Opportunities for children and young people
- We will work with young people to develop a new ’10 by 10’ programme for our borough, so that young people have an opportunity to try ten exciting things before they are ten years old.
- We will keep investing in our youth senate, so that young people in our borough are involved in decision making. We will continue to reform the role of the youth senate to explore new and effective ways to improve the engagement and participation of young people, and to ensure the voices of young people are heard, listened too, and consulted with.
- Since the government cut funding for youth services, we have continued to fund targeted provision from local budgets. We will look to invest more in practical activity by reducing costs of running services. This could include working in partnership with other providers to co-locate services in buildings which have multiple uses and working with other organisations who have access to different sources of funding to run youth programmes. We will also consider new and innovative outreach models which identify young people most in need of support and we will extend our targeted services to 11-19 year olds, or 25 if they have special educational needs or are a care leaver. We will explore the establishment of youth hubs and look to work in partnerships for cohesive delivery of youth services.
- To increase youth social mobility, we will work in partnership with organisations like the Local Enterprise Partnership and Chamber of Commerce, businesses, and the community and voluntary sector on targeted projects in schools and through our young people’s service to offer training, recruitment advice and mentoring opportunities.
- We will maintain access to good quality parks and green spaces for children and young people to play and be active. We will seek new funding to include an education officer in our sustainability teams, so the work on our wildflower and grassland strategy and climate emergency response can be shared with children and young people, helping them to connect with nature, exercise and learn about the natural environment.
