January always prompts considerable press coverage and speculation about what the upcoming year will hold. In the UK at the moment the discussion centres on budgets cuts, unemployment especially youth joblessness, and whether the European Union will slip into recession or continue its anaemic recovery in the months ahead.
There is also growing concern that child poverty is rising, with tax rises, benefit cuts and cuts to services disproportionately affecting families with children and young people…the “squeezed middle” as politicians like to refer to “hard working middle income families”!
Young people are facing the combination of the loss of a $50 per week grant to 16- to 18-year olds from poorer families who continued in education, rising numbers of school districts introducing parent pay programs especially for students aged 16 and over and cuts to local public transit. Three quarters of local authorities reported in December that they are cutting spending on local public transit before 2013-2014, one in five subsidised bus services have already been withdrawn or reduced, and nearly three quarters of school districts say they are reviewing or cutting back on school transport (nearly half are cutting or increasing charges for transport to post 16 students).
Concern has prompted a Westminster Hall debate in Parliament on school transport listed for Jan. 10 – which for anyone who’s a complete policy wonk and wants to watch is on Parliament TV.
Sian Thornthwaite started the School Transport and Travel Consultancy (STC) in the UK in 1991. She has more then a decade of experience working in the criminal justice sector with prisons probation and courts and is a trustee and treasurer of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, London.
