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The next item is youth organisations, which we dealt with at our meeting on 8 October. The clerks have produced a note of some of the issues that emerged. When we heard from the panel of uniformed and non-uniformed youth organisations, we were conscious that we were unable to give a full inquiry's consideration to the matter. Nevertheless, colleagues will agree that many interesting and important issues arose from the representations that we heard. Subject to the committee's agreement, I am minded to ask the Executive for its observations on a number of the issues that arose.
I was struck by the statistic that showed the number of youngsters who are involved in uniformed organisations. Like you, convener, I believe that those organisations very much value their independence, but there were a couple of areas in which they felt that the Executive could take some action. The first such issue was the organisations' place in the scheme of things. The Executive is developing a youth strategy, and it is important that the role of those organisations in the community is recognised.
The MOD money is not specifically a matter for the Executive. Perhaps we can take up the matter elsewhere, but it is not for the Executive to respond to such questions.
I disagree with that. Colleagues in Westminster could raise the issue, but it is absolutely an issue for the Scottish Executive to deal with where, for example, that money is used as part of devolved areas of responsibility—in schools or youth work in our communities. That information should be held by the Executive.
There is an overarching strategy in the youth programme that will be presented by the Executive. We should ask when that programme will be available and whether we can have input in the form of a committee inquiry. Training in volunteer development and insurance are issues that have emerged from a number of the organisations. In addition, there is the point that Rhona Brankin made about the combined cadet force.
Although Wendy Alexander is unable to be here this morning, she raised the issue about whether some of the organisations should be talking to the voluntary issues unit in the Executive. We have not mentioned that in the paper.
An issue arose about the extent to which the organisations had access to voluntary sector core funding provision. I was not sure that we got to the heart of the matter, but perhaps we could inquire about that situation. There was a general feeling among some youth organisations that they are under-resourced and undervalued, and we can see where they are coming from. It would be helpful to know whether they have full access to that funding.
I am interested in paragraphs 5 and 6 in the paper, which deal with the stability of membership and the great demand for people to join the uniformed organisations. Have we reflected those points properly and have we perhaps been a bit pessimistic in the face of the organisations' evidence? We seem to have been more negative than the organisations were. I am happy for the clerks to check that.
We will leave that one out. I note the suggestion that, were there support for training and resourcing, the problem of voluntary recruitment might be overcome and the girls and boys who are currently unable to access the groups could have that opportunity.
The emphasis is on the fact that although the demand exists, there is not a supply of adult volunteers. The paper reads as though there has been a decline in demand from young people, which I do not believe to be the case from the evidence that we heard.
Would it be fair to say that that problem is not restricted to PPP schools? There was a suggestion about the difficulties of accessing schools in the summer, at weekends and in general, so the issue is broader than you suggest.
One of my concerns is the funding of generic youth work. The national youth strategy is about to be launched and I am not sure what it will contain, but we should make the point strongly that there is a need for funding of generic youth work. It backs up the volunteer system if there are good core workers to encourage volunteers and to be part of the training system.
I suspect that Rosemary Byrne is right on those issues but, in fairness, I do not think that we have much evidence about that kind of thing. That might be one of the issues that we could take up. My feeling is that, once the youth strategy is available and we know the context in which it will operate, we should undertake a more thorough inquiry into youth work generally and follow up such issues at that point. I am not sure whether we are ready to ask the minister specifically about that issue on the basis of the information that we received at our previous meeting.
I would like to follow up a point that was made by Rhona Brankin. She touched on the relevant point that there should be more opportunities for cadet corps to be based in state schools, wherever there is demand. We could make that point gently to the Ministry of Defence, even if the subject is reserved. It takes a number of years to build up a successful cadet corps, but the opportunities should be spread much more widely throughout the state system than they are at present.
I was unsure, after hearing the evidence at our previous meeting, how much of the resource that the Ministry of Defence makes available is school based. I know of cadet groups in my constituency that are not linked to schools but are what I would describe as working-class-based organisations.
Is there a distinction between the combined cadet force people and the other three more mainstream groups?
Yes, that is right. There is a cadet corps in my constituency that is part of the Territorial Army. It is community wide and not linked to a specific school. It provides a valuable opportunity for young people to participate.
No. It is my intention to reflect today's discussion, based on the evidence that we heard last week, in a letter from me to the minister, asking for observation and further feedback on some of the points that we have homed in on—pretty much as we have listed them this morning.
That is good. I am not sure that I agree with all the points that were made, although the points are worthy of further discussion.
That is one of the ideas that we touched on in our discussion, although we did not get too far with it. We could ask the Executive whether it has any plans to issue guidance or to pursue the matter with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.
Exactly. We are flagging up issues that the Executive may wish to address.
We should bear it in mind that uniformed organisations operate differently from informal youth clubs. It is a different market, to some degree.
Indeed. Some things would be shared and some would not, although all organisations share the burden of regulation. That is a complex issue for the whole of government. While it may not be desirable to reduce the burden of regulation—because regulation exists to protect young people—it would be desirable to simplify it and make it more understandable, so that it is less of an obstacle to volunteers and young people.
We must have been asleep at that point.
I do not think that I made it up. It was a useful point.
That is a good point.
I have one last question on volunteer development, which is addressed briefly in the report. Lifelong learning is important in attracting and retaining volunteers. Mention was made of some areas in which there is accreditation for people who work with young people. We should ask the Executive what opportunities are available for voluntary sector workers in youth settings to acquire some sort of accreditation. As well as the regulatory framework that protects young people, it is important that there is some sort of—I do not want to use the term "quality control"—volunteer development to ensure that there are opportunities for volunteers to develop their skills.
Interestingly, the cadets had quite a well-developed system. Shortly after the meeting in Stirling castle, I went to an exhibition on the work of the cadets, such as the outreach project. They had gone some way in developing accreditation for young people and, I think, for their adult leaders as well. That was an interesting development.
Yes. If, for example, guides want to go on and become guiders, they could take bitesize chunks of learning that have some level of accreditation that can be built on to something else outside the movement.
Other groups said that they were doing something with that.
Our paper on youth organisations mentions that accredited training is available to sports volunteers, so there is some development work in that area. The Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee picked up on the opportunities for the informal lifelong learning sector. Youth organisations regard themselves as organisations that promote lifelong learning.
I was struck by two other points. The first is that Jim Duffy of the scouts said that the training grant had been withdrawn without notice two years ago and had never been replaced. That was all to do with the linkage into adult volunteering money. We might want to address that point, because it is germane.
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