Agenda item

The LCN received information on local youth provision from the Connect Somerset Champion, and detail about what that work involved. They also learned about the work the Somerset Youth Work Alliance are doing and the need for funding for provision by the Community Youth Project.

During the discussion the following points were raised:

• There is a need for wider information on youth provision, as groups like Scouts and Brownies are not included. A lot of this bleeds into adjacent LCNs, and young people will often cross the LCN borders to access provision. We need to look at how we can join up with other LCNs to mapthem.
• Why are some of the schools included on the list? LCN geography doesn’t match up exactly with Connect Somerset geography, as they follow Primary Care Network boundaries.
• There are also private schools not included.
• There is a need to cascade to schools what youth provision is available.
• How do you work independently, informally, with young people who have different sorts of needs but are alienated and lack meaningful relationships with adults? Some young people have gone on to get qualifications so they can support young people, that’s the sustainable way to move forward.
• Is there a place where parents and young people can go to find out what’s going on? There is an app called tellmi – available at tellme.help, which has an offer of peer support and early intervention, and has a database of youth organisations. SPARK Somerset have also done work on this in some areas.
• As part of the mapping process, the youth work alliance hope to have a young person led directory online.
• What about children under 12 rather than young people? Taunton LCN has created a subgroup with lots of interested providers – Taunton has denser clusters and groups. Would be useful to get input from schools, nursery providers, etc.
• The best people to tell what their needs are are children, young people, and their parents. Perhaps we can cascade a questionnaire that parishes can support with.
• If there’s appetite, a working group can get into the detail of some of these things.
• How big of an issue does it seem to be in your parish? Where LCNs feel that there’s something missing, a working group has helped speak to young people, identify what’s happening and where the gaps are, and if those gaps are genuine or because there is no engagement from young people for that provision.
• Some provision has been wound up due to lack of volunteers and trustees, rather than lack of interest from children.
• A survey has been done – there were many league sports and children and young people wanted more informal sports where they just play, and café style provision.
• There are areas where there is lots of provision that is joined up.
• People are talking about unwieldy and antisocial behaviour – those at the people that are hard to reach and we need to capture their voices and figure out what’s important to them. We should be looking at capturing a wide range of age groups.
• SASP has been doing work with their Moving Mums group, young mums in groups with children, to get those voices.
• Tapping into individual voices, social media, associated groups, and asking people in the street what would benefit them.
• There is a high level of publicity of concerns at the moment, we need to think about how we address them.
• In Creech St Michael, a youth project with CYP has been running for several years. Young people reported that the youth project was the only space they had to express concerns about wellbeing and mental health. They liked the activities but the safe space to talk about the challenges they face was really important. If we don’t find the funding to support it, it will end at the end of March, even though we have facilities and participants.
• There needs to be a way to link needs and resources – there’s not enough coordination to know where we are. Some activities don’t meet some of the most needy children in our society. Need to do research and mapping on this so people making decisions have the information they need.
• On antisocial behaviour, data was requested on antisocial behaviour but the figures were very low. The perception of antisocial behaviour was higher, but it may be due to adults being antisocial rather than young people.
• Dorset Youth Association created an annual survey sent to all schools asking a variety of questions to get a wide spread of data. All members of the association have access to that data from all of the schools, and coordination means young people were only asked to fill in one survey and everyone had access to the same information. This could be something a working group could work towards.
• In Watford there are lots of problems with youth, need to ask young people what they actually need. Why aren’t there any young people in the LCN?
• West Monkton PC run a Community Café at the BACH each Wednesday and also a Stay and Play for Mums and Tots to have a coffee on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.

LCN members were asked to contact Emmaline Kay in order to register their interest to join the youth provision working group.