The National Youth Agency - Participation News, November 2008

Participation News, November 2008

1 Dec 2008
Issue 12 includes details of the Young Inspector Service which will see young people supported to scrutinise local activities and youth service, the youth advisors initiative whereby young people will have the opportunity to influence the CLG’s issues and training resources from Participation Works about training young people aged 8 -12 to participate in decision making.

Policy

The DCSF has announced that it will be introducing new legislation to ensure that multi-agency Children’s Trusts Boards are operating in every local authority area. The Boards will consist of the local authority, health, police, schools and other services who will be legally required to work together to agree and deliver a Children and Young People’s Plan.

Also of interest...

The DCSF has also published new guidance on Children’s Trusts. The guidance takes into account the revised 2008 statutory guidance for local authorities and agencies on the ‘duty to cooperate’ to improve children’s well-being. The guidance states that Trusts should involve and empower children, young people and their families in order to drive through change. Alongside this guidance is a short leaflet which contains a simplified explanation of what a Children’s Trust is for and what it does.

The Government has introduced support for commissioning services for local authorities and Children’s Trusts partners. The Commissioning Support Programme will help Children’s Trusts to plan, design and implement services more effectively by providing tailored support as and when Trust partners need it, developing online resources and networks to help commissioners share best practice, and holding conferences. The programme will run until April 2011.

The Government has introduced a change to the law to place a duty on all maintained schools in England and Wales to consider the views of children and young people. The provisions are introduced as new Section 29A of the Education Act 2002. A consultation on the regulations will take place in Spring 2009.

The Government has launched the Young Muslim Advisory Group. Twenty-two Muslim young people will have direct access to cabinet ministers and will work with government departments to tackle discrimination, increase employment levels and combat gangs, crime and drug use. One of their first tasks will be to organise a conference to give Muslim young people the chance to discuss the challenges they face and their vision for the future.

Teams of young people will be supported by a third sector organisation to scrutinise local activities and youth services in a new £4.5 million pilot scheme announced by Children and Young People’s Minister Beverley Hughes. The Young Inspector Service will be piloted in up to 36 local authorities across the country and will involve around 30 young people in each local authority drawn from the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The DCSF has commenced a procurement exercise to appoint a suitably qualified organisation to work with local authority areas to develop and implement the pilots. Further information and the procurement specification are available for interested third sector organisations.

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears has announced the 22 projects that will share in a £1.3m Community Leadership Fund aimed at supporting Muslim communities to unlock the potential of local people to take a lead on tackling violent extremism. One strand of the funding will be to support youth-led projects which develop the leadership skills of young people, including both formal and informal activities and training such as sports, workshops and mentoring. Recipients of the first funding round include the Muslim Youth Helpline and Muslim Youthwork Foundation.

Practice

The Youth Citizenship Commission, established to consider ways of re-engaging young people in the political process, has published a consultation paper seeking views on whether the voting age should be lowered to 16. The deadline for responses is 20 January 2009.

Ofsted has published a report of a consultation with 686 children and young people living away from home or using social care services. The children and young people discussed the key issues that they would like to see considered for future inclusion in the new National Minimum Standards to help providers and users judge the standard of services. It found that young people rated having their own privacy, being kept safe (particularly in relation to internet safety) and healthy, and staying in touch with their families as the most important of the rules they would like to see included in the standards.

The Home Office has announced that five areas across the country have been awarded a share of nearly half a million pounds to create the next generation of support services for young victims of crime. Part of the Youth Crime Action Plan, the new pilot scheme will deliver a range of services including training by young people for police on how better to work with young people.

The Department of Communities and Local Government is to work with a new team of youth advisors aimed at giving young people the opportunity to influence the department's issues. The first, of a series of monthly meetings focused on young people's views on making green spaces - such as parks, piers and town centres - more attractive to young people and protecting them from vandalism.

Ofsted and the DCSF have launched a consultation on a proposed set of school level indicators which will measure schools' contribution to pupils’ well-being. The indicators will be a combination of measures for which quantitative data are available, such as the school’s overall attendance rate and the take-up of school lunches, and measures of the perceptions of pupils and parents on the extent to which a school promotes well-being. The consultation will run until 16 January 2009.

The Association of Principal Youth and Community Officers has agreed to broaden its remit and membership to include the full range of professionals who work in services delivering Integrated Youth Support.

The NYA’s Youth Work for Health Team is putting together a quality resource -The Health Activities Resource Pack. It wants to test out the activities it is developing and would like to hear from youth projects that could trial the resources with young people. Please email Roger Morford rogerm@nya.org.uk for further details - feel free to forward this request to your contacts and networks.

Research

An Audit Commission report into the progress local councils and their partners are making in developing Children's Trusts has found that there is little evidence of better outcomes for children and young people. While professionals are working together, this is often through informal arrangements outside the trust. The report says that children and young people should be given a greater say in how children's services are designed by drawing on The National Youth Agency’s Hear by Right standards.

A report from the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities and Cambridge University’s education faculty on including young people with learning disabilties in the life of mainstream schools and colleges has found that young people want more opportunities to make their voices heard through means such as school or college councils. Often, these do not include young people with learning difficulties or special educational needs.

Funding and Awards

Nominations are now open for the Brook Sexual Health Awards 2008. The awards reward young people, projects and other professionals working with young people. The closing date is 15 December 2008.

CHANGEit, an award scheme run by Common Purpose and sponsored by Deutsche Bank, is now open for nominations. CHANGEit recognises, supports and rewards campaigners aged 11 to 18 who have already made a difference in their communities or have ideas to create positive change. Nominations, for individuals or groups can be submitted online. The closing date is 12 January 2009.

O2’s It's your community awards provide small grants of between £100 and £1,000 to local groups and individuals for any projects that can be shown to benefit their community. There are four categories for awards: rebuild and restore; cultural; active; and green and clean. Applications can be submitted at any time and decisions will be made within a month.

Resources

A new report from The National Youth Agency looks at the lessons from recent capital investment in youth facilities. Sponsored by the DCSF, the report – ‘Investing in Youth Facilities: findings from recent experience’ - identifies current leading practice around the ten myplace principles. These include areas such as young people’s outcomes, young people’s active participation, accessibility, community cohesion and long-term viability. The report is based on 36 case studies profiling new and improved individual facilities and eight examining local authorities’ strategic approaches to capital investment.

Participation Works have produced training resources to support practitioners to train young people aged 8 to 12 to participate in decision making. Areas covered include recruitment and selection, facilitation and making change happen.

Events, Jobs and Training

The Directory for Social Change is holding a conference that looks at including and involving young people in society. The conference, Youth and Opportunity, will be held in London on 8 December 2008.

Participation Works and The NYA are holding a series of events throughout England designed to answer participants’ questions about Hear by Right. The events are free and open to all but attendees do need to have some awareness of Hear by Right. The first event is to be held in Winchester on 10 December 2008.

Participation Works is an online gateway to the world of children and young people’s participation. It includes access to information, resources, training and networking opportunities.

If you would like to find out more about The NYA’s work on participation, The NYA Participation Newsletter is available from the Participation Team webpages It is published direct to the web every two months.