Issue - meetings

The Committee to consider the proposed restructure of Youth, Connexions and Participation services.(Report to follow)

Members of the Committee considered a report on the proposals for the restructure of the Council’s Youth, Connexions and Participation services. The context behind the recommendations and necessity for this report were the requirement for the local authority to make savings of over 84 million over the next 3 years. As part of this, the Children and Young People’s service were required to restructure the service to reduce spending by 14.1m whilst ensuring that it fulfilled its statutory duties and protected services to the borough’s most vulnerable children. The proposition was to reorganise the Council’s Youth Service, Connexions Service, and Children and Young People, Parent & Community Participation Service into a revised Youth, Participation and Community service to achieve required savings of £3,298,443 whilst keeping to the following responsibilities:

• Delivering statutory responsibilities for the Local Authority
• Prioritising provision for at risk vulnerable groups
• Meeting  the needs of the community and the aspirations of young people

It was noted that 105 staff were affected by the review which equated to 85.9 Full Time Equivalents. It involved the deletion of 44 vacant posts (30.9 Full Time Equivalent posts). The full employment position of the staff members included in the restructure was set out in section 5 of appendix 1. The Committee learned that the restructure had sought to achieve a balance between full and part time posts   as working in youth service involved flexibility and working outside normal working hours.

The key aim of the new service was to target children most at risk. This would be achieved through maximising frontline services so that through partnership with statutory and community organisations there was focus on working with young people and families which were known to the Council to have enhanced risk factors. A further priority of the new service would be community development and quality assurance  which would entail developing , agreeing and monitoring clear quality standards in conjunction with young people for services that were managed by the Council , commissioned, or those that  the Council signposted to in the voluntary, community  and third sector .  The Council would be seeking to develop relationships with these sectors to ensure that there was a shared understanding of the meaning of quality services across the borough. This would further include: addressing professional issues where required, training, staff development, ensuring safeguarding protocols were in place and that tracking systems,  which provided schools with and other agencies with data information on learning, and employment destinations of young people  were maintained to a high level. The third key priority was citizenship and involvement of young people and ensuring that they were routinely involved and engaged in decision making, shaping, and planning the service.  This would include working with children and young people through the Youth Council and CIC Council and ensuring that consultation on broader developments of the service included young people. In relation to the connection of this priority to the Voluntary Sector this would involve liaising with HAVCO to make sure that there were skilled  ...  view the full minutes text for item 139