Safeguarding young people in Surrey

Safeguarding has been popping up in my diary and conversations quite a lot of late.

I have been invited to represent the youth third sector on the Surrey Children's Safeguarding Board. Over time, I believe that my attendance at these meetings could make a difference to young people in Surrey - I know of a number of stories about how third sector organisations, particularly small voluntary ones, are not managing to exchange the information that they need with statutory bodies in order to provide the highest possible level of safeguarding. An example of this is that voluntary organisations need to know if there are any restraining orders on a young person turning up at a youth club if the victim might also be there. I hope that through attending the safeguarding board, and other initiatives, we can bring the statutory and voluntary sectors closer together on Safeguarding.

If you have any thoughts on safeguarding young people in Surrey let me know:

·         What is concerning young people about their safety?

·         Are you a third sector organisation that has concerns around safeguarding?

·         Perhaps you work for a statutory body and have ideas for change about your relationship with the third sector? 

      Feel free to reply to this blog or email me. 

Surrey Young Superstars

Yesterday we celebrated some wonderful young people in Surrey at the Surrey Young Superstars Awards run in partnership with Haslemere Travel at the Radisson Blu in Guildford. Many of you will know that we have run our Celebration of Youth event for a number of years. This year, rather than have two separate events in the county, we chose to work with Haslemere Travel to celebrate the achievements of young people, under their brand – Surrey Young Superstars. Thanks to Savills Guildford who kindly sponsored the event.

The awards were presented by sailor Tracy Edwards MBE, well known for leading the first all-female crew in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race and becoming the first woman to receive the Yachtsman of the Year Trophy. Tracy told her story, which is a wonderful example of why we should never give up on even the most troublesome young people... at 15 she was expelled from school and only found sailing when backpacking around Europe age 16. Thanks to Tracy for sharing her story and for presenting the awards.

Here are some snippets about the inspiring young people…

Aged only 12 Josh Bryan swam 22 miles in his local swimming pool – equivalent to swimming the Channel - raising more than £750 for Shooting Star Chase, but he didn’t stop there…he subsequently climbed the 541ft of Broadgate Tower in the city of London to raise a further £500. Josh was awarded Individual Fundraising Superstar (age 5-12).

• Luke Kitterman was inspired to raise funds when a close friend was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. Luke raised over £1000 with his friends Callum Brown and Zack Fuller by running the NUTS Challenge, a 7km obstacle course that is used by the Army for training.  Luke was awarded Individual Fundraising Superstar (age 13-19).

• 14 year old Ronnie Barley won Caring Superstar and also the overall 2015 Superstar winner. Ronnie is the sole carer for his mother, who lives with a debilitating long-term illness. He supports his mother emotionally, physically and practically on a daily basis – cleaning, washing, feeding the pets, and ensuring his mother takes her medication.

• Despite undergoing several major surgeries throughout her childhood, Bella Symons has always been determined to come back to school each time and carry on with her studies. A valued member of the Combined Cadet Force, in addition she coaches a football team for disabled children in her own spare time, where she makes a real, positive difference to the children on the team. Bella was awarded Courageous Superstar.

• Sing-along concerts help build a rapport between the students at Royal Holloway College and over one hundred people in several nursing homes. Samuel Wong has expanded the Singalong group from just 4 to more than 200 members. He has led a group to increase volunteering amongst students and done other voluntary roles including supporting public consultations and promoting social harmony with the Surrey Police Independent Advisory Group. Samuel was awarded the Volunteering Superstar.

• Surrey Heath Youth Council was awarded the Group Volunteering Superstar – it has been involved in all sorts of projects, including consulting and raising money to improve a local skate park, a litter pick up service, health service and bus service surveys and giving young people’s views on local development in Camberley. They also ran an anti-bullying conference and trained 100 young people from the Borough’s five main schools to become anti-bullying ambassadors, to support victims and help reduce bullying.

