Friday 31 March 2017

More success for Emoji's

Another 10 weeks have gone by and another group of young people who attend the Vale Youth Service Emoji's project have completed the programme.  It was great to attend the presentation evening again and meet the young people who have worked hard and I presented them with their certificates. Congratulations to you all!    


Thursday 30 March 2017

Adverse Childhood Experiences

So what are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)?

At a recent youth cabinet meeting we discussed ACEs and the impact they have on the lives of children and young people in Wales.  As explained by Public Health Wales, "ACEs are stressful experiences occurring during childhood that directly harm a child (e.g. sexual or physical abuse) or affect the environment in which they live (e.g. growing up in a house with domestic violence)."

As a youth cabinet we realised that a lot of the issues that affect young people and the work we do directly links to ACEs and it was great to have the opportunity to show our film about this at the Healthy & Safe event run for teachers and professionals who work with children and young people at risk of ACEs.





Tuesday 21 March 2017

Pupil Voice Conference

The annual Pupil Voice conference was held at Barry Memorial Hall and all secondary school councils were invited to attend.  It was great to see so many school council members from Barry Comprehensive, Bryn Hafren, Stanwell, Llantwit School and Cowbridge Comprehensive at the event.
To start off the day, school council members were presented with the results of the bi-annual school council audit where both teachers and young people were able to give their views on the running of the school council.  This also included some results of the recent Viewpoint survey run by the Council.  Below you can see some of main results from school council members. 

Throughout the day school council members all took part in a UNCRC workshop delivered by the Rights Ambassadors and learnt more about children's rights.  There was another workshop on the Children and Young People's National Participation Standards and everyone got to learn more about the different ways young people can have a voice locally and nationally, ranging from Youth Action Groups to becoming a Member of UK Youth Parliament.  Young people involved in these projects helped deliver these workshops too.  

There was also a Q&A session with the Youth Mayor and Deputy Youth Mayor which was great because we got to meet lots of young people that we represent. Everyone asked challenging questions but hopefully Daley an I are more informed on what matters to young people and how we can keep school council up to date and be more representative in the future.    

In the afternoon, officers from the Council attended to raise awareness of the Well-being of Future Generations Act and carried out some activities to find out what pupils want from the Vale in the future.  

I hope that all who attended had a great time and found the day both fun and informative.  I thoroughly enjoyed delivering a workshop and raising awareness of the Vale Youth Forum and Youth Cabinet.  Hopefully the event will inspire future members of the participation groups.    














Thursday 9 March 2017

Engineering Change

We'd like to thank Jane Hutt AM for inviting us to her annual Spring Breakfast this morning which took place at Cardiff and Vale College's International Centre for Aerospace Training (ICAT) at Cardiff Airport Business Park.

The theme for this year was 'Engineering Change' with a focus on encouraging more young people into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) courses, apprenticeships, jobs and future career opportunities, particularly females who are under-represented in these fields.

Jane Hutt AM and guest speaker Julie James AM, Minister for Skills and Science talked about the work being done by Welsh Government to encourage more opportunities for young people and the links being made between education and business to ensure we have the skills needed for the future.

It was also interesting to hear from the private sector and local employers such as Sony, Aston Martin, Dow Corning and British Airways Maintenance Cardiff who offer amazing opportunities for young people whether that be school visits to inspire pupils or apprenticeships and training opportunities that you couldn't find anywhere else.      




Wednesday 8 March 2017

Youth Service Bronze Quality Mark

Tonight we had a different type of meeting on the VPOD! We met with assessors who are inspecting the Youth Service as they are in the process of applying for the Bronze Quality Mark for Youth Work in Wales.

We discussed the role of the youth cabinet, the work we do in the local community and the impact we have by ensuring the voices of young people are listened to by decision-makers.  We promoted our current area of work\; the youth satisfaction survey, and how we are in the process of piloting the survey in local youth provisions to find out what young people think of the Youth Service.  We hope that this survey will be used as an annual evaluation tool to ensure the voices of young people are listened to.  We also mentioned the accreditation we are working towards, an Agored Cymru Unit in 'Young People's Participation - Having a Voice' as well the support we all receive from our youth workers.

Good luck to the Youth Service in gaining the Bronze Quality Mark!


Joint meeting

This evening we had our termly meeting with the Council's Cabinet.  We discussed our progress and main areas of work since our last meeting.  They were impressed with our work and were very supportive of the youth satisfaction survey we have been working on.

We also discussed the UK Youth Parliament's Votes at 16 campaign and the possibility of the council supporting the campaign in the future.  Today it's International Woman's Day and we discussed the importance of gender equality and the ways in which the youth cabinet can promote gender equality in the work we do.

This was our last meeting before the local elections and so possibly the last time we'll be meeting with Cabinet so we'd like to thank them for all their support and work we've jointly achieved since we started the youth cabinet in 2014.  

Tuesday 7 March 2017

HM Lord Lieutenant

Tonight we attended a reception for the HM Lord Lieutenant of South Glamorgan at the Mayor's Parlour.  We would like to thank the Mayor of the Vale, Cllr Stuart Egan, for inviting us to the reception where HM Lord Lieutenant, Mrs Morfudd Ann Meredith was officially welcomed to the role.

We met representatives and ambassadors of residents living in the Vale such as the Deputy Mayor of the Vale, Mayor of Llantwit and HM Deputy Lord Lieutenant.  It was great to represent young people at the event and promote the work of the Youth Cabinet and Vale Youth Forum.

Did you know? - HM Lord Lieutenant is appointed by the Queen and is a representative of the Queen.  It is the Lord Lieutenant's responsibility to organise all Royal visits to the local area and escort any member of the Royal Family on the day of the visit.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lord-lieutenant-of-south-glamorgan-morfudd-meredith.