Agenda item

To consider a report by the Lead Officer: Young People, Safeguarding and Workforce Development (copy attached) on progress regarding the mapping and profiling of community groups, the emerging themes and next steps.

                                                                                 10.55 am – 11.30 am

A report by the Lead Officer: Young People, Safeguarding and Workforce Development (YPSWD), which provided an update on the mapping and profiling of community groups and emerging key themes, had been circulated with the papers for the meeting.

The Lead Member for Community Development introduced the report and outlined the themes emerging from the mapping work.  The Interim Head of Communication and Leisure and the Lead Officer:  Young People, Safeguarding and Workforce Development advised that of the approximately 1000 community groups that exist in Denbighshire around 300 had been profiled to date. 

The profiling work would assist the Council to plan for children and young people’s needs in future, particular out of school activities.  The next steps in the project had been detailed within the report.  Responding to Members’ questions and concerns, officers advised that:-

·                 The profiling work in each locality included organisations/groups’ equality and diversity, which covered all types of disabilities be they physical or learning disabilities.  The Service was also working closely with the Social Services Department on issues such as inclusion, holiday schemes and about whether the Disability Toolkit could be applied to the Youth Service’s broader work;

·                 Whilst some initial themes were emerging at this stage, particularly in relation to accessibility for disabled individuals to community groups, with only circa 30% of the profiling work completed it was anticipated that once the profiling was in the region of 80% complete some firm conclusions could be drawn on the number of groups accessible to the disabled.  At this point it was envisaged that the voluntary sector could be asked to help support this area in future;

·                 Confirmed that the mapping process should be more or less completed by the end of the current financial year;

·                 With a view to encouraging young people to engage with community/activity groups, and with different age groups, the establishment of a ‘virtual youth service’ was being proposed, as a means of information sharing and communicating information about the diverse groups available in the County;

·                 They were aware of a shortage of age 12 to 25 specific provision in the Prestatyn area.  However, further work was required to determine whether young people in this age group were engaging with other broader age-range community groups in that area, and whether they were involved in more than one of these groups.  The Children and Young People’s Partnership had recently highlighted low level mental health issues within this specific age group;

·                 Confirmed that they were working closely with Menter Iaith and Yr Urdd with a view to growing the availability of social settings where pupils could use the Welsh Language outside of a formal educational setting.  The County’s own Youth Clubs were encouraging the use of Welsh in their sessions and the Welsh in Education Strategic Group (WESG) were also looking at potential opportunities for doing this.  The Lead Member advised that he had recently contacted the Welsh Language Commissioner with respect of this matter

The Lead Officer agreed to promote the need for all groups to be as inclusive as possible and accessible to people with disabilities.  As the majority of the groups were community groups run by volunteers they would need to be persuaded and influenced to be inclusive to all.  Members felt that it was important that community based groups need to work closely together to complement each other and to ensure that no particular age group or element of the community felt disengaged or isolated.

Members congratulated the officers on their progress with the profiling work across the County, particularly with young offenders in rehabilitating them and turning them away from a life of crime.  This work would undoubtedly pay dividends in the future. 

Following further discussion, it was:-

RESOLVED – that subject to the above observations the Committee:-

(a)            receives the information provided; and

(b)      supports the continuation of the work to map and profile the community groups across the County.

Councillor M Ll Davies queried why Council documentation seemed recently to have reverted to using the English alphabet for sub-paragraphs and not the Welsh alphabet.  He thought that this contravened the Council’s Welsh Language Policy.  The Scrutiny Co-ordinator undertook to look into the matter and report back to the Committee in due course.