The National Youth Agency and children's charity 4Children have submitted a plea to the Treasury to increase the daily spend on services for teenagers to £1 per day.
They claim that increasing the average spend on statutory youth services from £98 to £350 per teenager per year would result in half the population of 13- to 19-year-olds using youth services, effectively doubling the current level of provision while also directing services to the most vulnerable.
Their plea coincides with yet more research and headlines revealing how adults are scared of teenagers who hang around on street corners. Surely Gordon Brown and his team will be able to see the potential benefits to society as a whole of such a relatively tiny up-front investment.