Agenda item

The deputy leader and cabinet member for children, young people and education to present the theme for the meeting.

The deputy leader and cabinet member for children, young people and education, Councillor Jasmine Ali, presented the first motion in the themed debate.

Councillor William Houngbo, the majority opposition group spokesperson, responded to the motion and proposed Amendment A.

Following debate (Councillors Jason Ochere, Evelyn Akoto, Nick Johnson, Kath Whittam, Peter John, Victor Chamberlain, Richard Leeming, James McAsh, Hamish McCallum and Kieron Williams), Councillor Jasmine Ali responded to the debate.

Amendment A was put to the vote and declared to be Lost.

The motion was put to the vote and declared to be Carried.

RESOLVED:

The Southwark Youth New Deal

1.  Council Assembly notes:

a.  That under this Labour administration, Southwark is committed to working with young people to deliver the best possible services through a £15 million youth investment. This investment is geared towards improving all outcomes for young people including their health, wellbeing, social, education and employment opportunities. This includes three council managed youth centres and 29 organisations that deliver youth activities in great spaces across the borough, including the reopening and refurbishment of spaces like the Blue Youth Club.

b.  The council has won an international award for its ethnographic engagement of young people in the design of its services.  Young people are currently working with urban creatives We Made That to film spaces on the Brandon which will bring about a youth-led transformation of relevant spaces.

c.  The new Youth Parliament selection is underway – with every secondary school, special education school, pupil referral unit, college, and youth centre currently engaged in canvassing and voting so that the new Youth Parliament can sit in the autumn.

d.  This Labour administration has revolutionised young people’s mental health services. Southwark is now a beacon of mental health support by delivering its commitment to support 100% of children and young people with mental health needs, through its launch of the free open access mental health drop in The Nest and the £2m investment in schools for mental health prevention.

e.  The council has delivered on training and employment for its young residents whilst the government’s implementation of Kickstart made it difficult for employers to navigate, and challenging for young people to participate. Since July 2019, Southwark Works has supported 570 young people; helping 104 of them into secure and good quality jobs and apprenticeships, and 142 into other outcomes including training and work experience. A further 114 young people have been supported into well-paid internships.

f.  Under this Labour administration, Southwark is committed to great outcomes for its young people, with no young person left behind. 199 young people who were previously not in education, training or employment have received training through the Southwark Construction Skills Centre, and a further 961 Southwark school children are engaged with the programme.

g.  Southwark’s Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Services include great education and post sixteen offers for our young people. We are exemplars, with other local authorities turning to Southwark for guidance on their SEND services. Our Youth Offending Service (YOS) is now a national exemplar, and was praised by Ofsted and HM Inspectorate of Probations for carrying out essential work supporting young people. This Labour administration has protected funding for YOS and will continue to do so in the face of Conservative cuts.

2.  Council Assembly further notes:

a.  Even before the pandemic, children and young people have been stunted and pulled down by 11 years of Conservative austerity. We recognise that cuts to council budgets, attacks on welfare and benefits, a national crisis in care, and the London housing crisis have all impacted on young people in the Southwark.

b.  According to the YMCA over 760 youth centres have closed since the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010, widely condemned by experts as pushing young people into violence and exploitation. The list goes on; university tuition fees trebled, arts provision cut, Educational Maintenance Allowance scrapped. In this time, investigations where a young person is believed to be at risk of significant harm have more than doubled.

c.  Children and young people have lost over half a year of face to face learning, and this, combined with unequal access to home learning, has exacerbated existing attainment gaps. Worryingly, in June the government’s schools recovery chief, Sir Kevan Collins, resigned in disbelief over the lack of funding offered - £1.4bn against the £15bn recommended – to help children catch up.

d.  The growing mental health crisis for young people has been magnified by repeated lockdowns, whilst provision remains woefully inadequate. According to the charity Young Minds, 67% of young people believe that the pandemic will have a long-term negative effect on their mental health, whilst 40% said that their school had no school counsellor. Devastatingly, data from the Millenium Cohort Study has shown that 7% of children have attempted suicide by the age of 17.

e.  Covid-19 has wreaked havoc on the sectors where young people make up the bulk of employees, such as leisure, hospitality and tourism – according to a London School of Economics (LSE) study, if you are under 25 you are more than twice as likely to have lost your job than an older adult.

3.  Council assembly therefore calls on cabinet:

a.  To deliver the Youth New Deal at pace:

  i.  To put all young people at the heart of service design for young people.

  ii.  To make sure that the new Youth Parliament is inclusive and accessible with co-opted young members with care experience, experience of the youth justice system and school exclusion.

  iii.  To recommission its youth service programmes, (‘Positive futures for young people fund’) to reflect young people’s voices, by directly involving young people in the selection of providers with new programmes, to commence in April 2022.

  iv.  To build on the vision to support 100% of child and adolescent mental health need and the success of the council’s child and adolescent free mental health drop-in service by continuing to provide its outreach service to schools and including pop-up drop-in services throughout school holidays, in order to increase accessibility and profile of and young people’s mental health support.

  v.  To recession-proof youth opportunity and ensure that every school leaver has an education, training or employment opportunity, by delivering ongoing support for vulnerable young people into jobs and apprenticeships through programmes such as Southwark Works.

  vi.  To ensure that, aligned to the emerging digital hub, the Youth Opportunities Campaign will continue to promote job and training opportunities directly to young people and their guardians via a monthly bulletin. The £2m Southwark Pioneers Fund will also support young entrepreneurs to start and sustain their own businesses.

  vii.  Launch a new Sure Start for Teenagers to establish a new cross council and cross partnership initiative to support teenagers and their families where needed.

  viii.  To develop a new youth digital information hub and establish a new youth services portal/website as the cornerstone of the Youth New Deal. To ensure the rapid provision of comprehensive, up to date and accessible information about activities and services for young people and their families.

b.   To lobby the governmentto invest in young people’s futures by:

  i.  Putting forward a comprehensive schools plan that will allow our young people to catch up on their lost education, coupled with a funding package which means this can actually be delivered.

  ii.  Funding our schools in Southwark properly and finding a fairer funding formula that will allow our schools to stay open despite falling pupil admission numbers, so that smaller class sizes can help our young people catch up on lost learning.

  iii.  Ensuring there is good quality mental health support in every school and Higher Education facility, and follow the lead of the Labour-led Welsh Government which has legislated to make counselling support for pupils age 10 -18 mandatory.

  iv.  Address the administrative issues and technical difficulties which are stopping businesses and young people alike from benefitting from the Kickstart scheme.

  v.  Reinstating and ring-fencing youth services funding to 2010/11 real terms levels.