Truth About Youth Project
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-00851, in the name of Sandra White, on the truth about youth project. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament acknowledges Young Scot, the national youth information and citizenship charity for Scotland that provides people aged 11 to 26 with information and incentives supporting them to become informed and active citizens; supports the project, Truth About Youth, run by Young Scot and funded by The Co-operative Foundation, which aims to challenge and change negative perceptions of teenagers and young adults in the wider public; commends Glasgow as being the only Scottish city to take part in the project; supports the aim of showing how young people contribute positively to society with the help of various workshops, a blogging website and a media partnership, and wishes everyone involved success with the project.
17:55
I thank all the members who have stayed behind for the debate, as I know that we are running late and that many members have other business.
It is important to see young people in a positive light. They are not all bad. In my speech, I hope that members will hear comments from one youngster that prove that young people are ambitious for not just themselves, but the country as a whole.
Young Scot is the national youth information and citizenship charity for Scotland. It provides young people between the ages of 11 and 26 with information, ideas and incentives to become confident, informed and active citizens. I congratulate it on its work and its undoubted success as an organisation. The breadth of the information and help that it offers people is truly staggering—it ranges from how to set up a band, to advice on housing, relationships, getting a job and knowing legal rights.
The organisation is a great resource. The national entitlement card for young people, which offers them discounted travel and other discounts at more than 1,400 outlets throughout Scotland, has of course been popular. The card is part of the European youth card network, which provides more than 100,000 discounts in more than 40 countries. That is also popular.
Much of Young Scot’s work is about empowering young people, providing them with the necessary information to make informed decisions and choices and giving them the necessary tools to turn their ideas into action and to take advantage of the opportunities that are available to them. All that together helps young people to grow into confident and aspirational young adults.
Members might remember that we debated youth unemployment last Thursday. In the debate, I was keen to stress that many of the young people whom I meet in my constituency of Glasgow Kelvin are aspirational, ambitious, passionate about what they want to do and keen to participate fully in their communities and larger society. However, they sometimes feel that, rather than being listened to, they are pigeonholed at a young age, which has a negative impact on their confidence and outlook.
If we are to tackle some of the issues that young people have to deal with—be they unemployment or a feeling of being pigeonholed—we need to engage the young people, listen to them and help them to achieve what they want. The truth about youth project sets out to do exactly that. It aims to engage young people in highly practical activities in their communities that will make a great difference to those communities and to the young people involved.
Truth about youth is run by Young Scot and supported by the Co-operative Foundation, which I congratulate on and thank for its support. The project focuses on challenging negative perceptions of young people. It is being undertaken in Glasgow, but the negative perception that people sometimes have of young people is certainly not confined to Glasgow.
The project sets out to challenge such perceptions by supporting workshops that are created and delivered by young people, in which young people and adults can come together to gain a better understanding of the positive things that young people do. The workshops have been highly successful in bringing together young and old to gain a better understanding of one another through identifying stereotypes, encouraging understanding between generations and sharing stories of positive involvement in the community.
A blogging site called The Patter—“patter” is a good Glasgow word—has been set up to give everyone the opportunity to blog and share their thoughts on young people. A recent entry by Anon—a media studies student at Cardonald College—hit the nail on the head. Anon said:
“One common word used to describe young people nowadays is ‘lazy’. I bet you, if you are young, will have been called this word one time or another by older folk. But the question is, is it the truth or a complete misconception? For one, it is slightly unfair, as although there are a fair many young people who are genuinely lazy, a lot of them just have nothing practical to do. With the lack of jobs and lack of social activities in towns (e.g. ruined football pitches, closed sport or entertainment facilities etc), the only thing in my opinion which is available to young people now is chatting to each other on the internet, such as Facebook, or playing their games consoles all day. Or resort to becoming a NED which is sadly becoming more commonplace. So, while a lot of us are lazy, many of us are still called ‘lazy’ very unfairly. If we have nothing to do, what can we do?”
That young person feels that young people are being painted in a negative light and the blog identifies the fact that we need to provide more opportunities for social and other activities.
I would like the lessons that have been learned and the experience that has been gained by the project to be extended across Scotland, and the Scottish Government to work with Young Scot to see that that happens. Perhaps the minister will look favourably on my request in summing up, as I believe that he understands the challenges that face younger people. Angela Constance once said:
“I probably didn’t really engage with education fully until I was about 14. Prior to that, I was a little disengaged. Not problematic, but disengaged.”
That probably sums up the feelings of some young people today.
I ask the minister to look favourably on Young Scot and its projects. As I said in my opening remarks, it is time for someone to stand up for the youth of this country against the negative publicity that they always get. A lot of good young people are out there and we should be praising from the rooftops Young Scot and what it brings to young people. If anyone from the media is in the gallery, I hope that they will pick up on that and engage with young people.
