Agenda item

The Committee will receive a brief update on community boards and  will hear about plans to promote youth participation. Members are invited to provide input and suggestions to assist in achieving increased youth involvement with the community boards.

Contributors:

Steve Bowles, Cabinet Member for Communities

Claire Hawkes, Service Director for Localities and Strategic Partnerships

Wendy Morgan-Brown, Head of Community Boards & Head of Registration, Coroners & Trading Standards

Emily Davis, Programme Director, Action4Youth

Papers:

Presentation slides

The Committee received an update on Community Board activity from Cllr S Bowles, Cabinet Member for Communities and then heard from Emily Davis, Programme Director at Action4Youth who presented information on projects for young people which had received funding from Community Boards. 

Slides supporting Cllr Bowles update were included in the agenda pack. The following points were highlighted:

• Efforts had been made to increase the awareness of Community Boards, and further work was ongoing to engage residents more with their local board and increase public attendance at meetings. The first Community Board newsletter had been issued; the Cabinet Member had held individual meetings with Chairmen and Vice-Chairmen to hear about board activities and challenges; and briefing sessions had been held internally with directorate management teams to promote the work and offerings of the boards. A marketing budget had been established for centralised branding and marketing to ensure boards presented professionally and consistently with grab kits now available for Community Board Co-ordinators to use and take with them to events. To increase awareness, Co-ordinators had been holding engagement events including attending fayres and a number of local events as well as meeting with delivery partners such as Leap, Buckinghamshire Business First, local schools and community groups.
• The second round of board meetings for this year was underway and feedback to date had been encouraging with good progress reported. There were active action groups for each board.
• Work was also underway with the Community Resilience team to understand how boards could support local communities and councils during a major incident. An emergency planning exercise had recently been held and local communities were encouraged to take up resilience plans, with the boards helping to apply for emergency funding for items such as sandbags.
• The funding panel was now established, closely monitoring budget usage and met fortnightly. The spend and project breakdown for each Board was kept under review. With the funding process having opened in July 2021, £1.15m worth of projects had been passed to the boards and £590k of contributory funding had been secured. Projects funded and projects being progressed could be viewed on pages 15-16 of the reports pack.
• Priorities for the next three months would continue to focus on ensuring projects were prepared and submitted in a timely manner with a focus on environment and economic recovery projects. A menu of initiatives was underway to share with the boards detailing potential projects and delivery partners.
• The Proud of Bucks awards would include categories for Community Boards, and each board would decide how to deliver these awards with the suggestion of a physical event which could also aid with increasing board awareness.
• There was also a focus on looking at how engaging with young residents could be improved to establish their needs.

During the presentation from Ms Davis, Action4Youth the following points were highlighted (presentations slides are appended to these minutes):

• A brief background and summary of the work undertaken by Action4Youth was provided to the committee. Action 4 Youth had received Community Board funding for two projects, these were The Junction in High Wycombe, and a Youth mentoring project across Aylesbury Vale. Details of each project can be seen in the appended presentation slides.
• The Junction received £40k funding from the High Wycombe Community Board to support core running costs for the next three years. It served as a multi service drop in centre offering a range of planned sessions and activities seven days a week catering for young people aged 12-18, and provided specialist support to those who were vulnerable. The Junction was located in the High Wycombe library, which was chosen for its town centre location which already attracted young people and was accessible by public transport. Sessions were based around health and wellbeing, crisis support/counselling and the general youth space.
• Timetable sessions had included boxing and dance and a weekly mental wellbeing counsellor was available for one to one support. There was also a female only evening to support harder to reach groups getting involved in activities.
• The centre had three core staff members and had various partners coming in to collaborate and support young people. It had also been positive to see pupils from different schools and backgrounds mixing.
• The youth mentoring project had been awarded £41,947 from across six community boards in the Aylesbury Vale area. A similar project which had been successful in the Wycombe area was coming to the end of its three year funding it received from the legacy district council.
• This was a 1:1 mentoring project for young people aged 11-17 who experienced low self-esteem, confidence issues, anxiety, low level mental ill health and challenging behaviour. Interactions were face to face weekly for between ten and twelve weeks’ dependant on individual needs. Action4Youth would work with its already established network to receive referrals from schools, council, social care, youth groups and direct from parent/guardians.
• The boards who had funded the project had initially identified young people in their priorities and had secondary schools located in or very near the area covered by the Community Board. It was identified that matching the approximate number of young people in each area to the number of referrals may present a challenge when ensuring Community Board money is spent in the right local area, and flexibility would be required in instances where a young person attended school in one area but lived in another.
• There had been significant interest in the full time mentor role and an excellent field of candidates were due to be interviewed shortly. The aim was to get the project running as soon as possible, with January 2022 being the latest start date.

Following the presentations, questions and comments were raised by the Committee. These included:

• A member asked whether there were plans for The Junction to support young people transitioning in to employment by offering CV writing sessions as well as other practical support. Members were advised that an employability programme was planned for the future when the centre had been established. The Junction was also involved with the Government Kick Start programme and would be taking on four junior youth workers who would have been on universal credit for a period of time.
• In relation to access to funding, this was said to be an ongoing process. In addition to Community Board funding, funding was secured through other sources including donations and the National Lottery. The target was for a minimum of three years running costs to be covered at any time.
• The Committee questioned outreach work and were advised that staff visited a number of schools and community groups and also worked around the town centre to make young people aware of the facilities and services on offer. There was a target to increase outreach work to keep attendance growing. In relation to distance, it was said that outreach targeted any young people who were in reasonable distance to the town centre library location which is located by the bus station. A long term ambition was to have local hubs. Further it was said that if Action4Youth were approached by a Parish Council who had an available venue and funding for establishment costs, advice could be given to run that facility. There was a yearly membership fee from Action4Youth, however this would cover DBS checks, introductions to youth work, support with getting a management committee up and running and access to subsidised training.
• It was confirmed that both Wycombe Youth Action and Aylesbury Youth Action were members of Action4Youth and had access to training and DBS checks with both working on the NCS programme as charity partners. Action4Youth had asked youth groups about their interest in running projects at The Junction and groups had been invited to give proposals of programmes.
• A member noted that Community Board funding had been granted to Action4Youth and that the Council had also provided funding to Aylesbury Youth Action and queried if the figure was known that was being provided to youth groups in Buckinghamshire. The Cabinet Member advised that he would obtain this information and feed it back.
• In terms of attracting staff and holding on to quality youth workers, members were advised that at the current time recruitment was not an issue and a number of sessional staff were still available for the centre to use.

Recommendation

With the intention to get more young people involved with Community Boards, the Committee recommended that Action4Youth could facilitate discussion of potential Community Board schemes and topics with a view to obtain and understand the views of young people. This could then be fed back to Community Board Co-ordinators and taken in to consideration when progressing projects and allocating funding.