Agenda and draft minutes

Present: Hannah (KC), Kamron (BC), Lissy (NA), Kayla (WPS), Michaella (WPS), Morcea Walker (adult co-chair), Cllr Anna King (Adult co-chair), Aimee Luck (WNC), Jamie Wells (WNC), Cllr Fiona Baker (Cabinet member for Children, Families and Education)

Apologies: Honey (NSB), Nicole (CC), Ruva (NSB)

Lissy was nominated to act as chair for this meeting. Each meeting we will rotate the chair so each young person has a turn.

Lissy took us through the notes from the last meeting and picked up on any actions for updates:

·       HMD: Youth Council have recorded statements to be included int he event. Lissy has been asked to compere at the event and will represent Youth Council. Aimee unable to get a single loaf of challah bread for the meeting but will try to keep one from the event for the forum’s February meeting.

·       Stop and Search: Kayla joined the Race Action Plan group meeting. Anyone wanting to join the scrutiny panel please email Kim on kim.billingham@northants.police.uk

·       Market Square regen: Aimee to ensure JamieC has the ideas noted by young people for designs.

·       Youth Council Logo: Comments passed back to the graphic designer – will take some time to develop. Suggested something to bring to our new starters in April before agreeing.

Aimee gave an update on the progress of the West Northants Youth Council development. The plans are expected to take longer than anticipated but are part of a wider conversation about how the council engages with young people. Support is being given to map out youth related work streams and gaps and will give some more structure to these plans going forward.

The plan is still to keep building the Youth Council and encouraging involvement from young people from outside of Northampton who are very underrepresented at present. Jamie and Aimee are working on letters to schools and youth groups to invite new reps from April and have met with providers in South Northants to support us in this.

The group reviewed the forward plan and discussed items of interest with Cllr Baker who gave some more detail around papers. Some items fall outside of her remit. Cllr Baker offered to speak to colleagues for more details on any as requested.

Young people agreed an interest in the following:

·       Children & Young People’s Community Health & Wellbeing services

·       Parking charge arrangements at parks

·       Northampton Active Quarter

·       School Admission arrangements

·       Private Finance Initiative – Lifecycle Works

·       Public Health Framework

·       Towns Fund Leisure project business case (February)

·       Public Health and NSHE Integrated sexual health services (February)

·       Prison Contract recommissioning (February)

·       Overview & Scrutiny – children & adolescent mental health (March)

Action: Aimee to share reports going to cabinet in January for Youth Council’s further information.

Action: Cllr Fiona Baker to request additional information on items going to cabinet after January – listed above in bold.

Action: Aimee to contact James Edmunds re Youth Council previous input into O&S and options for any further representation.

At the next Youth Council meeting the group will look at what decisions have been made and make any comments on upcoming papers of interest.

Lissy took us through the Action Plan. High number of actions achieved/completed this year. Unfortunately, some were not such as Heritage Tours due to circumstances beyond our control (national mourning period).

Youth Council agreed on current items for 2023; to be reviewed throughout the year. See action plan for further details.

Public Health Youth surveys:

The forum have been asked to review a draft survey of young people for Public Health. The group reviewed all of the questions and made recommendations for making them more user friendly, such as more inclusive language, including definitions or explaining how areas are defined, and removing unnecessary or confusing abbreviations not used by young people.

Action: Aimee to feedback the recommendations to Public Health

Youth Programme development:

Jamie gave an overview of past projects the team have delivered to educate young people in primary schools. The Community Safety team are now tasked with developing this for secondary schools and would like the Youth Councils support to develop this to make sure it covers the issues that are most important to young people and targets the right ages.

Really positive discussion started but will need to be picked up on February meeting due to time.

Market Square ideas:

Forum asked to collate their ideas under the headings ‘past, present and future’. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to finish this piece of work during the meeting.

Action: Aimee to send over anything noted from this and past session to regeneration team and invite to next meeting to give update.