract. It affirms young people’s worth, supports their development, and protects their future. In the words of one young person, “Youth work gave me someone who listened when no one else did. That changed everything.”
To dismantle youth work is to take away the scaffolding that holds so many young lives together. To rebuild it is to invest not just in individuals, but in communities and collective wellbeing. We can no longer afford the risks of neglect. The stakes, for health, for equity, for public safety, and for future prosperity, are too high.
What youth work offers is not just transformation, but prevention. And what it demands now is protection, prioritisation, and sustainable support. In an era defined by uncertainty, youth work remains one of the most certain ways to create a stronger, safer, fairer and more hopeful tomorrow.
