The final Budget published on 27 February 2024 provides detail on the government’s financing, taxation and MEG level allocations. It sets out the government’s revenue and capital spending proposals, including detailed portfolio spending plans.
Month: February 2024
Strengthening the legislative framework for Youth Work in Wales – A Welsh Government update.
A series of drop-in ‘Empower Hour’ sessions for youth workers and youth support workers were held in December 2023 to introduce the intended approach to strengthening the legislative framework for youth work in Wales, building on the Minister for Education and Welsh Language’s recent statement.
Over 70 people attended the sessions, enabling us to start gathering a wide range of views and examples of good practice, including in relation to rights and entitlement-based approaches, and innovative examples of leadership and partnership working. We also gained valuable feedback on areas that need further consideration, including the strengths and weaknesses of various youth work definitions and how they are applied, the challenge of balancing universal and targeted provision, clarity of roles and terminology, and the need to raise a greater awareness in other sectors outside of youth work and its impact.
Key Messages
- A clear need for simpler and more descriptive language to distinguish youth work and wider support services so that this is more easily understood by young people and adults alike.
- Rights and entitlements should be delivered in a natural and empowered way and across all education areas – not manufactured and bureaucratic.
- Youth work is often seen as a preventative solution and not for its role or merit as an effective form of education.
- Youth work practice and definitions/understanding are being driven by societal changes, gaps in services and budget pressures – and not by what young people want or need.
- Celebrating youth work and youth workers helps raise the profile and awareness of the sector and its impact.
- There is not always balance between targeted and universal provision, but both are important and rely on each other.
- Youth work is opportunity focused, but funding is often problem focussed.
- Opportunity-based language is more appealing and exciting to young people. Access to services is referral driven, time-consuming and costly.
- Youth workers are often seen as the experts in creating and maintaining relationships with young people and can be the guide for other services.
- More needs to be done to bridge the gap between youth work and other sectors and encourage youth workers to influence and inform policy areas that impact upon young people.
- Clarity is needed on accountability for decision makers to govern youth work effectively and for youth workers to support young people to participate.
- People involved in youth work want to know how funding is allocated in local authorities and voluntary youth organisations to ensure provision reflects geographic and population needs.
- Youth Work is fluid – at leadership and practitioner level, turnover creates problems for consistency and continuity of relationships and progress.
- More time and resources need to be allocated towards regional working to incorporate voluntary and local authority approaches to focus on areas of developing practice, provision and resources.
In the next phase of engagement, we will be discussing with local authorities, voluntary organisations, and other key stakeholders to explore some of the issues identified above and other topics in more detail. A further update on key messages from this phase will be shared in due course.
If you want to be part of the conversation, but haven’t had the opportunity yet please contact YouthWork@gov.wales
WEBINAR: Promo Cymru – Increasing the number of youth work services available through the medium of Welsh
This webinar is presented by the Welsh Language Implementation Participation Group, one of five groups established to support the work of the Youth Work Strategy Implementation Board.
One of the key recommendations within the ‘Time to deliver for young people in Wales’ report was that “The Welsh Government should increase the availability of youth work services through the medium of Welsh. It should also ensure that promoting youth work through the medium of Welsh is a key priority for the national body”.
We want to discover the good practices happening across Wales and the sector’s challenges. This will contribute to developing this recommendation and other aspects of our work.
In this webinar, we will share some of the work happening on a national level, many of which are new and continuing to be developed. We will discuss the priorities that were put in place for the next steps.
The Welsh Language IPG wants to see a strategic framework being developed that clearly sets out how a cross-section of organisations will purposely plan to increase the number of youth work services available through the medium of Welsh. Therefore, we want to hear from various organisations to develop this conversation further. During this webinar, we will share examples of good practice and experiences whilst responding to the challenges, and we are eager to collect further evidence to support this work.
Presenters include:
– Lowri Jones, Menter Iaith Sir Caerffili – Chair of the Welsh Lanuage IPG
– Iestyn Wyn, Welsh Government
– CFTi Project – Cardiff City Council, Menter Caerdydd and Urdd
– GISDA
– Urdd Gobaith Cymru
The second part of the webinar will include break-out workshops where we will discuss the following:
- As partners, how can we plan strategically to increase Welsh medium youth work?
– What are some of the possible opportunities and barriers?
We welcome Directors, Co-ordinators, Heads of Services, and Chief Executives of organisations that manage and plan youth work in Wales who are interested in learning more and contributing to this discussion. Sign up free today. Sign up free today on this link: https://lu.ma/i2rizvem
07 March 2024
10 – 11:30am
Police and Crime Commissioner welcomes new members to his Youth Ambassador Forum
On Wednesday 31st January, Police and Crime Commissioner Dafydd Llywelyn welcomed young people from across the Force area to Police Headquarters in Carmarthen, who have been appointed as new members of the Dyfed-Powys Youth Ambassador scheme, and who will work with the PCC to ensure that young people’s voices are heard.
A total of nine young people (five new members and four current members) are now members of the Youth Ambassador programme, ranging in age from 15 to 24 years old, and were invited to the Police Headquarters on 31st of January, for an induction and training session to support and prepare them in representing young people from Powys, Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.
The training was provided in partnership with experienced Youth Work and Social Education lecturers from University of Wales Trinity Saint David’s Yr Athrofa: Institute of Education and Humanities.
PCC Dafydd Llywelyn first established a Youth Forum in 2018 with youth ambassadors and has continued to build on the work to date, so that Dyfed-Powys has a Forum of Youth Ambassadors who are ready to ‘influence’ and ‘challenge decision-making’, to ensure that the communities of Dyfed-Powys have a Police Force that successfully safeguard children and young people and promote their wellbeing.
Welsh Government to ban disposable vapes and back plans for raising smoking age
Welsh Government to ban disposable vapes and back plans for raising smoking age | GOV.WALES
Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Wellbeing Lynne Neagle has confirmed the Welsh Government will press ahead with plans to ban disposable vapes and support UK Government legislation to increase the smoking age and restrict sales of vapes.
It follows today’s (Monday 29 January) publication of the outcome of the four nations consultation ‘Creating a smokefree generation and tackling youth vaping’.
The consultation closed on 6 December and received 27,921 responses, 1,018 from Wales. The UK Government will now bring forward a Tobacco and Vapes Bill at the earliest opportunity that will take measures to:
- change the age of sale for all tobacco products, cigarette papers and herbal smoking products whereby anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 will never legally be sold (and also in Scotland never legally purchase) tobacco products alongside prohibiting proxy sales, and changing warning notices
- introduce regulation making powers to restrict flavours, point of sale and packaging for vaping products (nicotine and non-nicotine) as well as other consumer nicotine products
- introduce new enforcement powers for England and Wales for breaches of age of sale legislation for tobacco and vapes (nicotine and non-nicotine) and other consumer nicotine products
Mapping the voluntary youth work sector in Wales – final report
The link to the final report of Lizzy Bacon’s thesis on the mapping of the voluntary youth work sector in Wales is here: https://criminology.research.southwales.ac.uk/news/2021/new-project-map-and-evaluate-voluntary-youth-work-sector-wales/
We hope that you will enjoy reading this in-depth, comprehensive and important piece of research.