Report attached.

Contact: Helena Williams, Youth Support Team Manager, Shropshire Council

The Assistant Director for Services to Children and the Youth Support Team Manager, Shropshire Council gave a presentation which covered the following areas:

·        Youth work;

·        Statutory guidance;

·        Youth offer; and

·        Shropshire Youth Strategy

The Youth Support Team Manager explained that the golden thread running throughout all of this was prevention and health and wellbeing, which was critical to all those bits of work.  She went through each piece of work and explained how each piece informed the others and how they got to the need’s strategy.  She explained what youth work was and highlighted the statutory guidance that came out in September 2023 for local authorities to co-ordinate services and activities to improve young people’s wellbeing (for those aged 13-19 and up to 25 with SEND).  She drew out the key points from the Guidance and the 9 ‘essentials’ of a local youth offer.

The Youth Support Team Manager informed the Board that the government had recently announced that universal youth provision was going to feed into driving down some of the issues being faced by young people today and she drew attention to the four government missions (Opportunity, Take back our streets, NHS and Economic Growth) and to the national updates, which included publication of ‘Today’s Youth, Tomorrow’s Nation’ Report which was due in the spring before the launch of the National Youth Strategy in the summer.

She went on to highlight what young people were telling them that they wanted in terms of a youth offer and what was important to them, and she shared a draft Participation Structure which focused on community-led partnership working and linked into each place based JSNA area so that young people could manage their own plans within their localities.

Finally, the Assistant Director for Services to Children updated the Board in terms of where they were at with the Participation Strategy which had been refreshed and was going to Full Council in March. 

The Chier Officer for Healthwatch was pleased that the Local Authority were taking back responsibility for youth work, and she was keen to work with them to see how young people were being given a voice and had a couple of reports she could share with them, one about Young People and Social Prescribing.

From a Police point of view, the Superintendent, West Mercia Police explained that the geography of Shropshire was a challenge and that the county needed a consistent offer.  Once the funding for neighbourhood policing was understood, they hoped to be involved in locality hubs.  Turning to Shropshire Fire and Rescue, the Chief Fire Officer felt there was some correlation with prevention activities along with links to apprenticeship and cadet opportunities and wished to get involved and see where this fits within the strategy.

The Portfolio Holder for Children and Young People reflected on the progress that had been made over the last four years and was proud that young people were now front and centre in the decisions that were being made and in all the collaborative working being undertaken, and to that end, she informed the meeting that a young member of the Youth Council had presented a report to Cabinet earlier that week as well as, for the first time ever, a young person had co-presented a paper at Council, really demonstrating how young people’s voices were being heard.

The Chair thanked the Assistant Director for Services to Children and the Youth Support Team Manager for bringing this to the Board and although he was interested in listening to the national context, he was reassured that they would do the right thing for Shropshire.

RESOLVED:

To approve the recommendations detailed within the report.