PROPOSED cuts to the Education Authority’s (EA) budget will have a detrimental impact upon Youth Services throughout Belfast, a leading youth leader has claimed.

Jacqui Maguire, a Senior Youth Leader at John Paul II Youth Club in Ardoyne, has said the cuts to the budget will lead to a loss of services for young people throughout North Belfast and beyond, and could very well lead to a negative impact regarding anti-social behaviour at several interface points as well as job losses.

“We’re losing roughly £33,000 per year, which means we’re going to have to drastically scale back our services and let some staff go," Jacqui said. "They have told us we can only have around 35 children in our building. We usually have upwards of 70 in our building each night. Our summer scheme provisions will have to be cut, and we usually have around 300 children who attend that.

“Our kids benefit greatly from social education, and before we took many kids away to other countries to experience other countries and cultures. We’ve taken kids to India, Canada, Poland and Germany. For some of our kids school isn’t for them, we’ve had kids who have struggled to write their own names, but last week seven kids came back with OCN Level One qualifications.

“The EA want us to tackle low achievement, and we have been successful, but now with these cuts, we will lose staff and our ability to tackle the low achievement they want us to tackle.”

Jacqui said that she is concerned about the long term consequences of the budget cuts.

"We won’t be able to tackle mental health, low achievement, child sexual exploitation, which we have been tackling. It will hit the whole of North Belfast as well as the whole of the North of Ireland. In the summer we do loads of work at the interfaces, and now with the cuts to our staff and services, we’re not sure how we’re going to reach these young people and it could lead to a lot of our good work being undone.”

The cuts will not only affect youth provision services but it will be affecting schools directly as well, resulting in cuts to the North’s already underfunded education service. Justin McCamphill, from teaching union NASUWT, pointed to a bleak future for education under the upcoming cuts.

“As a consequence of a failure to form an Executive, government departments have been operating without proper budgets and decisions which should have been made in relation to education have not been taken.

“Cutting spending on the Education Authority's block grant and the aggregated schools’ budget will hit the poorest children hardest. The Secretary of State needs to explain how he expects the EA to meet its statutory obligations in relation to the education of special needs children if its budget is to be slashed.

“Similarly, if the aggregated schools’ budget is cut, we can expect schools closures, increased class sizes, cuts to the school day, teacher redundancies and pressure on teachers and support staff to work outside their contracts and Health and Safety legislation."

Politically, the cuts to the EA have been condemned by a range of parties with MP for West Belfast Paul Maskey writing to the EA to seek an urgent meeting regarding the cuts to youth services.

“I have spoken to a number of youth providers across Belfast today who have shared their concerns with me about cuts to youth services which the Education Authority is imposing on them," he said. "The impact of these cuts will be devastating for youth providers, for youth services and ultimately for young people across the city.

“The news of the cuts has come as a shock to the groups and people who supply services such as outreach to some of our most vulnerable young people. They told me they were unaware that funding would be cut this year.

"I’m seeking an urgent meeting with the Education Authority with our team of MPs and MLAs across the city. These cuts come hot on the heels of Tory cuts announced here last week following the DUP’s boycott of our Assembly and Executive.

 “The DUP should get back to work around the Executive table with the other parties to get locally elected ministers in place and support the public against unbridled Tory cuts.”