Charities see merit in David Cameron's National Citizen Service, but are critical that it may be replicating existing, well-run youth volunteering schemes. Vibeka Mair asks why the government won't listen to the voluntary sector and keeps wasting money reinventing the wheel.
National Citizen Service costs £1,100 per person for six weeks. For the same price you can fund two Scouts at £600 each for a whole year.
This comment stood out at the meeting hosted yesterday by NCVO on civil society’s response to the recent UK riots.
The conversation, chaired by Ben Kernighan, deputy chief executive of NCVO and Baroness Jill Pitkeathley, Labour peer and former chair of Cafcass, focused heavily on young people.
Participants sensibly noted that rioters and looters were not exclusively made up of young people - one person said he found evidence that the average age of a convicted rioter was 28.
But, it was felt that a significant proportion of young people were involved, and discussions were held on how to engage them back in society.
National Citizen Service (NCS), which David Cameron has suggested should be extended, was mentioned straight away. But instead of it being lauded as a great solution to young people’s apathy with society, charities were critical that the scheme was a waste of time and insisted the money should have been used to support existing projects.
A representative from youth volunteering charity Sea Cadets complained that NCS didn’t deliver the slow-burn approach that uniformed volunteering, such as his charity or the Scouts offered. He also made the point that engaging at 16 years of age was too late, and six weeks was too short.
NCS, however, garnered some support. It was different from existing volunteering schemes as it involved young people from different backgrounds, and it was trying to give them a taste for volunteering, said one charity worker.
And another person believed that involvement in National Citizen Service would look far better and official on a young person’s CV than volunteering for other charities.
But, there is clearly much scepticism with the scheme in the sector going up to the highest levels. The chief executives of Acevo and Navca recently made their own criticisms of the scheme. And Civil Society has recently featured a blog on this very same subject.
On paper, National Citizen Service sounds like a great idea, and it has wide cross-party consensus, with Labour recently trying to jump on the bandwagon. But charities clearly feel miffed, and like the Big Society, feel the government is merely trying to encourage and fund stuff that is happening already.
After the riots, many youth charities said that they had warned for months that civil unrest would result from cuts to youth services.
Let’s hope those who are criticising the £50m NCS scheme for being too short and untested won’t be vindicated in a year’s time.
