2011 Year Book - search3.openobjects.com Book . 2 Contents: ... an accompanying questionnaire to...
Transcript of 2011 Year Book - search3.openobjects.com Book . 2 Contents: ... an accompanying questionnaire to...
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Contents:
Elections Page 3
Campaigns Page 5
Other achievements Page 9
Evaluation Page 13
Statistics Page15
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Elections The elections for the 2011 Youth Cabinet
were held between 29th November – 10th
December, with the ballot count on 13th
December. In total, 1952 votes were
cast, this is approximately 12.4% of the
11-19yr old population, or approximately
34.7% of the Reading School population.
Counts from each school/group were as
follows:
Highdown 553
Reading Girls 326
Kendrick 315
Abbey School 315
Blessed Hugh Faringdon 197
Avenue School 79
South YES Team 65
East YES Team 23
DofE Group 23
West YES Team 19
North YES Team 18
CRED 15
Young Carers 4
Total = 1,952
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A total of 11 young people put themselves
forward as candidates. In the event,
there were as many spaces on the
cabinet as there were candidates, so all
who put themselves forward were voted
in (providing they gained a minimum of 50
votes). Therefore, the 2011 youth-cabinet
members were:
Newly elected: 2nd year: Aiden James
Aishwarya Lisa
Katrina Josie
Saraniya Faye
Alison Nicole
Sharon
Naeem
Changavy
Freya
Katie
Patrick
Those elected to roles were as follows:
Chair - Josie
Vice-chair - Aishwarya/Lisa
Admin - James
Member of Youth Parliament - Faye
Deputy MYP - Saraniya
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Campaigns
As in previous years, the cabinet decided
to run three campaigns. These were:
The following pages go through the
progress made through each campaign:
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Environment
Our Campaign Aim:
To raise awareness of environmental issues
amongst young people in Reading
Objectives:
1. Develop and roll-out an environmental ‘stamp-of-approval’ to retailers
and businesses, in order to encourage them to reduce their carbon
footprint & recycle more
Progress made - A great amount of progress was made with this objective
in particular; near the point of completion. The stamp was designed, with
an accompanying questionnaire to retailers completed. The advice and
approval of the Oracle was secured with everything prepared for a launch
in the new-year. A questionnaire for market research in support of this
launch was also prepared.
2. Use, and show support for, Earth-Hour, to promote the environmental
cause
Progress made - The environment campaign showed support for Earth Hour
through the radio show ‘SHOUT’ as well as through social networking
pages to promote the event around reading, and thus the environmental
cause. Therefore the objective was achieved.
3. Get the Christmas Lights turned-off as a way of raising awareness of
environmental issues.
Progress made - This objective was not met as we approached the Oracle
too late in the year (November) for them to consider it, however they did
show an interest for next year. We decided to concentrate our efforts on
the badge, as turning the lights on and off may have even used up more
electricity that leaving them on!
Any other comments about the campaign?
This year’s environment campaign was very successful, with a simple yet
important and effective idea brought to near completion. I hope that this
year’s cabinet see it through! Through our efforts concerning the objectives
and outside them (e.g. giving presentations on environmental awareness in
our schools and talking a lot about the campaign on the radio) the
campaign was made successful and we achieved to some extent the main
aim of raising awareness of environmental issues amongst young people in
Reading.
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Safer Reading -
With a Focus on Sexual & Mental
Health
Our Campaign Aim:
Improve access to sexual and mental health
services for young people in Reading.
Objectives:
1. Contact school-nurses in schools about the services they offer, and
deliver assemblies promoting health services.
Progress made: We used the cabinet members as a source of contact
between different schools in Reading. As a cabinet, each of us gave an
assembly to our year groups in our school about who we are and what we
do. We also included some information about health services which we
promote
2. Contact School-Councils, Head Girl/Boy Teams, and do other work, to
gather information about what young people want, and what is missing.
Progress made: We were able to compile a questionnaire to be sent out to
the school councils and the senior management teams in various
secondary schools in Reading. The aim of the survey was to see what sorts
of facilities were available to students and whether or not they were aware
of what was being offered at School. Although we sent the questionnaire to
every school within the region, we have only received two replies so far
and so were not able to make very much progress.
3. Ensure we have input and influence developments in these areas,
particularly around Juice and counselling services.
Progress made: We were able to have quite a significant say in the
redesigning of the ‘Juice’ posters and the ‘Juice’ website. Hopefully, now,
we feel that it would be more accessible to young people and hope that
they would be more willing to use their services.
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Things To Do, Places To Go
Our Campaign Aim:
Maintain and build on Things To Do, Places To
Go for young people in Reading.
Objectives:
1. Undertake research to establish what activities young people in
Reading would like to do, and what are the blocks stopping them
Progress Made: We completed this objective – we ran a survey in various
youth clubs and organisations, getting 121 responses back. We found out
that young people would like to do physical activities, such as Football,
Dance, Camping and Table-Tennis. The two main blocks to people
accessing activities are firstly, the cost of the activity, and secondly the
distance, or difficulty, in getting there.
2. Improve the promotion of current activities available for young people
Progress Made: The same survey told us that young people think the best
way to find out about activities is via social-networks. We have worked
with the Integrated Youth Development Service on this, and they have now
launched their own Facebook page for young people in Reading, to tell
them about activities which are happening.
3. Use links with Reading Transport to create new opportunities for young
people to travel to existing activities
Progress Made: We didn’t make much progress with this campaign, though
we did meet with the Chief-Exec of Reading Buses, and talked to him about
some of the issues with young people using buses, such as the price.
