Agenda item

To receive a report from Councillor Portia Mwangangye, Cabinet Member for Leisure, Parks and Young People and Toni Ainge, Director of Leisure and Eva Gomez, Head of Culture on Youth Services and Positive Futures for Young People Fund. (Report to follow)

The commission then received a report from Councillor Portia Mwangangye, Cabinet Member for Leisure, Parks and Young People and Toni Ainge, Director of Leisure, Eva Gomez, Head of Culture and Justine Wilson-Darke, Youth and Play Service Manager on Youth Services and Positive Futures for Young People Fund (PFYPF) covering the following topics

• In-house youth service and commissioned youth service; Youth Centres and Adventure playgrounds (In-house services); Damilola Taylor Centre (DTC) and Kennel playground offer youth programmes
• Youth commissioned service get PFYPF of £1.2m which is given to VCS every two years for sport and culture programmes; Youth Parliament – representative branch of young people who get decision making powers on PFYPF allocation, influencing planning policy and safer Southwark aspects that affect young people
• One-hub website is a conduit for parents to find out what is going with the youth organisations; Youth in-house services being developed to support the upcoming cohort of young people; £500k from the governments youth transformation programme allocated to voluntary youth organisations.
• Southwark Youth Parliament and Young Advisors link to young people to be expanded to include youth interested in getting involved in community programmes.
• Exploring engagement with young people in parks, podcast centres and sports centres like the Burgess Sports Centre which is quite popular.
• Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) path finder programme funding £0.5m to be invested by August 2026; Small Grants fund given directly going to young people who want to get into football and can’t afford boots, kits etc.; young girls who want to get into fashion or beauty.
• New state of the art equipment, fresh turf for football pitches at DTC; New music production space at the new ventures’ youth centre; Capital investment in adventure playgrounds like Ellen Brown.
• Ring fenced funding from positive futures fund for young people who are neurodivergent and have SEND needs.

The commission then asked questions on the following themes

·  Supporting families of children having neurodivergent needs and the need for quiet spaces and better training for staff

·  Consultation in the report indicate that 33% of youth are not aware of the youth clubs; New funding £0.5m and hurdles in delivering within the timeframe of August 2026

The commission heard from Toni that the council is exploring ways in which playgrounds and parks can be all inclusive and some parks are being considered in having more capital investment for SEND disability needs.

Justine informed the commission that the council is working with a couple of organisations on training staff like Diversity Family Hub and Southwark Resource Centre team.  The staff working is these areas have an annual training plan. There are some challenges with spaces in council buildings which are one-room facilities and not appropriate for quite spaces. In addition, resources and child to staff ratio is also a challenge.

Councillor Mwangangye explained to the commission that there is work being done with children services and through the Youth Transformation Programme to identify areas that have SEND children to make it easier to access Youth Clubs, Playgrounds and open spaces.

The commission was informed by Eva that through the DCMS funding, the council is developing social media channels through which they can reach more young people. The team is also working on engaging with young people in-person at school breaks to spread awareness on facilities, adult presence, youth workers being present at these youth centres.

The commission heard from Toni that the council team had to lobby the central government extensively to be granted DCMS funding and has achieved that. However, DCMS funding come with strict rules on where the funding could be used, although the funding can’t be directly used in youth centres, it can be used for back-end work which will provide a firm base on which more can be delivered for youth services.

Eva explained to the commission that the DCMS funding will be useful in setting up a young people framework, hiring young researchers and direct involvement of young people in delivering youth projects. Furthermore, working with the local youth VCS sector in delivering challenging aspects in youth services.