Author: Tracy Bailey

YOUTH COMBINED AUTHORITY MEETING MINUTES

Friday 13th April 2018

On Friday 13 April YCA members met at Gorse Hill Studios, to take part in a fun and creative morning of drama, art and music.
Members split into 3 groups...
One created art work depicting their hopes for the future of the YCA. Another group devised a drama piece, symbolising the importance of listening to young people.
The third group wrote and performed a song about their aspirations as YCA members!

YOUTH COMBINED AUTHORITY MINUTES: April 2018

In the afternoon, after a tasty lunch, it was down to business with the YCA meeting.
Members fed back from the Health and Curriculum 4 Life Working Groups:
Health
Members explored health as a concept and talked about realistic and unrealistic targets and aspirations. They decided to focus primarily on mental health for the next year and broke that down into:
Stigma, challenging perceptions and raising awareness
Quality, making services young people friendly
Training for professionals and young people on supporting young people (i.e. Mental Health First Aid )
Spreading good services across Greater Manchester and addressing the postcode lottery

Curriculum 4 Life
Members discussed the key things they want to achieve:
Quality work experience
Opportunities to receive skills for life outside of school
C4L subjects earning young people UCAS points, AQA accreditation, etc
They asked: ‘How can we achieve it?’ and gathered the following ideas:
Host a work experience convention
Work with providers such as NCS (targeting their Skills Week), Duke of Edinburgh, and local and regional youth organisations
Get schools in each local authority to agree to pilot a C4L
Online careers and work experience portal

Attended by:
Oldham Youth Council
Tameside Council
Trafford Council
Wigan Council
42 Street
GM Fire & Rescue Service
Gorse Hill Studios
One Manchester
Water Adventure Centre
Xplode Magazine

YOUTH COMBINED AUTHORITY MINUTES: April 2018

Work Experience…

Chairs introduced Sophie Hope from the Work and Skills Team at the Combined Authority. Sophie discussed:
Working closely with around 170 employers and 77 schools/colleges — increasing all the time
Work experience conference in January with employers and 60 schools to show them the skills young people have
Working with employers to understand skills and experience they need and encourage quality work experience placements (not coffee making)
Students that have work experience are less likely to be NEET

Tom Kenning: ‘’There needs to be targets and worksheets to stop meaningless work experience’’

Jessica Consterdine: ‘Is it just for young people in their GCSE year? Is it just a day or day and a half?’’

Sophie Hope:
“This is the start, there is an ambition for every young person from Year 7 having the opportunity to work with employers by 2020.”

Received external requests to work with the YCA from:
1. Preventing Hateful Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion Commission
2. The People’s History Museum
1. Voted to hold an external meeting to look at:
how Prevent operates in Greater Manchester
addressing social exclusion
developing a community-led approach to challenging hateful radicalisation
2. Voted to get involved in:
developing a package of learning resources and immersive activities that focus on a significant event that took place 200 years ago - the Peterloo Massacre.

Life Readiness Questionnaire
David Ottiwell from the Research Team at the Combined Authority. His role is to ensure that policies are based on evidence. One of Greater Manchester's ambitions is to ensure all young people leave school ‘ready for life’. David is developing a measure to assess whether we are on track to achieve this.
Members took part in a table top discussion to help develop survey questions which will be asked of pupils from all over Greater Manchester. They were asked:
Are the questions clear and easy to answer?
Are they the right ones to assess ‘life-readiness’?
How young people can be encourage to compete the survey?
The final version of the survey will be brought back to the YCA in June.

Next Meeting dates:
Thursday 14th June
Thursday 12th July
Thursday 13th September
Thursday 11th October
Thursday 15th November
Thursday 13th December