Collaboration

Collaboration has been a bit of a theme this week, having been to the launch of Surrey CC’s new Homelessness service for young people on Tuesday.  The launch was held at High Ashurst on the top of Box Hill - a very fine new building that sits well in the countryside up there.

This is a superb initiative which locates responsibility for homeless young people with SCC’s Youth Support Service and is based on a collaboration between the County Council, district councils and housing providers. Readers will recall that homelessness was one of the major issues referred to in the “Young Surrey – strategic review 2012/13” on our website (under News).

On Monday I had met with Surrey CAB Consortium about collaborating over a grant bid , and on Wednesday was in London for the AGM of our national body NCVYS who were sharing the occasion with two other organisations - LEAP and UK Youth who held their AGMs separately, but simultaneously. Great panel speeches, notably by Dame Julia Cleverdon (ex BitC) and inspirational talk by Tanni Grey-Thompson, paralympian. Good networking including with Oftsted’s HMI Inspector for Youth Services, who I know.  NCVYS have negotiated a special relationship with an insurance company Unity Uk with whom we willl be partnering locally to give good insurance rates to our Members. I find such events useful for discerning trends, and am pleased that we are on track and ahead of trends, particularly in building links to business. NCVYS have invited us to write a short piece about achievements to go off to the DfE…..

Various funding proposals are coming to a head over the next couple of weeks so we will have to wait patiently (not my strongest suit).

Meanwhile, The Challenge Network (Members – delivering National Citizenship Scheme) have undertaken to find young people to organise the Celebration of Youth…the long awaited social enterprise is being registered….we’ve put a proposal to Guildford FE College to link to their students as a virtual reference group, and for them to put forward a student for our Board of Directors.

We’ve got the flyer ready to launch the Surrey Youth Enterprise “how to" workshop for young people on self-employment - 24 January…and so on – a very positive week!!

I am not even commenting on the rugby this time (against the All Blacks). Question is - are England learning/improving? I think the answer is yes. Advent Sunday..says something about Christmas coming up!

Mike