Agenda item

On 26th February 2025 Medway Youth Council (MYC) delivered its annual Young Peoples Conference that addressed issues related to Medway, with specific attention to young people’s experiences of living, learning, and working in Medway. The report makes key recommendations from young people about how these issues raised should be addressed.

Discussion:

The Committee received the report which detailed the findings of the Annual Conference and were informed that there had been 119 participants (92 students and 27 teachers) and 20 schools represented. Additionally, there were over 300 responses  to the survey leading up to the event. The range of participants was varied, and participants were able to express their views confidently regarding issues that mattered to them.

Travel infrastructure - in response to a question on how accessible young people found travel across Medway, the Committee learnt that many young people  expressed issues with travel and transport links. Young people  wanted improvements to be made to the infrastructure to enable them to travel more easily. There were issues identified with frequency of buses, in particular in the more rural parts of Medway, as well as accuracy of information on the bus timetable App on arrival and departure times  which often had a knock on detrimental impact.

It was commented that there appeared to be an increased number of respondents to the survey from young people that attend Grammar school,  and it was asked how many of the respondents were Medway. The Committee was informed that the Youth Council  would be working on how to get increased participation  from Non-Grammar schools.

In response to a question on how the Council would respond to the findings  of the survey, the Director of People and Deputy Chief Executive undertook to explore this, with thoughts that it be shared with the Medway Safeguarding Children Partnership and it would be down to the  various partners to respond to the information presented.

Survey findings - in relation to the survey findings that young people felt more was needed to support mental health in schools, the Public Health Principal and Strategic Head of Public Health Programmes said that there had been significant work carried out over the last 5 years to increase mental health and emotional wellbeing support. Commissioners had taken an iThrive approach to ensure there were services in place to meet need across the framework with Mental Health  and Emotional Wellbeing Support Teams in schools, online counselling support through Kooth and now for older young people through QWELL, dedicated pathways for care experienced young people and the new low mood and anxiety service called BRAVE. The challenge was not with provision or access but  about pathways and  ability to navigate the system and as a result , the Therapeutic Alliance was being developed  to help young people and families navigate what could often be a complex system, the work on the Therapeutic Alliance was progressing well, with a  go live date of April 2026.

It was commented that the collective worry about safety was concerning, and it was vital that the Community Safety Partnership take note of what young people had expressed and build in interventions to improve safety.

The issues  with lack of work experience for young people and issues with work experience for young people with SEND was highlighted and a briefing note on this was requested.

Decision:

a)     The Committee noted the Medway Youth Council Conference Annual report.

b)     The Medway Youth Council to seek responses from the recommendations made and for the feedback to be presented to the Committee.