Torfaen Youth Forum

Minutes of the meeting held at

County hall, committee room 5,

6:00-8:30

Present

Eddie, Kierran, Rob, Shane, James, Seren, Abi-Louis, Luke, Naomi, Sarah, Lucy, Claude, Dwayne, Dan, Katie, Ryan, Jade, Dermot McChrystal, Mick Pearson, Lynda, Rebecca, Nic, Katy Wicks,

Apologies

Mike DeVal, Sarah Campbell, Matt

1

Minutes of last meeting

2

Energiser by Katy Wicks

The minute were in order and all was fine.

The energiser consisted of the forum getting into order of, age, name, and house number, once in these orders they had to get into pairs with the person next to them and they had to find out from each other the answer to a few questions, i.e. what was their worst nightmare, what did they have for breakfast 2 days ago and what are their main ambitions?

Dermot Mc Crystal's contact details

01633 648132

Dermot.mccrystal@torfaen.gov.uk

3

Question time with Dermot Mc Crystal

1. Why do certain subjects have a smaller budget than others?

   answer: depends on the head teacher and governing body, the older you are the more money the school gets to spend on you, also that some schools may specialise on one subject because more young people want to do that course rather than another course, Maths, English and Science are core subjects and are mandatory so this is why they get more funding that other subjects such as humanities.

2. Why is healthy food more expensive than the less healthy food?

   answer: the welsh assembly government (WAG) say that healthy food is organic food, organic food is more expensive, and less healthy food is cheaper, healthy food involves more preparation, which means more work, but the upside is that more funding is being put into healthy foods in schools and all school canteen staff are being trained in food preparation.

3. Why are English School better off than Welsh schools?

   answer: YGG has roughly 1/4 young people from Torfaen who attend it, the rest are from further away from the area, so they don't necessarily have the access to funding that is required because of the fact that there is a minimal amount of young people who attend the school who are actually from the borough itself.

   3b schools in England receive better and more funding because of the fact that they have a higher amount of funding available from Westminster.

   Torfaen has the highest risk rates in Wales and also has the lowest funded education, could the two be related?

4. Is there a Special Budget for schools to accommodate those with disabilities?

   answer: yes, depending on the addition learning need/special educational need, the higher the need the higher the funding.

5. What is the policy on teachers bullying Students?

   answer: bullying or a child or young person by an adult is classed as abuse, if abuse is suspected the person who is accused is to be classed as a risk to children and young people, they will then be referred to social services, a meeting is then called to see if this is a one off offence or whether it was a deliberate intent to hurt.

6. What are the rules around catchment areas and who decides them?

   answer: the local authority sets the catchment areas, but to counteract this Margret Thatcher brought in parental choice, but the down side is that every school has a maximum number of pupils that hey have to accept into the school each year.

   For information on bus passes talk to a man called Steve Hill you should be able to find his number on the Torfaen website, www.torfaen.gov.uk

7. Why do young people get suspended from school because of their hair styles?

answer: every school has a dress code, when you start going to the school you are accepting this dress code and in doing so you are agreeing to abide by it, since September there has been 1-2 fair exclusions from school, but exclusion is not always effective as some young people see this as a reward, because its free time from school, they get to play on their computers etc, on average there are 150 young people in Torfaen who have been excluded from school for just a couple of days and they seem to be repeat offenders.

Over the next 6-12 months youth access and the learning zone will be drastically changing and they will be put into one main building that is yet to be decided and disclosed.

4

Youth inspectors Katie Winter

Katie, Ryan and Grant are all going on a weekend to train young people to become youth inspectors and they are asking if they can use TYPF (Torfaen young people's forum) as a pilot they want to assess the forum and see where it works and where it doesn't work this assessment will be informal and unofficial.

5

Hayley Kettle youth panel

Just an update and to clarify to the forum what the youth panel will be doing over the next 12 months, youth projects will come to the panel and ask them for a maximum of £500 for their project, the panel will then decide if they are eligible for this funding.

The panel arranged to meet on Thursday 15^th May in the TVA offices.

6

CYPP Children and Young People's Partnership

Seren wasn't at the last CYPP meeting so she couldn't feed back on it, but we did discuss the possibility of electing another young person to attend the meetings to back up Seren, if you wish to be this person please come up with a few words and bring them to the next meeting.

7

Katy's update

Single plan workshops are finished, this was the workshop we all did in Brynteg hall, the feedback from the workshops has gone back to the important people of the council.

Julia's Cover, will come in post on the 1^st may her name is Lisa Tuckwell, James, Eddie and Ryan to be the welcoming committee for Lisa, they are to tell her about the forum and what we have done over the past two – three years.

Mick added that at all the meetings he has been at that they have all said that Katy has been doing a cracking job.

CCW Children's commissioner for Wales advisory team, we all decided that Abi-Louis should have the place as she was the only one who wrote a speech.

8

Issues Sub Group

The subgroup fed back all that they had done on the Monday before, we all discussed the issues that young people of Torfaen came up with on the 25^th march, the main issues that we discussed were on:

The environment

The leisure facilities

The transport in Torfaen

9

Funky Dragon

The main issues and workshops that FD are working on are:

More Welsh Language

Votes @ 16

The majority of the ministers at the Welsh Assembly Government have agreed to voting age to be 16, out of the 48 that voted 46 said yes, 1 abstained and 1 said no.

There were no issues from the forum to be taken to the next FD meeting.

10

Mick

Asked to bring an issue to us, so we allowed him to speak.

Mick said that the WAG are giving the youth service £111,000 to revamp some youth centres so they are going to do up the door way in Blaenavon, Ashley house and CCYP in Cwmbran, CCYP will only be getting a new boiler.

Young people from Abersychan stated that the doorway gets more stuff than they get.

Senior Member Training 10-11 may names of people who want to do it are:

Eddie, Claude, Abi-Louis, Naomi, Bob/Kierran and James

11

AOB

Katy read out an email she received from someone called Julia Rice,

She is from performance and research. More adults and professionals for us to tell how to work with us.

Jan Bruton was asking for some young people to attend the IYPSG (involving children and young peoples steering group) meetings, Eddie and Sarah have put their names forward for it