Report of the Strategic Director (Neighbourhoods) and the Head of Youth Strategy and Engagement

This report provides an overview of Manchester’s Youth and Play offer, which includes provision commissioned by the Council and the Youth and Play Fund which is distributed via Young Manchester.  It also highlights the offer which will be available across the city throughout the summer school holidays, which encompasses the offers from the wider partners and stakeholders, including the targeted Holiday Activities and Food programme (HAF).

The Committee received a report of the Strategic Director (Neighbourhoods) and the Head of Youth Strategy and Engagement which provided an overview of Manchester’s Youth and Play offer, which included provision commissioned by the Council and the Youth and Play Fund which was distributed via Young Manchester. It also highlighted the offer which would be available across the city throughout the summer school holidays, which encompassed the offers from the wider partners and stakeholders, including the targeted Holiday Activities and Food programme (HAF).

Officers referred to the main points and themes within the report, which included:

• Youth and Play Funding (Manchester City Council);
• Youth and Play Fund (Young Manchester);
• Summer provision; and
• Next steps.

Some of the key points and themes that arose from the Committee’s discussions were:

• To ask how the engagement data referred to in the report was collected;
• How the Youth and Play Fund was allocated and the geographic spread of organisations applying for and receiving funding;
• Young people not wanting to cross ward boundaries to access youth provision;
• What could be done to improve the engagement of young people with youth provision, particularly in wards where this was low;
• To request a breakdown of data for the four hubs, including the ward of residence of the young people accessing the provision; and
• That issues relating to youth provision should be brought to Ward Co-ordination meetings.

Alex Kennedy, Member of the Youth Parliament and Manchester Youth Council and Chair of Gorton Youth Forum, asked what was being done to ensure equality of accessibility to funding for grassroots youth projects compared to more established projects and to ensure an equal distribution of funding across different wards.

The Head of Youth Strategy and Engagement explained how Young Manchester funding was distributed across wards based on a needs analysis which ranked wards on factors such as deprivation, education levels and eligibility for Free School Meals.  She acknowledged that more needed to be done in relation to access to funding for grassroots providers and black-led organisations and advised that there was currently a consultation taking place with the sector on the future of commissioning for the Youth and Play Fund and that a report would coming to the Committee and the Executive on this.  She also informed Members that the Council had established Area Youth Leads who each had an allocation of funding for working with grassroots organisations, helping to get them into a position where they could apply for larger amounts of funding.

The Chair advised that the funding allocation should be more evenly spread across different areas of the city.  She highlighted that, when funding had recently been made available for capital projects in parks, it had been distributed evenly with £30k being allocated to each ward and she stated that this was a fairer approach.

The Head of Youth Strategy and Engagement advised that the engagement data referred to in the report was data returned to Young Manchester by the organisations that received funding from the Youth and Play Fund and she outlined how this was used, for example, identifying demographic groups who were less likely to be accessing youth provision and responding to this.  She highlighted that figures were lower than in previous years due to the COVID-19 restrictions that had been in place.  In response to the question on crossing ward boundaries, she reported that data was gathered from the hubs on where the young people accessing them came from and it showed that young people were travelling in to the bigger hubs, advising that it was important to ensure the transport links were good and that young people felt safe on that transport; however, she acknowledged that ongoing work was needed about making young people felt safe crossing boundaries and that it was also important to get the right providers in each area so that young people had access to the kind of provision that they wanted to attend.  She reported that the national guidelines were that young people should live within a 20-minute safe travel journey of youth provision and that in Manchester all young people lived within that time limit. 

The Executive Member for Children’s Services reported that more youth activities had been provided this summer than had taken place for a number of years and that Ward Councillors had been provided with details of both universal provision and provision in their ward funded through the Holiday Activities and Food programme.

The Ward Councillor for Miles Platting and Newton Heath expressed concern about the level of provision for young people in her ward and questioned whether youth provision was within a 20-minute safe travel journey for all young people.  She highlighted how travel issues were restricting the access of young people in her ward to youth activities in the city.  She questioned the accuracy of the data on which provision across different wards was based.  She advised that there was no high school within her ward and that many children in her ward attended a high school outside of Manchester City Council’s boundaries and, therefore, data on the number of these children who were eligible for Free School Meals had not been included in the analysis.  She also asked how Manchester children attending a non-Manchester school could find out about youth provision within the city.

The Chair stated that, while the Government did not provide sufficient funding for youth provision, the Council needed to ensure that the limited funds that were available were targeted in the right places.  She highlighted the need to consider the boundaries that some young people would not cross and transport issues and also advised that more detached youth work was needed. 

The Head of Youth Strategy and Engagement reported that the needs analysis had been carried out in conjunction with the Council and the relevant Executive Member at the time but that this had been five years ago and she agreed that it needed to be revised.  She confirmed that the Free School Meals data was based on the ward in which the school was located, not where the young person lived.  The Chair advised that Ward Councillors should be consulted at an early stage in the revised needs analysis.

The Head of Youth Strategy and Engagement clarified that the guideline of being within a 20-minute safe travel time related to a youth provision, not one of the main youth hubs.  She advised that information on youth activities had been disseminated through a range of channels, including working collaboratively with Greater Manchester colleagues, and that many youth providers had also been using social media to promote their provision.  She highlighted that information was also available on the Loads To Do website.  She informed the Committee that the CEO of the HideOut Youth Zone had offered to share their minibuses to help young people access activities but that this was the responsibility of the providers and not something that was directly in the control of the Council.

Decisions

1.            To note that the Committee will receive a further report on the Youth and Play Fund and Young Manchester in the autumn.

2.            To request a breakdown of data for the four hubs, including the ward of residence of the young people accessing the provision.

[Councillor Alijah declared a personal interest as the Chair of the Hideaway Youth Project.]