Issue - meetings

The Board considered a report of the Strategic Director – Children and Young People outlining proposals to secure improved outcomes for young people through the future commissioning arrangements of Halton Youth Service.

It was noted that, in June 2002, the Executive Board had agreed that:

·        the principle of the Youth Service transferring to Greater Merseyside Connexions Partnership; and

·        that a first stage transfer would take place from September 2002 with staff seconded to the Connexions service. The second stage for transfer was to take place from April 2003.

In March 2003, the Board further approved the Partnership Agreement for the management of the Youth Service by Greater Merseyside Connexions Partnership. This had proven to be successful with the Youth Service now demonstrating improved performance against National Performance Indicators. However, the contracted period for the commissioning of the Youth Service ended on 31^st March 2009.

In 2006, the Government launched “Youth Matters”, a key policy directive which promoted a vision of integrated support structures and services for teenagers which promoted and sought to secure access to positive activities and high quality information, advice and guidance. This would be delivered within a framework of integrated and targeted youth support with local flexibility for service re-design.

As a consequence of youth matters, local authorities were responsible and accountable for Youth Policy in their area and were taking responsibility for integrated planning and commissioning of the full range of services for teenagers from universal activities through to more specialist and targeted support. This would, over time, enable universal and targeted services to work closely together to provide integrated support for young people and to improve outcomes for them.

In addition, Youth Matters also made it clear that the support and guidance services provided by Connexions should now “go local” so that they could be more fully included and integrated with a whole range of services for young people and their parents and carers. It was intended that the “localisation” of Connexions services would be achieved through the development of an integrated Youth Support strategy at the local level, which would enable a greater coherence of service to young people and their parents/carers and provide greater efficiency in the way services were procured and delivered locally.

The guidance contained in Youth Matters had subsequently been confirmed in legislation through the Education and Inspections Act 2007 and would be further embedded in the forthcoming Education and Skills Act.

More recently, the publication of PSA Delivery agreements and, in particular, PSA 14 focused upon the objective to “increase the number of children and young people on the path to success”. Mechanisms for securing progress against the objectives contained in PSA14 included delivery of high quality opportunities and activities for young people to secure their engagement in positive activities and to include diversionary activities to prevent them engaging in “at risk” or anti-social behaviours in the community. Traditionally, this had been delivered through youth clubs but additionally was increasingly now being secured through more creative routes.

In  ...  view the full minutes text for item 84