"Surrey Youth Focus are exceptional"

So said the CEO of our national body, NCVYS after a presentation (see our website) that I gave at NCVYS in London on Tuesday. The workshop included a presentation from the Cabinet Office about the Minister's (Nick Hurd's)  priorities for youth policy up to the General Election in May 2015, namely:

• supporting innovation by local authorities ie the offloading of internal services into Mutuals, Social enterprises and Local Authority Trading Companies  hence my comment about the blurring of the distinctions between the public/private/charity sector.
• youth social action (Ready to Serve, NCS, DoE etc 
• encouraging Whitehall Departments to listen to the voice of young people
• helping statutory youth services develop the evidence for justifying youth services - the s.507B responsibility for the technically minded

Part of being exceptional is that we are constantly innovative and I was really pleased to have a pre-meeting with our CommUniLAB project manager this morning together with one of our Trustees to begin planning the project. This will be a game-changing success for SYF.

Another innovation is setting up our second social enterprise to take over the management of Woking Youth Arts centre. There is a huge amount of time driven work to get this sorted for us to take over the property from 1April...we need cleaning/building maintenance contractor , change the locks, sort entry codes etc. I had an encouraging meeting with Surrey CC's Cabinet Member, and Associate Cabinet member together with the County Councillor for Knaphill. They wanted to be re-assured about our plans for the WYAC and in particular that we would not be disadvantaging Peer Productions. I was able to share the very positive plans we have for marketing more activities in the building.

Met with YES+ on Wednesday to plan the delivery of a 2 day workshop delivered by them to youth workers from the Youth Consortium about the early identification of indicators that might lead to ant-social or criminal behaviour. Project funded by the Police and Crime Commissioner.

We're hoping to pitch the intelligent CCTV software to Surrey Police on behalf of our first social enterprise, but understandably Surrey Police are pre-occupied with flooding issues at the moment.

Just been asked this morning to take on a funded project to engage with young people about health issues...more work..more income..exceptional!

Mike