To discuss the Wiltshire Children’s Trust draft 13 to 19 Commissioning Strategy which sets out suggestions on priorities for the future including ensuring the council’s youth service is as modern and effective as possible so it can continue to meet young people’s needs. Young people and representatives from a range of agencies working with 13 to 19 year olds have been involved from the start and their views have informed the draft strategy.
To view the draft strategy and comment, www.wiltshirepathways.org/ShowNews.asp?NewsID=379
Minutes:
Kevin Sweeney, Area Manager Integrated Youth Service who is leading on the consultation process for the Children’s Trust Draft Commissioning Strategy updated the board on the aims and scope of the consultation. The Strategy has a broad scope and includes health, education, housing, leisure, teenage pregnancy, youth crime and safeguarding. It is taking place against a backdrop of both national and local initiatives and changes including:
Nationally
· Big Society including Citizenship scheme and local decision making
· New Education Bill – Academies and free schools
· Information Advice and Guidance – moves towards an all age service?
Locally
· Local services delivered through campus sites
· Savings needing to be made in all services - £600,000 from Youth Work and £417,000 from Information Advice and Guidance Children and Young People’s Plan Vision
The key aim is to improve the outcomes for young people aged between 13 -19 in Wiltshire, and this will be achieved by:
· Making sure there is a good range of quality services
· Providing early response to the needs of young people when they are at risk or problems arise
· Improving the way we work together and with partners
A separate key priority within the Strategy is to work with the new campus developments planned for Wiltshire. The plan is to create a campus in each community area which will be a building or collection of buildings where a number of services or agencies are all based e.g. library, playgroup, sports hall and office space for workers. It is possible that some of the space in each campus will be for 13 – 19 year olds.
Wiltshire Council is currently looking to change the way it runs youth work in the county, part of this is to reflect the need to make savings but also to ensure that the needs of young people are met. The principles that will guide decisions on future youth work services and savings are that all Wiltshire young people aged 13- 19 will have access to high quality youth work opportunities. Young people will be actively involved in the planning and delivery of youth work. There will be enough youth work resources to meet the needs of vulnerable young people and there will be a greater range of service providers and growth in voluntary sector youth work. There are 4 suggestions being put forward by Wiltshire Council about possible changes to the youth service these are;
· Testing the Market - involving competitively tendering the existing service
· Developing Local Partnerships with the Voluntary Sector or Secondary Schools or Colleges – involving partnership working, reducing the overlap and duplication
· Local Management and Closer Alignment with Campus Developments – align existing provision more closely with the 18 Area Boards and with Campus development
· Changing Local Youth Work Offer through Reduced Reliance on Existing Buildings – Youth Development Centres in a few major population centres staffed by Team Leaders, youth Development co-ordination and part time assistant youth workers.
Members of the board and public raised a number of points and questions which were discussed including;
· The Strategy appears to be a list of aspirations how will these be achieved for example Careers advice that is now to be delivered by schools. Kevin Sweeney explained that Connexions Wiltshire is part of Wiltshire Council’s Integrated Youth Service along with the Development Service for Young People (formerly the Youth Development Service) and the Targeted Support Service for Young People (formerly the Youth Offending Team). This is a national issue encompassing a change in the arrangements of support to schools. Representatives from CAYPIG explained that their recent experience of discussing future careers with their tutors who have known them for a considerable length of time was a more valuable experience than discussing issues with someone who did not know them and that they had never met before.
· The Strategy discusses the level of local deprivation but does not appear to indicate the level of child poverty why is this? Julia Cramp Director for Commissioning and Performance, Department for Children and Education explained that this was due to accounting technicality. The government uses different measurements. The Chairman informed the board that the latest figures show Westbury Ham – West is among the 30% most deprived wards in England. Deprivation is assessed on a number of indicators – income, employment, health deprivation and disability, education skills and training, barriers to housing and services, crime and living environment. The Child Poverty Needs Assessment (Dec 2010) showed that Westbury Ham was 13th in Wiltshire ref child poverty (28% of children living in poverty).
· Are the 4 options detailed within the Strategy extant or can they be varied? Kevin Sweeney explained that there were commonalities in the provision of the services and that whilst each Area Board believed their situation was unique they were not.
· The Chairman asked the members of CAYPIG what they would do if they did not have their local youth centre. Their response was that they would probably ‘hang around’ street corners, the public toilets and be moved on from place to place by the police.Cllr Jenkins stated how important the youth centre was to Westbury, that the young people would have nowhere to go and that there would be a cost implication in dealing with anti social behaviour issues should the centre be lost. Julia Cramp explained that many authorities had lost between 50-70% of their budgets in this financial year. Wiltshire have not done this so that they can plan properly, evaluate and make appropriate changes to the way the services are delivered for an effective youth service.
Cllr Hawker explained that the campus aspect for Westbury was currently theoretical, Westbury has a purpose built youth centre which is not being used to full capacity and this should be utilised and that option 0 should be adopted as the Area Board’s view.
Decision
Westbury Area Board strongly believes that Westbury Youth Centre should be retained as “Option 0 (Zero)” – ie. The no change position – because:
a) The building is already located in the ideal location to serve the important and various needs of the super output area for deprivation that it is located in;
b) The building is purpose designed and therefore highly suitable for its purpose;
c) The building has plenty of scope for more intensive and economic use by the community, because it was built as a youth and community centre, which would help the maintenance and running costs;
d) There are no suitable and available alternative premises in the right location (ie. in the super output area) to consider moving the youth service to anyway. This issue was fully addressed in 2006 when the county council attempted to close the building and find alternative premises and then realised that no alternative suitable premises are available;
e) It needs to be appreciated that whilst Westbury is included in the Campus Strategy for Wiltshire Council, in terms of beginning to discuss possible options if any at all can be found in the future, in fact the current position is that no-one has any idea where or what is possible nor when anything would happen, other than dates for considering in the future. This is simply not a serious option, in terms of alternative premises for the current youth strategy consultation, because noone knows when or what might happen in Westbury – or even if anything would happen at all. The latter point is highly pertinent against the background of announcements that Wiltshire Council intends to cease running both Westbury Swimming Pool and Leighton Sports Centre without identifying anyone who is prepared to run them AND against the background that announcements have been made that nearby towns will get new sports facilities on an campus and Westbury has simply not been included in any such announcement. In the absence of further information, the only realistic conclusion is that Westbury may not get any new buildings at all and even if we did, none may be in a suitable location or contain suitable accommodation to house the youth service;
f) The scope for running a local youth advisory committee (as used to exist until 2006), involving local people representing the town and parish councils and other relevant partners, such as Police, need to be considered and implemented, as this would help access grant funding (particularly from the town council) for staffing and running specific youth projects administered by the youth service.