• Epsom and Ewell PHAB, a youth club which integrates both able-bodied and children with disabilities wrote, produced and performed a musical called “We predict a riot” at the Epsom Playhouse. The team ran the event on a tight budget - organizing auditions, running extensive rehearsals at weekends, ordering costumes, booking the theatre, arranging publicity and, of course, selling tickets. Over 45 youngsters took part aged 8-18, either as performers or stage crew, helped by a team of 20 volunteers. They were awarded Enterprise Superstar.

We are grateful, as ever, for the wonderful support that we received from our patrons and other dignitaries in Surrey. Attendees included the Lord-Lieutenant, the High Sheriff, the chairman of Surrey County Council, the Mayor of Haslemere, the Deputy Mayor of Guildford, the Detective Chief Superintendent and 18 member organisations of Surrey Youth Focus. Checkout our website for pictures. 

Timebanks, Community & Sharing

I have had a pretty busy couple of weeks. Here are a few items that I would like to highlight.

Surrey County Council is running a project to get Time Banks set up across Surrey. Timebanks are a way of getting people to offer and receive skills in their communities. They often appeal to a different people in society to those who do traditional volunteering.  

“Within our communities we have a wealth of skills, interests and experience that we can share with each other. Timebanking is all about giving and receiving.  It works by people offering to share a skill, interest, experience or some practical support with other time bank members.  In return they can receive something they want from the time bank.”

If you want to know more, you can attend an information session in Guildford on 27^th May. Otherwise contact Liz Tracey.

We presented Communilab to our Community Champions, Penningtons Manches solicitors, who were, as ever, very supportive and helpful. They took a good look at the system and came up with ideas as to how they can use it to help young people in Surrey.

In common with many of you I was saddened to hear about the devastation of Clandon Park in a fire this week. I was there just a week ago, enjoying the magnificent surroundings during the GASP ten year anniversary reception. It was an inspirational event, celebrating how young people's lives can be turned around and enhanced by practical projects working in conjunction with mainstream education. As you may have picked up by now, I strongly believe in the power of partnerships between charity/voluntary groups and businesses. Appropriate partnerships can do a lot more for a charity’s cause than just a monetary exchange. The support of McLaren has helped GASP on a number of levels. What better motivator for young people interested in mechanics than to have their awards event at McLaren? Also, the use of McLaren’s name has eased open other doors for GASP. Here’s to  GASPs next ten years…

(A little personal aside - it was particularly poignant for me when Sally Varah, GASP’s hardworking, inspirational chair, asked us to remember what we were doing 10 years ago. I can remember in some detail my two months visiting the neonatal unit in hospital every day where my tiny premature son spent the first couple of months of his life. He is ten years old this month and is healthy, happy normal boy.)

All Saints - no 2 on Trip Advisor

I was delighted to hear that All Saints Cafe are now ranked 2 out of 46 for food & drink locations in Leatherhead on Trip Advisor. In case you haven’t heard of them, All Saints Café has been born out of the Leatherhead Youth Project and its' aim is to nurture young people who need some help into employment. This demonstrates several different building blocks that a charity needs to get right if moving into trading…making a significant difference to the charity’s beneficiaries…delighting the customer AND getting them to tell people about it…enabling the word to get out through social media, etc. 

All Saints had great help from corporate partners on opening its' cafe. On that subject there has been much in the media about Cameron's pledge to get public sector and large companies to pay employees to do 3 days voluntary work a year. I was surprised to hear that this was backed by an unlikely source - the CBI. Also the Institute of Personnel and Development have issued a report that says 39% of large organisations already offer paid time for their employees to take part in volunteering opportunities, with an additional 23% offering unpaid time, not bad! 

Think of all these people - with their networks, skills and experience -  what a huge difference they could make towards solving some of the issues that charities are trying to solve. The challenge is to make great use of the time they have available. It’s easy getting people to paint fences. It’s a lot harder (but a lot more beneficial) to get them collaborating to solve issues.

I was told about this organisation today – City Camp Brighton – “a local network of people and events working to accelerate social innovation projects within the City, through providing support, funding and resource.”

