On a Wednesday afternoon, four young people are discussing adverse childhood experiences in the welcoming space at Merseyside Youth Association (MYA), situated within Liverpool city centre. Young people and youth workers discuss the impact of difficult experiences in childhood, and the risk of turning to drugs or alcohol to cope, as part of a creative arts mental health awareness project that will culminate in a three-day theatre festival in February, involving nine to 25-year-olds. For the participants, youth services have helped them with the challenges of adolescence and making sense of their lives. Engaged in the discussion is Adam, an articulate 22-year-old who has “branched out as a person” since using youth services.

“I’m on the autism spectrum so for me it was very hard to make friends at school, but I started opening up when I went to college. I was also then coming to terms with my sexuality.” He first joined an LGBT social group run by the Young Person’s Advisory Service charity, and soon became engaged with other projects, including helping to organise and running events. He learnt new skills, travelled to different parts of the country, and widened his horizons. Three years ago, he also started attending MYA. Now there is a lot more going on in Adam’s life outside of youth services. “I’ve become a lot more confident,” he says.

MYA youth worker Kath Thompson, who has also worked as a teacher, says a youth worker “can be that consistent person” for young people. “Schools don’t have time to deal with the pastoral needs, the growing mental health issues. Quite often parents are not connecting with young people, so for me youth work is all about young people finding belonging.”

But youth work has been hit disproportionately hard by spending cuts, with young people losing out as a result, according to a report by a cross-party group of MPs, published today. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Youth Affairs’ youth work inquiry looked at what services are available to support the personal and social development of young people who spend just 15% of their waking hours in formal education.

Ahead of its final report, due out by December, its summary findings show that despite the role youth work plays in prevention and early intervention, youth centres and clubs, including street work and mobile units, “have all but disappeared from some communities”. Now it’s more a case of short-term and targeted projects, with the eligibility criteria to take part set so high that many don’t get a look-in. This is further compounded by a shortage of suitably qualified and experienced youth workers on the ground.

Currently, a clear picture of who provides what, how and where is difficult to determine due to a lack of national data available since an annual audit of youth services across local authorities was scrapped in 2009. Still council funding for youth services has plummeted by almost two-thirds (62%), from just over £1bn in 2008-09 to £388m in 2016-17, with the steepest cuts occurring after 2010.

Austerity means that while some councils are able to continue providing good quality youth work,with innovative models of delivery and funding agreements, all too often “services are disjointed, both across and within regions”. Local authorities have a statutory duty to ensure “sufficient” provision of educational and recreational leisure-time activities for young people, but the vague wording means that many cash-strapped councils have chosen to focus spending on other statutory services where there is growing demand, such as looked-after children.

As a result, “a child in one postcode may receive a totally different youth offer to a child in a neighbouring postcode, with no accountability or strategy to try and ensure this is not the case,” the report states. Leigh Middleton, chief executive officer of the National Youth Agency, and an adviser to the inquiry, says the long-term informal support offered to young people has eroded dramatically. “We talk about lonely, isolated young people, yet they no longer have that safe space to go to get that support.”

The Local Government Association, which gave evidence to the inquiry, says that between 2012-2016, more than 600 youth centres and nearly 139,000 youth service places across the UK have gone. Its submission says that: “In many areas, services for young people are increasingly targeted at those in most need to try to ensure that they receive the support they need to flourish.” This has left “limited funding” available for universal youth services.

The LGA wants councils to receive some of the government funding currently dedicated to the National Citizen Service, a three to four-week programme of action for 15 to 17-year-olds that MPs were told receives 95% of the total government spend on youth services. This would better support “year-round provision that meets the needs of young people locally,” the LGA says. Today’s report takes no view on the merits of funding one programme over another butcalls for greater investment and commitment to support youth services “as we enter the next comprehensive spending review (2019) and an ‘end to austerity’”, backed by a shared understanding of the role of youth work and the impact of services.

There are signs that the government recognises the problem. In its recent civil society strategy, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport noted the “transformational” impact of youth work and trained youth workers can have and promises to review the guidance which sets out the duty placed on local authorities to provide appropriate youth services.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown and chair of the APPG, visited services up and down the country as part of the inquiry, and heard of huge disparities in council spending. While every area is asking for more money, without a clear government steer, “the reality is that youth services won’t be the ones getting it”. “There needs to be a national baseline standard; that is audits, and making sure we define what is sufficient. If we don’t do that, then we can pour as much money as we like in, and you will find young people are liable for a postcode lottery.”

Ben Bradley, the Conservative MP for Mansfield and a member of the APPG inquiry group, agrees.For some youngsters, youth work is the only source of continuity in their lives.

“When you look at the preventive element of it – how much good quality youth work intervention early on can save you further down the line, I think it should be a big priority and removing ringfencing on things like that I think is daft.”

But charities and others providing youth services are finding it hard to keep going. Back in Liverpool, the MYA lost more than £1.6m of its local authority funding between 2010-14, causing half its staff to be cut. MYA also lost 43% of its NHS funding for its mental health preventive work.

MYA still runs projects open to everyone, such as music and art, but its chief executive, Gill Bainbridge, says there are now fewer. “We used to have a lot of drop-in sports projects and we used to have a lot of streets outreach work and detached youth workers. All of that got cut.”

The charity has managed to build back up to around 70 staff by finding alternative funding streams for particular projects, such as out-of-work 15 to 29-year-olds, but there is no room for complacency. “You are always facing a cliff edge,” says Bainbridge.

Yet for Adam, the benefits of youth work are crystal clear. “I’ve gained a lot of contacts and networked with a lot of staff. It’s really helped me grow as a person.”