Perhaps the minister will tell us whether he will meet representatives from Young Scot and its projects in Glasgow, particularly in the east end, and look to rolling out that experience across the country. We want positive, aspirational and confident young people. We have such young people, but we just have to ensure that other people know that young people are not all lazy. I look forward to the rest of the debate.
18:02
I apologise that I have to leave the chamber immediately after speaking. I have a longstanding engagement for which I am a little bit tight for time because of the adjustment to today’s agenda.
I thank Sandra White for bringing the debate to Parliament, and I certainly concur with any proposal that can help to raise awareness of the commendable achievements of our young people. Read any local newspaper around the country and it is not too hard to find examples of the extraordinary efforts of many young people, at school or in their communities.
Sandra White has already referred to some fantastic examples in Glasgow. In Drumchapel, we have seen the fantastic work of the G15 youth project, which helps young people with issues such as unemployment; it also helps young people to address drugs and alcohol abuse and campaigns against vandalism. The Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust has invested £37 million in helping young people who are aged between 18 and 25 to start up their own businesses, and how imaginative some of their ideas have been.
On top of all that, an interesting statistic came out last week. Charitable giving in Britain, including by our young people, remains at a particularly high level and among the best in the world. Nor should we forget about the huge efforts of a growing number of young carers who give so much of their time to looking after family members, often in very difficult circumstances.
That said, the 2009 social attitudes survey reveals some uncomfortable facts that we ignore at our peril, particularly the fact that misplaced perceptions rather than factual evidence can often be the determining factor in the public opinion of young people—I refer to the young man to whom Sandra White referred—and the national media can too often play a role in perpetuating that. The good-news stories seldom make the headlines, whereas the bad-news stories often do. It is disturbing that half of those who were surveyed thought that the media were particularly negative towards young people, but two thirds of those who were surveyed thought that many young people in their own communities were extremely positive. Those sums do not add up, and that is a matter of concern to us all.
It is clear that there are cases in which there is a higher incidence of negative behaviour among young people and in which it would be completely wrong to ignore what is often a vicious circle of antisocial problems that have a corrosive effect on the fabric of communities. However, instilling confidence and self-esteem in our young people is crucial. Young people who are experiencing significant problems at home or in their personal life often feel that they have no one to talk to about those problems. The project that Sandra White has described is excellent in that regard. It gives young people a place that they can go to to talk about their problems and get specialist help. That is sometimes important from a role model aspect. Sometimes, those people have had very little, and they have been too frightened or embarrassed to talk about the problems that they have faced. One of the most challenging issues for a young person is finding somebody who cares about them and understands their problems.
I did not appreciate how much work some of the truth about youth groups have done, particularly in setting up a new website, which I have looked at. I was very impressed by that website, as it is exactly the kind of support that is required.
I warmly commend the work of the truth about youth project, but we must not forget about the important role that parents and schools can have in tackling some of the issues. As parliamentarians, we have a responsibility to try to take that forward. I will not hear what the minister says, but I am sure that he is aware of those difficulties.
I firmly compliment the project and Sandra White, and again apologise for having to leave the chamber.
18:07
Presiding Officer,
“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?”
“The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint ... As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behaviour and dress.”
Those are quotes about young people of their time. The first is not from Jeremy Clarkson; it is from Plato. The second is not about Rihanna; it is from 1274. The popular perception of young people has a tendency to fear, label and generalise about them rather than reflect the full range of what they do, how they study and work, and how they engage with their community and create their own communities and cultures, which really drives the creative spirit of our society.
I welcome Sandra White’s debate, join her in highlighting the truth about youth project, and congratulate Young Scot on securing the project with the Co-operative Foundation, which is taking forward similar projects in seven cities in the United Kingdom.
As Sandra White said, the project challenges the negative perceptions of young people in Glasgow. I was interested in exploring that a bit further and, like Liz Smith, I had a look at the social attitudes survey. I was surprised to see that the most negative views of young people were found not among older people, who are most often thought to be critical of them, but among young adults, aged 18 to 29. The way in which the truth about youth project is developing, with the blogging site for discussion and peer-led workshops, may be a good way to engage with that age group in particular.
We cannot ignore the pressures that young people currently face. At lunch time, I was at a National Union of Students Scotland’s think positive campaign meeting. That campaign is to do with mental health issues among students, who are a group of young people considered to be overprivileged or lazy but who are often studying and working, stressed about exams and deadlines, and worried about their future careers. All those pressures impact on their mental health. That is not the popular view that we have of young people.
