Youth Services Review

Powys Voluntary Youth Sector

Views of Voluntary Youth Groups to influence the development of the CYPP Youth Services Strategy Review, September 2012.

PAVO recently facilitated meetings with key personnel from a range of voluntary youth groups to hear about their views to help enhance and move forward services for young people.

Below you will find a summary of their comments.  Please do feel free to agree, disagree and add any comments.  

A full consultation process with a draft Strategy will be coming up very soon.  This is your opportunity to influence from the very start.

Summary

Areas where planning together and working together could help:

· More youth leaders needed

· More access to training which is low cost and flexible

· Some funding available to help with start up of new groups, especially in small rural communities

· Communication links with Statutory services (including schools) and other Voluntary Youth Groups.

· More marketing and promotion of groups to parents/carers, young people, other statutory agencies, other voluntary youth groups.

 Workforce Development:

The first challenge that ALL youth groups referred to was the need for more youth leaders.  There are waiting lists of children/young people and the lack of leaders means that demand cannot be met.  Finding Welsh Speakers is particularly difficult.  Welsh language seems to be kept as a “class room language”.

There is also the need to ensure that all leaders receive adequate training and support to provide a consistent quality service, which is inclusive.  This means more training needs to be delivered flexibly, for example: available locally, Saturdays, during school hours.  Further support is needed, in the small amount of cases, when leaders are not reaching standards.  Cost was another issue which sometimes causes a barrier.  Smaller groups, especially, find it difficult to cover costs of training.

It is difficult to retain the interests and commitment of young people who have been through youth groups to return after university. These young people are often seen as valuable future leaders and keeping them interested is difficult.

PCC Youth Service currently provide training and this could be arranged more flexibly. Youth Organisations could look at their own training programmes and needs.  Training  could also be planned together to make better use of time/travel etc.

Funding:

The more funding is available the more young people will be able to benefit. It is recognised that youth groups provide a very good cost effective service.  However, due to the rural nature of Powys, start up funding is often needed for groups, due to frequent significant changes in the demographics of small communities.

Buildings:

Availability of buildings seems to patchy across the county.  Some organisations eg: Scouts and St Johns, own a number of buildings and other youth and community groups make use of them.  Other organisations use village halls and PCC owned buildings.  Availability to some buildings is sometimes an issue and the cost is always an issue with a need to keep it to the minimum.  One organisation pointed out the need for simple residential accommodation that could be used by all youth groups.

Closer Working Relationships with Statutory Sector, ie: Schools and PCC Youth Service.

Closer working relationships with schools would help to ensure that schools recognise the achievements that children and young people attain outside of education.  More partnership working with youth groups would add value to schools.  The development of the CYPP, Community Focused Schools policy should enable this to happen more. Clearer lines of communication need to be developed.  One suggestion was more joint celebrations of awards.

Youth groups also need more information about the education system so that they can see where they can make a contribution to learning eg: Welsh Baccalaureate.  This would help schools to recognise the skills, knowledge and experience gained outside the classroom.

Closer Working Relationships with other Voluntary Youth Groups

It would be helpful to have more information about projects running and developing across the county.  Time is limited, but setting up communication mechanisms would help.  Knowing who’s who both in Statutory & Voluntary Youth Sector would help.

Some mapping information would be helpful to know what is around and the resources available.  It would also help to avoid duplication, which sometimes happens, but leaves gaps in other areas. It would also be helpful to know about sports club activities, which also attract many young people.

Marketing & Promotion of the benefits of the Voluntary Youth Sector

This is another area where all groups could work more closely together.  All recognised that it is important to ensure the right people are aware of the benefits young people have gained in voluntary sector youth groups.   Some common performance measures, which could be collated centrally, would demonstrate the strength of the sector, as a whole.  Data, qualitative and quantitative, could also highlight the benefits achieved by young people in their local youth groups.

In addition, parents/carers, young people and others have pre-conceptions of youth groups, especially, uniformed groups.  There is a need to promote themselves to demonstrate that they are accessible for all and don’t always wear uniforms, for example!  Youth Groups are also aware that they need to make sure young people understand that any youth group provides a whole range of activities and are not just focused on narrow range of activities eg:  first aid or camping.