Agenda item

To receive a report which sets out the performance of the youth offer within Early Help and Preventative Services.

Stuart Collins (Director of Integrated Children's Services (West Kent and Early Help and Preventative Services Lead)) and Helen Cook (Senior Commissioner - (Children’s) Early Help and Preventative Services) were in attendance for this item

1.    Mr Gough (Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Education) and Stuart Collins introduced the report which set out the total Kent County Council funded youth offer of £3.988 million and how this was utilised to meet the needs of young people in Kent. The funded offer consisted of two key elements, an internally operated targeted youth provision, with a total budget of £2.812m and a commissioned, externally provided, open access youth provision with a total budget of £1.176m.

2.    The Chairman thanked the officers for the detailed, informative report that they had provided which covered all aspects that Members of the Committee had requested previously.

(a)  In response to a question, Matt Dunkley said that any decisions which related to funding were made by Members. He said that many other local authorities were hitting a financial wall for a number of reasons, the main reasons being issues around the national funding formula and population increase, and the challenge that all local authorities were faced with was youth provision. He said that the budget from which services were funded had been cut by 60% since 2008, and therefore all local authorities had to make difficult financial choices.

(b)  In response to a question, Stuart Collins said that when identifying need, it was important to work with Kent’s youth hub delivery managers that understood their local areas and considered the voice of the child, which was a key aspect and at the front and centre of the youth hub delivery engagement. He said that he defined youth work as the voluntary engagement of young people in a range of settings, both universal and targeted, it was the way in which individuals engaged and used the voice of young people that defined good youth work.

(c)  In response to a question, Stuart Collins said that the range of activities that were available to the young people were need-led activities. He said that it was important for Kent to maintain a targeted and universal youth offer.

(d)  In response to a question, Stuart Collins said that e-Start was an ICT system that was used across Kent’s open access youth and children’s centres, and ongoing work was being undertaken to improve the system, but at present, the system was used by internal services but could also be accessed by external services.

(e)  In response to a question, Helen Cook discussed the targeted work that Kent’s commissioning officers undertook with each of the commission providers. She said that commissioning officers were working with young people to build relationships and to make it easier for them to feel that they could share their personal details with them which would improve the red ratings within the report. She talked about the improvement plan and said that the plan was put into place to capture the excellent work that had been undertaken by the commissioning officers.

(f)   In response to a question, Stuart Collins said that the contract started in December 2016 and the contracts were finished by April 2018 in sight of action planning and ensuring that there were clear improvement plans in place.

(g)  In response to a question, Stuart Collins said that the work that was undertaken needed to be targeted to ensure that the appropriate groups of young people were reached and supported.

(h)  In response to a question, Helen Cook said that payments to providers were made a month in arrears.

3.    RESOLVED that the report be noted.