The Director of Place will submit Document “N” which informs the Area Committee of the progress made in relation to the establishment of the new Youth Offer across the Bradford District and specifically in the Bradford East Area.

Recommended-

(1)     That the achievements of the Youth Offer Working Group, and the Youth Sector as a whole, as outlined in the Action Plan (Appendix A of Document “N”) be noted and a further update be presented to the Committee in 12 months time.

(2)     That the Committee considers and comments on the shared direction of travel and of the continued commitment from the Youth Sector to work together, and to do things differently.

(3)     That the Committee notes the work already undertaken around Youth Voice and commits to formalising Youth Voice arrangements in respect of the Bradford EastArea Committee work plan for 2017-18.

(Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee)

                                                                        (Jonathan Hayes – 01535 618008)

The Director of Place submitted Document “N” which informed the Area Committee of the progress made in relation to the establishment of the new youth offer across the Bradford District and specifically in the Bradford East Area.

Officers from the Youth Service Team attended the meeting and made a detailed presentation respect of the youth offer, both District-wide and in Bradford East.

A number of young people also attended the meeting and described their positive experiences of the youth service provision in Bradford East, including the buddy programme; the youth club at the Karmand Centre; volunteering; summer camp and residential courses; the National Citizenship Service (NCS) and provision for young people who identified as LGBT. They described activities they had undertaken and how much they had enjoyed them, how their confidence had improved and, in some cases how they had been inspired to become volunteers for other young people following on from them. 

Members thanked the youth team for the report and their presentation and expressed their support for schemes such as NCS. They went on to question the team in respect of the following issues:-

·         Did the service undertake work in support of community cohesion?

·         Did the service work with faith organisations?

·         Did young people access the information service at Britannia House or did the formality of the setting make it off-putting?

·         How did the open access provision in Bradford East compare with the rest of the District?

·         Was the amount of sessional youth work referred to in the report for Bradford East only or District wide?

·         Were the 333 young people who completed the youth survey resident in Bradford East and how did that number compare to the overall number of young people in the constituency?

·         How could the number of young people surveyed be increased?

In response, the Youth Commissioner and her team advised that:-

·         A lot of work was directed at bringing young people together, even though it was not explicitly described as community cohesion.

·         The service did work alongside faith organisations and had participated in such activities as the “Mile of Tolerance” walk.

·         Figures would be provided in respect of the information service at Britannia House.

·         Participation in open access provision in Bradford was well above the 15% target which had been set.

·         The sessional work referred to was District wide.

·         The 333 young people who completed the youth survey were resident in Bradford East. There were 12000 13-19 year olds in the constituency.

·         It was hoped that as the survey would be annual, the number of participants would increase.

A Member thanked the young people in attendance for their presentations and stressed how important it was to listen to them. He asked if their involvement in interview panels had made a difference to service delivery and was informed that young people had been involved in two appointment panels and had been influential in getting the right person for each post.

The Member went on to enquire about looked after children and was informed that such young people were often referred to the youth service individually and that as such cases were often very complex, it was difficult to quantify outcomes.   

Resolved-

(1)     That the achievements of the Youth Offer Working Group, and the Youth Sector as a whole, as outlined in the Action Plan (Appendix A of Document “N”) be noted and a further update be presented to the Committee in 12 months time.

(2)     That the shared direction of travel and the continued commitment from the Youth Sector to work together, and to do things differently be noted.

(3)     That the work already undertaken around Youth Voice be noted and Youth Voice arrangements in respect of the Bradford EastArea Committee work plan for 2017-18 be formalised.

ACTION: Strategic Director,Place