Young people are not immune to the perception that others in society have of them, and negative views can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A video produced by Young Scot entitled “Perceptions Versus Youth” opens by asking the viewer what their perceptions are of young people in Scotland. It continues:
“Too often they’re described as lazy, selfish, intimidating, and anti-social. If someone kept saying that about you, would you not begin to believe it?”
A couple of weeks ago, there was a shocking report from Barnardo’s, which had surveyed 2,000 adults, 49 per cent of whom agreed that children are beginning to behave like animals, and almost 47 per cent of whom thought that youngsters are angry, violent and abusive. One in four said that those who behave badly are beyond help by the age of 10. There has been a recent increase—which coincides with the economic and financial pressures that the country faces—in negativity in the media, describing young people as feckless, scroungers and lazy. Only last week in the chamber, we heard disagreement over young people’s attitudes to work, and a description of them as workshy. The project and the work that we are highlighting tonight is to be welcomed, but there are bigger challenges about the extent to which society believes in and values children and young people, which we all have to influence and challenge.
In my region, I meet young people every week who are making a contribution to their community. I meet young people who are enthusiastic, young people who are developing their skills and young people who need a bit of support in their schools and communities in order to achieve. I also meet young people who are viewed as being antisocial, but we can usually help to get such local issues resolved with the involvement of partners and organisations.
More often, I am impressed by young people and by their initiative. Fife Youth Radio was officially launched just over a year ago, and it is driven by young people who worked hard to get funding for their project, who offer training for all their presenters and who will play requests from 6 pm every evening—although people might have to retune from Radio Scotland to Radio 1 if they are going to request anything that the presenters will have heard of. That is only one example. There are hundreds throughout Scotland, and we need to celebrate young people’s achievements more.
I very much welcome the truth about youth project, which aims to challenge misconceptions about young people. Although headlines lead on young people’s involvement in antisocial behaviour, only a tiny minority get into any kind of trouble. Far more young people are involved in volunteering work, studying, working and contributing, and I am pleased to be able to recognise that this evening.
18:11
I congratulate Sandra White on bringing this timely motion before the Parliament. Although it is a long time since she was young, I know that she remains passionate about the issues facing our youngsters today. Too often, young people are demonised and seen as layabouts or as trouble, hanging about on street corners. They are seen as folk to be avoided or ignored, but is that the truth about what young folk are doing and what they are like, or is it just a bit too convenient to look at them in that way? If we ignore them, or pigeonhole them as trouble, perhaps we feel that we do not need to bother with the issues that they are facing or to listen to what they are saying. I contend that to do that is a big mistake, because it risks alienating young people and engendering fear of them among older people. That just cannot be right.
That is why I think that the truth about youth project is an excellent initiative; it is one that I fully support. I want to give members an idea of its success so far. The project has brought together more than 3,000 young people and 1,000 adults, which is no mean feat. It has also teamed up with The Sunday Mail to produce a truth about youth supplement featuring positive stories about young people, more than 200,000 copies of which have been distributed throughout Glasgow.
When I cast my mind back—not to when I was young; I am not a miracle worker—but to January 2009, I remember securing a members’ business debate congratulating Knightswood youth theatre on, among other things, its work on bringing together young asylum seekers and refugees with young people from the local area to talk and share feelings. That helps them to realise that they are all the same, and to gain a better understanding of young people’s views and aspirations on a wide range of issues. I went to secondary school with the minister who replied to that debate, Linda Fabiani, although she was the janitor—[Laughter.] I used that joke because I thought that she was going to stay behind and listen to this debate but, unfortunately, she has gone. She said then that the
“efforts ... made by the young people involved and those who have taken the time to organise, teach and support the group”
are
“a great example of community spirit.”—[Official Report, 28 January 2009; c 14469.]
That community spirit extends across Scotland. In my constituency of Glasgow Anniesland, there are a number of groups who are to be commended for the work that they do in bringing the community together and in tackling stereotypes, wherever they might be. G15 in Drumchapel, which Liz Smith mentioned, and the Dumbarton Road corridor youth project in particular have grown to become organisations that now encompass the aspirations of a great number of the residents, young and old, in Drumchapel, Yoker, Scotstoun and Whiteinch. Their ambitious plans for those areas are a credit to the dedication and passion of all those who are involved in the various projects being taken forward, particularly in peer education on the issues of drink and drugs. Young people listen to other young people first and foremost.
One of the main aspirations frequently voiced in those areas is the need for more employment, particularly for young people. As Sandra White mentioned, we debated that issue last week, and I hope that some of the initiatives that the Scottish Government has brought forward, such as the 25,000 modern apprenticeship places a year for the next five years, the opportunities for all programme and the announcement of a dedicated minister for youth employment, will help young people as they strive to realise their hopes and dreams. Although no one is denying that much needs to be done, I am confident that those initiatives and initiatives such as the truth about youth project will deliver for young people.