4. Work with Area-Forums and communities to assist them in creating fun
community projects
Progress Made: We used the Shout radio opportunity to talk about some of
the activities going on across Reading.
5. Work with organisations in the voluntary sector to establish and
promote their activities
Progress Made: We used the Shout radio opportunity to talk about some of
the activities going on across Reading.
6. Work with school-councils to provide Things To Do, Places To Go in
schools
Progress Made: We made some progress with this, in that young people in
schools were asked to complete the survey, resulting in hopefully a better
awareness of where to find out about the activities which are on.
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Other Achievements in 2011:
Radio-Station
The youth-cabinet were invited to appear
on the Reading4u community radio
station, to talk about their work and what
they hoped to achieve.
2 cabinet members, Josie & Aishwarya,
attended, along with Tom (worker), on the
15th March 2011.
As a result, the youth-cabinet were
offered a regular slot on the radio-station,
which they kept up until pressures of
exams etc made it no longer possible, at
end of September 2011.
Their show was called ‘Shout’, and
amongst other things, featured a regular
‘Justin Bieber’ based quiz!
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Childrens Trust Board Meetings
Youth-Cabinet members attended and
represented the youth-cabinet at three of
the five Childrens Trust Board meetings
in 2011.
Three youth-cabinet members chaired the
board-meeting on 23rd March very
effectively, including running a specific
activity around the Voice, Influence &
Participation Guidance at this meeting:
E-mail sent 24th March 2011: Dear Faye, Saraniya and Aishwarya, I just wanted to congratulate you on well you ran the Children’s Trust Board meeting last night. Your section on the VIP Strategy was the most interesting agenda point, and you did extremely well telling people to stop talking when time was quickly slipping away. Being as we started the meeting late, you managed to keep it to within 2 hours, which almost never happens! Well done and thank you. Esther (Esther Blake, Childrens Trust Partnership Manager)
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DVD
The youth-cabinet were asked to put
together a DVD around what young
people want from health-services, for use
within the new arrangements for
commissioning with GP’s:
The DVD has now been completed and
made available for use over the course of
2012.
Voice, Influence & Participation Guidance
The Youth-Cabinet have taken a lead-role
in the roll-out of the VIP Guidance
assessment. They have participated in
eight of the ten VIP interviews with
service-managers over 2011 (the
exceptions being West CAT, and Early
Years which was run by parents).
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Other Achievements/events
• Participated in residential with Area-
Forums and Children-in-Care Council,
on Isle of Wight
• Inputted into consultations for the
new Sustainable Community Strategy
and Children and Young Peoples Plan
• Attended the Children & Young
Peoples Plan launch event, and
delivered a section to the whole
audience as part of the agenda
• Developed links with other groups,
including hosting the West-Berks
Youth Council at a meeting
• Met with the Chief-Exec of Reading
Buses in an additional meeting, to
discuss the needs of young people
when using buses
• Held a public meeting as part of Get-
Involved week.
• Met with a range of visitors, including
a range of councillors, PCT staff,
Royal Berkshire Hospital staff, and
staff from within Reading Borough
Council.
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Evaluation
What can be Improved? The group were asked what they would like to see improved or
built upon next year, being brutally honest! These were the
responses:
Not everyone turns up for all
the meetings, so lacks sense
of continuity
Attendance has been rocky
No Local Democracy Day Get further with
[environmental] badge
Haven’t had good attendance More people should come to
cabinet and make it
interesting
Lack of progress in campaigns
(except environment)
Make it fun and interesting!
Make it so that, if you can’t
come, you have to e-mail Tom
More people need to turn up
The way dates and times were
sent out was not great – could
be done in newsletters, or
Facebook page.
Make it shorter!
Some campaigns took a while
to get off the ground
Some visitors took up [a lot of]
useful meeting time
In the middle of the year,
attendance was bad
Need to do more campaign
work
We seemed to lack some
organisation which meant
potential events had to be
cancelled, such as Democracy
Day.
As you can see, some of the priorities for next year must
include ensuring good attendance, that the group is well
organised and properly plan, and to hit the ground running with
the campaigns. The development of better lines of
communication are also needed, via Facebook for example.
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Skills Target The group were then asked to put sticky spots onto a target,
split into four sections – meeting new people, building
knowledge, developing skills and other. They were then asked
to place a spot on the target – nearer the middle (ie bulls-eye),
the better they felt that section had gone over the year. The
results were as follows:
Very
Good
Good Bad Very
Bad
Meeting new people 2 5 0 0
Building Knowledge 3 4 0 0
Developing skills 3 4 0 0
Other 3 1 0 0
The ‘other’ items picked out were ‘having fun’ (the three in
very-good), and attending other meetings (good). As you can
see, the group strongly felt that, on an individual basis, the
year had helped them develop skills and knowledge, have fun
and meet new people.
Diamond ranking The group were asked to pick the nine things which had
happened over the course of the year which they felt had had
the most impact. They were then asked to diamond rank them
– that is, choose the thing which had the most impact,
followed by the next two, followed by next three, then two,
then one. They had to agree on this as a group. This is what
they came up with (most impact to the left, least to the right):
Environment
badge
Shout
Make friends
& residential
Consultations
Making Videos
VIP
Interviews
TTTPTG
Survey
Reading Buses meeting
Climate conference
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Other Relevant Information from 2011
Total number of Youth
Cabinet Sessions
37
Total hours delivered 105.5
Youth Worker Face-to-Face
hrs
186.75
Some photos from 2011:
For any more information on Reading Youth Cabinet,
or to keep track of progress in 2012, visit
www.readingyouth.com, or e-mail [email protected]