Agenda item

The Panel considered a report on Haringey’s Youth Strategy 2025-2030, which sought their views on the launch of the strategy and the associated plan for implementation. The report was introduced by Jackie Difolco, Director: Early Help and Prevention as set out in the agenda pack at pages 7 – 62. The Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and families was present for this agenda item, along with the Director for Children’s Services.  As part of the introduction to Youth Strategy, Natasha Williams, Youth Voice and Participation Coordinator introduced a number of young people who supported the development of the Youth Strategy. The Young People spoke to the Panel about their experiences of engaging with their peers on the strategy. The young people were introduced to the Panel: Maximilian Malcom Gray; Jeremiah Kofi Boahene-Boakye; Selina Ait Mokhtar; and Yasin Dogar.  The following was noted in summary of their comments:

• Jeremiah commented that there was a lot of young people in the borough who had unique talents, including in the arts. In areas such as: music, drama, dance, theatre, fashion. It was important, therefore, that young people were encouraged to find their talents, particularly as these could often be overlooked without a forum for expressing them. It was suggested that the London Borough of Culture was a way for people to come together and for them to develop their talents in a safe space. It was suggested that young people thought differently to adults and that finding further opportunities for the Council to engage with the voice of children was encouraged.
• Max emphasised the importance of education and tutoring support, through programmes such as Get your Grades. Max commented that these services were not evenly located across the borough and that accessing the Rising Green youth centre was a 30-40 minute journey each way from the west of the borough. It was suggested that there should be an expansion of the Get Your Grades up programme across the borough, in order that they influence more people. Max commented that a lack of youth provision could be a causal factor in young people becoming involved in crime. Max recounted his recent experience of being mugged at knifepoint and suggested that a number of his peer group has experienced something similar. In relation to Recommendation 6, the number of youth services in Haringey, at 110, was welcomed. It was commented that the number of people attending Rising Green was around 90 but that there were around 1075 pupils attending Fortismere alone. It was suggested that more needed to be done to publicise these services, especially through social media.
• Yasin commented that in relation to Recommendation 6 on engagement, Haringey had done some good work like Rising Green, but it was commented that this tended to happen in smaller groups. Haringey should be finding ways to spread awareness. The need to build relationships was highlighted as a key factor going forward. Yasin also suggested that Haringey needed to find ways to empower young people, including through more co-production and giving young people leading roles in the development of youth services.
• Selina praised the youth participation work in Haringey and commented that being involved in it had a positive impact on her confidence. It was commented that there was a lack of activities in the Bounds Green area for SEND individuals. It was also suggested that there needed to be more training and education on neuro diversity for both young people and adults in the borough. The positive impact of having young people in a room with people who made decisions in Haringey was emphasised and further opportunities to develop co-production with young people were encouraged.
• The Chair thanked the young people for coming along and speaking to the panel about their personal experiences.

The following arose during the discussion of this item:

1. The Panel queried whether there was any benchmarking undertaken in this area against other boroughs, for instance in relation to the self-assessment forms. Officers responded that the National Youth Agency were collecting data and were planning to publish this, but at the minute there was only six-months data available. It was commented that there was no pan-London forum for youth services, but that the service did interact with other boroughs on good practice and possible areas of joint delivery.
2. In light of the challenging funding environment faced by the VCS sector, the Panel enquired what capacity building work was being done to support the VCS. In response, officers acknowledged that the VCS sector was generally in a difficult budgetary position. The Council were able to offer buildings to VCS partners at a low cost in return for delivering services. Officers also set out that there was small grants locality fund, of up to £3k for application, to enable some capacity building for smaller organisations. It was also noted that there was a Haringey capacity building network in place with VCS providers, which looked at joint delivery and supporting joint funding applications.
3. The Panel noted that 40% of services were free to access, it was queried whether there was any further information about the cost of the rest of the services and whether they were a nominal fee. In response, officers advised that the costs varied from nominal contributions to £15 per hour for some sporting activities. It was also commented that in relation to sporting activities there were also costs for young people in some cases with buying the relevant sporting equipment.
4. The Panel questioned the extent to which promoting services to residents was hampered by concerns that they may be overrun. In response, officers commented that it was more do with not understanding how to properly utilise social media.  The Cabinet Member used the example of the Summer Programme and, in particular, the £1 Swim offer for school children during the summer holidays at either Park Lane or Tottenham Green. It was suggested that there was a need to target better communications activity to advertise these services.
5. The Panel questioned to what extent the service involved the voice of young people in commissioning. In response, officers advised that the service spoke to its young people often, they undertook surveys and they used case studies to learn good practice. The holiday activity fun programme was highlighted by way of an example. This was a £900k programme and the service made sure it was learning from outcomes all the time.
6. A co-opted member of the Panel welcomed the contribution of the young people to the discussion and the fact that they had brought the voice and experiences of young people. It was commented that communicating with young people in a way that was accessible was crucial, especially given the prevalence of social media in 2025. It was queried what could be done to improve the service’s social media communications. In response, officers reiterated that there was a gap and that they were keen to understand how to improve. Officers agreed to take forward the Cabinet Member’s earlier suggestion about creating a small working group with young people to look at how improvements could be made in communications.
7. In response to a query about location of services, officers acknowledged that around 50% were located in the east and 15% in the west. Officers commented that they were looking to develop a local Haringey youth network in order to ensure a consistent model of delivery across the borough. Officers commented that location of services and improving communications were two key objectives under the five-year strategy.
8. The Cabinet Member stated that she would set up a meeting with Natasha and members of the youth council to discuss some of the points raised during the meeting, as well as discussing how libraries could be made more relevant spaces. (Action: Natasha Williams).
9. The Corporate Director advised that she would pick up the robbery incident outside of the meeting and speak to the police and the youth justice board to see what could be done to improve safety in that location.
10. In relation to the concentration of services, the Chair queried whether there was any more detail about the services in terms of how many hours a week they were open, as this would be illustrative in understanding the level of disproportionality. In response, officers commented that there was a hyperlink in the document that brought up a map showing the location of each of the projects and the opening hours. The Director of Early Help, Prevention and SEND agreed to circulate a more accessible version of the map and the directory to the Panel. (Action Jackie Difolco).
11. The Panel commented that it would be good to see highlights of what was happening in the borough for young people on social media. In response, officers acknowledged the comments that had been made on social media as part of this item and noted that they would be setting up a task and finish group with colleagues in the communications team.

RESOLVED

1. That members of the Panel noted the contents of this report and directed any comments or observations to the Director for Early Help, Prevention and SEND.

2. That the Panel agreed to receiving an annual progress report on the Haringey Youth Strategy.