18:15
I thank Sandra White for bringing this members’ business debate to the chamber. I share Bill Kidd’s passion about some of the projects that he has mentioned—I live in the same area and I am heavily involved in some of the youth projects there. There are great projects, such as the intergenerational project. Last week, I had the pleasure of going to a presentation for a 90-year-old woman who had worked for 70 years as a volunteer with young people. It is a fabulous project.
Having worked with youth justice in Drumchapel, I have to say that, although the truth about youth project is great and meets the needs of some people, it does not meet the needs of others. While I was working in the social work department, there were great strains, with some local projects not being able to meet the needs of the young people who were coming through the youth justice project—in particular the ones who were vulnerable and perhaps also going through the children’s hearings system at the same time. There was a gap, but I hope that the minister may well choose to fill that gap by the end of his speech.
18:17
I welcome the motion and congratulate Sandra White on bringing such an important issue to the chamber and on contributing so positively to it.
This is a welcome opportunity to debate in positive terms young people and the contribution that they make to society. I think that I guessed after about a sentence where Claire Baker was going, but it was an appropriate way to introduce the subject. There tends to be a generational divide and, among those who are moving into an older generation—despite my belief about myself, I am sure that that includes me—there tends to be a negative view.
It is good to have the truth about youth project drawn to our attention, and I congratulate Glasgow, the Co-operative Foundation, Young Scot and all those who are involved in it. Although Anne McTaggart’s point that no project does everything is valid, I think that we should always emphasise the positive, and it is a positive project.
Young Scot is also a positive project. I am proud to say that I work quite often with Young Scot. We have brought it into a number of organisations, including one of the curriculum for excellence groups. We are already ensuring that Young Scot receives substantial Government funding: £500,000 for its headquarters grant, which is matched by health with another £500,000. The organisation is central to fulfilling the purposes that we have as a nation, and it is already contributing.
The truth about youth project is naturally one that Young Scot would want to take on. The figures speak for themselves: 60 per cent of 11 to 16-year-olds believe that they have often or sometimes been treated unfairly because of their age, and 77 per cent of 17 to 25-year-olds believe that, too. There is clearly an issue to be addressed, and I am glad that it is being addressed.
Too often, there is a negative portrayal of youth and youth activities not only in the media but in our own minds, and it is important to recognise the positive contribution that is made by the majority of young people. Youth work services in Scotland engage more than 300,000 young people every year, so an awful lot of young people are engaged in positive activities. We should encourage them and support them.
This project has shown considerable promise and success. It is now in discussion with the Co-op about funding that would allow it to roll out throughout Scotland. The decision will be made later this month. Although I cannot influence funding decisions by other bodies, I think all of us in the chamber—not that we are passing a resolution here—would regard a favourable decision by the Co-op as something positive for Scotland’s young people.
As far as Sandra White’s request about meeting Young Scot is concerned, I can tell her that I meet Young Scot regularly, as do other ministers. To use a good Irish word, I will be quite flaithiúlach with the time of my new ministerial colleague, Aileen Campbell, and commit her to meeting Young Scot at an early date to take these issues forward and discuss the wider issues of youth work. It will be illuminating for Aileen Campbell to get to grips with these issues by talking to people who are deeply engaged with them.
The job that Aileen Campbell will be doing and the job that I, and my colleagues, do is to make sure that we are champions for children and young people at every age. It is not just about providing for young people in silos, whether nursery school, pre-school, school, college or university. It is about the whole child; it is about making sure that we have that care and commitment.
We want to ensure that young people generally are respected within society and have their voices heard, which is fundamental to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which I have been championing since I became shadow minister for children way back in 2000. The Government is committed to recognising, respecting and promoting children’s rights and the UN convention and we will take that forward with legislation in this parliamentary session.
We also want to see greater participation in the voice against violence project, which involves full participation from young people on a key issue that affects them and wider society.
This week, there is a new ministerial role in the Government: Angela Constance’s new role as minister for youth employment. An additional £30 million has been allocated to that role over and above what is a very substantial budget. That post will also have young people and their prospects at its centre.
It is a truism that young people are the future. Unless we invest in them and see that investment as being something that carries forward the whole of society, society will not progress.
Key Government policies such as getting it right for every child, the curriculum for excellence and more choices, more chances live together with a wider commitment to the whole child and a focused commitment on matters such as youth employment.
We have to support young people not just to be done to but to do—to take control of and manage their own circumstances, rather than being dependent on services that are doing things to and for them. This project is a good example of where young people can be empowered to move forward and tell the truth about themselves. It is always the truth that sets people free.
Meeting closed at 18:22.