Agenda item - UPDATE ON THE EXTRA SUMMER YOUTH DIVERSIONARY ACTIVITIES

Agenda item

UPDATE ON THE EXTRA SUMMER YOUTH DIVERSIONARY ACTIVITIES

To receive a report from Paul Sutton, Assistant Director, Youth & Service Development

 

This report will be ‘To follow’

 

Minutes:

RECEIVED a report from Graham Jimpson, Project Manager, Enfield Youth Development unit, on the Extra Summer Youth Diversionary Activities.

 

NOTED:

 

(i)            In June 2018 Enfield’s administration authorised £100,000 (of the £150,000 that was pledged in the 2018 Labour manifesto to help tackle youth violence) to be spent on a programme of summer youth activities. A proposed programme of summer activities was then drawn up and formally agreed on July 2017.

(ii)          The young people involved in the programme had expressed their thanks to the Panel for this wonderful opportunity which had delivered fantastic results.

(iii)         The Youth Development unit took the lead in planning and implementing the programme and it was centred on three aims:

·         To deliver a programme of positive activities designed to reinforce the progress that young people at risk of offending/gang activity/anti-social behaviour were making at school or within education;

·         To ensure those under the Youth Offending Unit (YOU) supervision had more opportunities during the summer to engage in positive activities that could augment the work they were doing with the YOU.

·         To demonstrate to the community (young people and adults) that Enfield Council is committed to ensuring more opportunities for young people to engage in positive activities and to reducing youth crime.

(iv)         A key aspect of the programme was to ensure that the most disadvantaged young people were referred to it. Recruitment to the proposed programme was therefore targeted at the YOU, the Schools Behaviour Support Team, the Pupil Referral Units (PRUs), SPOE, Gangs Partnership Group as well as through Detached Youth Work in the areas of highest need.

(v)          Programmes were then produced, and information advertised on the website and other methods e.g. a public meeting, were also used to ensure that the public were fully aware of the programme.

(vi)         Another key aspect of the Summer Programme was partnership work: whilst the programme was planned and implemented by Enfield’s internal YDU much of the programme was delivered by partners.

(vii)        The programme included activities such as Boxercise provided by Edmonton Eagles as well as other activities provided by partners such as VIPS, Oasis and Enfield Children & Young People’s Service (ECYPS).

(viii)       Other activities on offer included cookery, athletics, football, basketball, street dance, art, BBQs, picnics, music (instruments and production), bike project and various others. Details of the full activities on offer are included with the report.

(ix)         Graham went on to talk about the risk and challenges faced in delivering the programme. The funding was announced at very short notice therefore creating, advertising and implementing a programme involving partners was naturally challenging in itself but the task was still very manageable, and any disadvantages were far outweighed by the advantage of having such a sum to invest in summer activities for young people.

(x)          To ensure the programme went meetings were held every Monday to de-brief regarding the previous week’s activities, deploy staff where they were needed, to review and revise the programme being offered and to share intelligence regarding potential issues and problems.

(xi)         Police feedback/intelligence was key to this programme. Enfield’s Community Safety unit co-ordinated police intelligence regarding potential ‘crime hotspots’ with almost daily updates.

(xii)        All delivery, except the outreach and offsite activities, was conducted via 4 of Enfield’s 5 Local Authority Youth Centres and the Enfield Island Village Youth Centre.

(xiii)       Further detailed information was provided on the range of delivery at each centre: Pullinger Youth Centre, Craig Park Youth Centre, Croyland Youth Centre and Ponders End Youth Centre.

(xiv)      Tables were also included in the report detailing the attendance data for the summer programme as well as a financial summary showing the actual expenditure.

(xv)       As part of the summer programme the Youth Development United recruited, from its bank of experienced sessional youth workers, a small Detached and Outreach Youth Work team to deliver detached and outreach sessions in areas of the borough where youth violence and criminal/anti-social behaviour were causing concern. The aim of this work was to reduce crime and ASB.

(xvi)      The objective was to engage the young people in these areas to ensure they were aware of what provision was being delivered and where and to try and get these young people into the positive activities on offer to achieve this aim.

(xvii)     With regards to the next steps, the funding that is committed but unspent is being used to enable the tapering off from the summer programme and particularly to build on some of the good work done over the summer, especially regarding the transition back into education after the summer for young people in the PRU.

(xviii)    The use of some of this funding is still awaiting agreement. Regarding the unspent funding discussions will be held regarding how best this can be utilised over the coming year e.g. Christmas holidays etc.

(xix)      Whilst the summer has been very successful it is recommended that if a decision is taken to fund summer activities for summer 2019 then to achieve optimum outcomes then funding should ideally be agreed by the end of May 2019 to enable more detailed planning to ensure a more comprehensive offer.

(xx)       In conclusion Paul Sutton, Assistant Director, Service Development & Youth Services thanked Graham and Rafique for pulling this whole programme together in a very short space of time. It had taken a great deal of time and effort and huge credit should be given to Graham and Rafique. Much of the success could be attributed to the wide range of contacts that Graham and Rafique have and their ability to engage with young people and the community.

 

Following Graham’s update, the following questions/comments were made:

 

Q.        How do you measure value for money?

A.        This will hopefully become evident when looking at young people who otherwise may not have remained in education etc. As part of the programme we took young people to look at jobs in the music industry at Westfield, Stratford. If you take young people out of their known environment inevitably they will like it and it will broaden their horizons which is the ultimate aim.

 

Q.        Looking at Crime Rates what difference did the summer programme make to these figures?

A.        The summer programme was not a magic wand but do think that anecdotally neighbourhoods and communities had a different/improved feel about them.

 

Q.        Looking at the data provided it would seem that it was mostly males who took part in the programme. Is there a reason for this?

A.        The data will be revisited to clarify that this is correct.  It should be remembered however that the majority of exclusions, PRU attendees etc are male so naturally there would have been more male referrals to the summer programme. We do however need to focus more on what young women want to ensure gender equality and we do need to weight the programme to suit all.

 

Q.        There appears to have been no representation on the programme from areas such as N13/EN2. Why is this?

A.        We need to rebuild provision in the Eastern Corridor. There is a lot of work to be done on encouraging young people to move out of their specific postcodes.

 

Q.        Has there been any feedback from the young people themselves?

A.        Just a thank you from young people is often enough. However further feedback will be provided when it becomes available.

 

Q.        Councillor Dey echoed the congratulations already expressed. He referred to the young people in the EN2 and N21 areas where considerable voluntary work is taking place and asked how we can rebuild links between the Council and the Voluntary Sector.

A.        We have made a start on this work and currently probably engage with approximately 25% of the Voluntary Sector. We now need to build on this work and we are open to working with anyone.

 

Paul concluded by advising Members that Enfield have taken an approach which other boroughs maybe haven’t, which is that we have gone out and engaged the public. This has given us about 80% of our attendance at our Youth Centres. We do and will continue to build on this.

 

The Chair thanked Graham, Paul and Rafique for attending the meeting to provide this very encouraging report.

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