Agenda item

Director of Communities) To receive a presentation and background report (attached) from members of the Youth Council on completed and proposed activities.

Five members of the Youth Council gave an illustrated talk on the work and projects they carried out during the year, their request for £8,000 DDF.

The Youth Councillors that made the presentation were, Annabelle Yaman from Epping St Johns School; Adam Freeman from Davenant Foundation School; Marley Chick from Epping St Johns School; Ashwin Gohil from Debden Park High School; and Finlay Jordan from Davenant Foundation School.

They thanked the Council for their involvement with and loyalty to the Youth Council over the past ten years. 2018 was the tenth anniversary of the Youth Council and they would be holding a celebration evening at the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday 4th July. This event would be sponsored by the Right Honourable Eleanor Laing.

They were now in their second and last year and were working hard to promote the 2018 Youth Elections to fill the 25, soon to be vacant, seats. They had enjoyed their time learning about the Council, working with the District Councillors and getting involved in numerous community projects.

They thanked the Council for granting them the £5,000 project money for 2017/18 which enabled them to carry out a drugs project to raise the awareness of the dangers of using ‘gateway drugs’. They also devised an online survey asking young people about their awareness of drug use in their area. To date the survey had been completed by 2884 young people.

Past projects have included Mental Health, Bullying Awareness and Safety and Drug awareness. Their next project for the new cohort would be ‘Gang Awareness’ as this was deemed to be a big issue in the district and a major concern nationally.

They were proud of the mental health project ‘MiLife’ that was set up by the Youth Council in 2016 and was a finalist in the National Crimebeat Awards 2018, endorsed by the High Sherriff. The results would be announced on 18^th April.

MiLife continues to be developed as funding has been secured for a three year period, from 2016 to 2019.  Over 6000 pupils have attended the roadshows and officers had been invited to deliver MiLife workshop at the Essex County Council Schools mental health conference. A primary school version has also been developed. This will be delivered to 6,500 pupils in reception up to year 6.

They ensured their peers and schools continued to have a voice and they attend individual School Councils and regularly give updates and presentations via school assemblies about their work. They also promoted the use of suggestion boxes and use of their youth councillors to report any issues in their school or community.

In 2017 they held a Youth Conference at the Civic Offices with the aim of promoting Local Democracy Week. They had over 70 delegates representing ten secondary schools from around the District. They identified 5 top issues of concern. These were:

·         Skills for work;

·         Mental Health;

·         Bullying;

·         Drug Misuse; and

·         Gangs

Social media was an important part of their work, promoting their work and their profile. They now had 1613 followers on Twitter, 794 likes on Facebook and 157 followers on Instagram.

They had contributed to several consultations over the year, including consultations on the Local Plan, Epping Forest College, Essex Police, Citizen Advice and the Children’s Society. They also have representatives on various local groups and had received training on Accredited Mental Health First Aid Training, Dementia Friends, hate Crime Ambassadors, Fearless training by Essex Police, British Youth Council, Consequences of Crime and Drug Awareness.

Volunteering remained a big thing for them. Last summer they had organised a clean up day with the City of London volunteer wardens and the Waste Management team of the District Council, when in just four hours they collected 550 Nitrous Oxide canisters. They were also working with various schools to set up Youth Volunteering days.

They have secured external funding to a total of £4,950 that has been brought into the district over the last year, enabling them to continue to deliver high quality projects.

Their chosen charity for the year was the Children’s Society, for which they have raised over £300.

They were also the finalists in the National Crime Beat Awards for the MiLife project and six youth councillors received Jack Petchey Achievement Awards.

To continue bringing new and exciting ideas to the community through their project work they formally requested the allocated sum of £8,000 DDF be released. This would enable them to continue working with the NHS team in schools via the MiLife project, working with the Essex Police Cadets, update the Youth Activities Map and work with the Sparks2Life and other gang projects to create a new gang awareness project for secondary schools.

The Youth Councillors then thanked the Committee for their continuing support and indicated that they were happy to take questions.

Councillor Butler congratulated the Youth Council on their work on mental health and drugs. He asked if the nitrous oxide canisters were legally purchased. He was told that this was a grey area in the law as it was illegal to supply it for consumption.

Councillor Janet Whitehouse asked what sort of support was given to schools. She was told that the Youth Council had suggestion boxes so that people could bring up any areas of concern. They also presented at assemblies to give out information on their new projects. All schools received this opportunity.

Councillor Holly Whitbread asked for some more information on the Police Cadet project.  She was told that the Youth Council had been working with them over the last few months arranging a volunteer’s day out, when they visited elderly person’s homes etc.  One of the goals was to increase the profile of the young people and counter all the bad press they received.

Councillor Mitchell asked if they had a ‘befriending service’ for the elderly. She was told that was what they wished to do and they already had held ‘intergenerational events’.

The Committee noted officers recommendation to reduce the number of presentations the Youth Council gave to the Communities Select Committee to just one a year. Members agreed with the proposed reduction but also considered that they would be better served to give this to the main Overview and Scrutiny Committee so that it could be webcast and a wider audience could see the wide ranging work that they carried out throughout the year. Members of the Youth Council present were agreeable to this.

The members of the Youth Council were thanked for their impressive presentation and the helpful answers they gave to members questions.

RESOLVED:

1)    That the Communities Select Committee noted the achievements of the Epping Forest Youth Council during 2017/18; 

2)    That the Committee would recommend the proposal to Overview and Scrutiny Committee to allocate a DDF sum of £5,000 to the Youth Council for projects during 2018/19;

3)    That the Committee would recommend the proposal to Overview and Scrutiny Committee to allocate a DDF sum of £3,000 to the Youth Council for the MiLife project during 2018/19;

4)    That the Committee also recommends that the number of Youth Council presentations to Members be reduced to once a year, but that this presentation be given at the Overview and Scrutiny Committee in order to be webcast.