Friday 5 October 2012

Bids & Bobs

Hi – the week has been dominated by a rush to finalise our £93,000 Armed Forces Community Covenant bid on behalf of nine uniformed organisations in Surrey, which collectively work with 30,000 young people in Surrey. There are a further 3,000 young people on waiting lists to join the Scouts and Guides particularly. The point of the bid is to increase the capacity of uniformed organisations in response to the evident demand, and to recruit and train more leaders, especially for the military cadets. I am aware of a similar collaboration in London that has received £millions of funding from the Government, but I think our effort is unique outside metropolitan areas. Fingers crossed.

We have also put in a small bid with our sister organisations in Sussex to our national body, NCVYS, for workforce development. This Surrey/Sussex bid will enable us to better map provision and market training offers in youth work, and in playwork for younger children (delivered by WSCYS). NCVYS have developed a new “Working with Young People” course in conjunction with the ABC Awarding body, which will be delivered locally by Lifetrain. Guildford FE College, who are also members of ours, are likely to be running a Level 2 (GCSE level)  course in Youth Work Practice fairly soon.  Meanwhile, I was contacted by a Youth Club this week who are struggling to recruit a (paid) part-time youth worker, so there is clearly a demand for youth workers. However, I suspect the point is that full-time professional youth work jobs are now very scarce and highly sought after, but perhaps fewer people are prepared to work in part-time jobs because of the anti-social hours and other limitations.

I helped to co-facilitate a one day workshop here with NCVYS about the Young Foundation’s work on Outcomes Framework for young people. The short version is that the life chances of young people do not depend on academic qualifications, but on their soft skills: relationships, communications, problem- solving etc etc..in other words the key relationships skills that youth workers try to imbue.

I have started work on the much-delayed Research Report, which I find really interesting, but hope that there is more than one reader! The point of it is to provide strategic advice to member organisations about the context in which we are all operating, and some of the trends and issues affecting young people. It will be a heavy read but packed with information, and deliberately contentious. It should be ready for Trustees on 23 October (just). All the references will be on the website once finished.

As regular readers know I am a Skeptic (sic-Greek) about commissioning…..West Coast mainline debacle??

Off to London on Saturday for last Father/Son lunch with youngest son before he marries in November, and to visit the Tate’s pre- raphaelite exhibition.

Have fun!

Mike 

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