dale lane

How many times do you hear the argument that young people “get up to no good” because they’re bored, and there’s “nothing to do”?

The “Education and Inspections Bill” hopes to change that. From January, education authorities will have a duty to make sure that young people in their area have sufficient “positive leisure-time activities”.

It includes provisions not only to make sure that enough activities are available, but that young people’s views are taken into account. A pot of money has been set aside to help pay for the creation and promotion of activities and facilities.

I like the idea – I wonder if we’ll see a difference?

There is some mention of getting help to develop and deliver activities:

… a local education authority may assist others in the provision of such facilities … [and] organisation of such activities; [and] the assistance … may include the provision of financial assistance; (ref)

It will be interesting to see if local authorities work with youth charities on this. A holistic approach for young people where education and activities to contribute to their local community are developed together sounds like a good thing to me.

I’ve been reading some of Wednesday’s debate in the House of Commons about the Charities Bill. This has been kicking around for a few years now – in fact, I thought it might end up becoming law last year, but it got put on hold when Labour started gearing up for last year’s General Election.

The Charities Bill will be the biggest shake-up in UK charity laws for hundreds of years, so I’ve been trying to get my head around what will be changing – in particular what the implications for SYA might be.

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I’ve been reading a report published by Volunteering England last week. Entitled On the Safe Side, it is the outcome of VE’s research into risk, risk management and volunteering.

They highlight several areas of concern – including ever increasing amounts of paperwork and bureaucracy, burdensome time and resources needed to complete risk assessment and health and safety activities for small organisations, the effort to keep up with new legislation and regulations, increasing cost of insurance, and external pressures towards excessive risk aversion.

It’s this last one which most struck a chord with me – small organisations feeling pressured towards excessive risk aversion. The report refers to “…several examples of smaller organisations having to restrict or cancel activities…” because of risk management concerns.

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The times are changing for Millennium Volunteers. How and when isn’t exactly clear. How long it will be around in it’s current form is something that we’ve been talking about this evening.

Probably best to start with a little background. Millennium Volunteers, or MV, is a national government initiative which aims to get young people into volunteering. MV provides nationally accepted recognition for volunteer work done by young people, through Award Of Excellence certificates signed by a government minister. The vision is for young people to gain experience and skills while making a positive contribution to their communities.

In each town or area, MV can be delivered differently, by a different type of organisation – in almost a franchise-type way. I’ve seen MV projects run by organisations from the voluntary sector, the local government sector, and further and higher education sectors. They all sign contracts to provide MV (promising to meet certain targets like number of young people, quality of service, etc.) on behalf of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). In return, they get funding and benefits like the use of the national brand.

Why do I care? Well, my organisation runs one of the 160 (?) MV projects. Although it’s not the only project that we run, it was how we started and still provides the biggest chunk of our funding. Changes to MV could have a big impact on our work, so I watch it with interest.

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Whether to protect against unforseen setbacks, or to be able to take advantage of unexpected change and opportunity, there is a need to set aside some money as a reserve. Sounds kinda obvious, but this evening has involved finding out that there is slightly more to it.

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