Tories put boot into young people - again

Wiltshire Council's Conservative administration has announced a further round of cuts to youth services.

Two years ago budgets were slashed and youth workers sacked. Local communities and Area Boards were given the job of salvaging something useful from the wreckage, with one youth officer per community area surviving.

Now the number of youth workers employed by county is to be reduced again from 18 to 7, so that in future one youth officer will cover more than one area. Formal redundancy consultations with staff are now under way.

WC says the action is, "In line with the council's priority to enable communities to do more for themselves." This means shunting costs down onto town and parish councils, and blaming them if a service fails.

Whilst the jobs of the front line workers are under threat, those of their managers are not.

Comment - Jane Scott's Conservatives see services for young people as a good thing to cut. The tragedy is that just when we'd been recovering from the previous round of Tory cuts and seeing some good work taking place, we're now going to lose the professional expertise which allowed that to happen. At this rate services for young people in Wiltshire will soon be non-existent - which is probably what the Tories are aiming for.