National policy, academies and other thoughts.

Wow! My comment on Hazel Blears blog was acutally read and responded to….how’s that for the power of blogging and social media! Some new Community Power Packs have been launched to support discussion and consultation on the White Paper which could be useful for supporting you to get young people’s views and thoughts and their involvement in the political process (you may need to adapt them to work with young people as the couple I have read so far tend to brush over young people’s specific involvement.)

Taking about ‘political education’ – one aspect of this or participation or empowerment work that we are currently supporting young people with also leads to me wonder how much consideration is given to joining up policies? Whilst there is a welcome (ish) support for the academies programme in funding new schools the issue is that it is purely about funding new school facilities. In a county where we have a large amount of community provision on school sites this provision is now under threat as the academies programme does not allow for the rebuild of this type of provision. Some of my youth work colleagues are now working in very difficult circumstances to support young people to protest at the potential loss of their ‘youth centre’ due to this programme,whilst protesting locally and empowering the young people to be involved in local district and county council meetings, and using this as a way of teaching them about budgets and how decisions are made about funding programmes at a national level, the young people are working hard together to try and ensure that their view is heard and that they can be a part of the solution.  For the staff it is difficult as the local authority supports the rebuild (as it understandably ensures some much needed new formal educational faciltities in some areas of high need) and yet there are no funds for any rebuilding of youth provision and they are having to juggle young peoples’ expectations through a period of uncertainty.

Isn’t it ironic that this is happening against the backdrop of Myplace which is aims to deliver world class youth facilities driven by the active participation of young people and their view and needs?!? Whilst the young people in this locality would welcome world class youth facilities they would prefer it even more at the moment not to lose the ones they have just because there is a lack of joined up thinking at a national level!