This is the nearest thing that I have found to what we are aspiring to be with Communilab - groups of people from a variety of backgrounds/organisations collaborating towards shared goals. In their case it is to accelerate social innovation projects in Brighton, in ours it is to significantly improve the lives of young people in Surrey.

International Collaboration

I beg your indulgence this week to talk about an idea that I had over the weekend that I would love to give away to someone who would like to run with it. Whilst obviously the main focus of my role is here in Surrey, I do sometimes wonder about the wider world and how we ensure peace for generations to come…. as I am sure many of you do.

On Friday we took the kids to the IMAX cinema in London to see an inspiring film about the launch of the International Space Station in the early 2000s. What struck me, apart from the amazing technical feats, was the wonderful collaboration between a large number of nations particularly Russia and America. The Russian missions to the international space station had American commanders and the American space shuttle missions had Russian commanders. The multinational teams of three work together for 3-4 years before going into space, getting to know each other extremely well.

This got me thinking more about how we can promote and celebrate this sort of international collaboration, especially those between people whose nations have a difficult relationship. I came up with the idea of an International Celebration of Collaboration where multinational groups of people from the world of science, sport, music, faiths and humanism, etc come together to celebrate the projects they have done together.  Other groups who want to start international collaboration could come along to learn and be inspired. So, if you know anybody who might like to get this underway… feel free to give them the idea. 

I only ask for an invite J

Early adopters

Like many people these days my career has taken a far from straight path. My first degree was in Electronic Engineering at Imperial College and I spent the first 10 years of my career in IT related roles. I gradually moved away from this as I found that people and organisations interested me more than technology. However I continue to maintain my interest in technology and how it can serve people. That is not to say that I am always an early adopter, sometimes I cling onto the old... my IT manager husband and I resisted a satnav for years preferring to navigate for each other (without marital arguments, I might add). 

I came across a great example this week of a piece of technology that I would happily be an early adopter for. 

The Connection, a London-based homelessness charity has launched an app that uses geolocation technology to let people tell them that a person is sleeping rough by making a donation. The Donate Locate app is available on Apple devices and enables people to donate £1, £3, or £5 to The Connection at St Martin's when they see someone sleeping rough and want to help. It will also record the location that they were at when then made the donation so that the charity’s outreach team can assist the person in need. Click here to read more

If you come across examples innovative uses of technology like this that you think could be applied to young people living in Surrey do let me know. Even better post it on Communilab, our Community forum for all to see. 

Communilab is still in "beta" phase, but we are gradually increasing the number of people who can log in and post content. If you are keen to be an early adopter, we would love to hear from you. If you don't have a login and want one drop me a line.

Young people's voices in design of services

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we were looking to develop a programme around the “Voice of Youth.”

Last week I had another good meeting with a statutory body want to hear the concerns of young people to ensure that they are being addressed appropriately. It is widely known that this generation of young people are less interested in party politics than previous generations. What perhaps is less well-known is that they are more engaged in society and societal issues than their parents’ generation.

Meanwhile, it feels to me like there is the will amongst lots of people within the statutory sector to get young people's voices listened to as part of the process of designing services. We are approached about once a month by statutory bodies and other organisations wanting to have young people’s opinions.  

Some may be tokenistic but I believe many are genuine.  However there is often a mismatch between the ways in which young people want to talk and the ways in which statutory bodies want to hear. The traditional focus groups and surveys that have worked in the past will not necessarily appeal to the current multimedia, socially networked generation who have more choices of how to spend their time than ever before. One of the important aspects in all of this is making sure that young people are given some feedback after they’ve give their voice, so that they know what has happened as a result.

This project is taking us a while to develop, rightfully so. I feel like I am on a treasure hunt, gradually gathering together clues on how we can make this happen in partnership with others. We are wondering about whether to create an interactive play or road show type event that can be taken to different youth settings in the county on, say, an annual basis, to collect young people’s opinions. The events would collect information on behalf of a variety of statutory bodies and other organisations. One of the criteria for the design of the events would be basing it on rigorous research methodologies, not just collecting a few sound bites. If you have heard of a similar thing elsewhere, do let me know.

Cheers,

Cate.