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Congratulations to everyone who has been successful in the Taith Pathway 2 funding call.

Pathway 2 2023 was open to organisations from Schools, Youth, Adult Education, Further Education and Vocational Education and Training sectors. 

Please follow the link to see a table of the successful recipients – Taith Pathway 2 2023 funding outcomes – Taith

Is your school or organisation thinking about applying for Taith Pathway 1 funding for your international mobility?  WCIA and Diverse Cymru are here to help you.  As Taith Champions we are able to assist you with your applications, from administrative support to help with identifying potential partners.  

The last of our three webinars will be taking place on the 18th March at 4pm via zoom. Taith Champions – Pathway 1 Last Minute Q&A Tickets, Mon 18 Mar 2024 at 16:00 | Eventbrite

It’s an opportunity to ask any of those last minute questions that you’re still unsure on, share best practise and see what likeminded organisations are planning.

If you missed our previous webinars you can find recordings of them here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/omUln1r99ksdzo1I_Zl9rOB4M5ZHpViBPcIxaAquMRQRjFIpuncbrseRozOdYjk8.Rt1Lo5SS-oG4XycP

Passcode: Y6g^hk?$

Estyn are currently recruiting for peer inspectors to work with them on their youth inspections.

Applications are welcomed from individual applicants who; 

• Have at least 3 years of experience in a youth work organisation or in the field of youth work;
• Have paid or unpaid (volunteer) experience in their youth work role, full or part time;
• Have experience of youth work in a quality role.

A professionally endorsed qualification in youth work (or proof that you are working towards one) is desirable though not essential at present, as the profession works towards full qualification and registration levels. This will be an essential requirement from September 2026 onwards.

https://www.estyn.gov.wales/working-us/current-vacancies

Recruitment starts from Monday 4 March – Monday 25 March 2024

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.

https://www.gov.wales/final-budget-2024-2025

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

Police and Crime Commissioner welcomes new members to his Youth Ambassador Forum (dyfedpowys-pcc.org.uk)

On Wednesday 31^st 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 31^st 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 | 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

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.  

As you will know, Estyn intends to inspect youth work provision in earnest during 2024.

CWVYS sits on the Estyn Youth Work Stakeholder Group. 

In preparation for the full round of inspections from autumn 2024, Estyn will be engaged in a range of pilot inspections.

Key points for pilots

• The Vale of Glamorgan local authority will be the first to be inspected during the week beginning 19 February 2024
• A voluntary youth work organisation will also be inspected before the end of March 2024. As yet, no decision or announcement has been made as to which organisation
• The documents attached are guidance received so far from Estyn; these will be reviewed following the pilot inspections plus feedback from CWVYS and the Principal Youth Officers’ Group
• There will be a call for Peer Inspectors from the field. Once we have received further details, we will share them with you
• CWVYS have pressed Estyn to produce specific guidance/criteria for the scope of inspections for the voluntary youth work sector
• We understand that Estyn is preparing a Communications Strategy for the roll-out of inspections following the 2 pilots.

The 2 documents attached are:

• How we inspect youth work, which covers the processes of the inspection
• What we inspect in youth work, cover the areas that will be inspected

Please note these are draft documents and are subject to change following the feedback from the pilot inspections and the field. 

We felt that it was important to provide you with an update, as a number of CWVYS Members will be drawn into the inspection within the Vale of Glamorgan.

The Children, Young People and Education Committee is conducting an inquiry into Children and Young People on the Margins, which in summary relates to missing children and those vulnerable to criminal exploitation.

This inquiry follows on from the Committee’s report into radical change for care experienced children. From the evidence received, children are estimated to make up almost 40% of children who go missing in Wales. Also, it has been reported that specific groups thought to be at risk of being ‘criminalised’ include care experienced children, unaccompanied asylum seeker-children and young people educated otherwise than at school, black and minority ethnic children and young people.

This inquiry will focus primarily on:
• Missing children.
• Children and young people who are victims of criminal exploitation.

We will also focus on identifying other groups of children identified as being “on the margins,” as a potential focus of future scrutiny sessions. These would be groups of children in circumstances that require a very specific response from children’s services or other statutory providers and for which there are concerns about the current policy or practice response.

For more information on the inquiry and to see the full terms of reference, please visit the inquiry webpage.

How to share your views
The Committee has launched a consultation, further information on how to submit is available on the consultation page. The Closing date is Thursday 28 March.

SeneddChildren@senedd.wales

@SeneddChildren