Agenda item

The Leader welcomed a member of the Newport Youth Council to the meeting. 

The Leader introduced the report and confirmed this administration talked about this in its manifesto, and set out in the Corporate Plan its intention to have in place a Children’s Charter which sets out the administration’s key commitments to children and young people.

The Charter is a set of promises that guide policy development and decision-making and set out what young people can expect from the Council.  It was quickly understood that young people preferred the term Young Person’s Promise rather than Children’s Charter; this respect for young people’s views reflects the participatory approach to developing the Promise. 

The Cabinet Member for Education and Skills explained the Promise has been developed for young people by young people and shows how young people can be empowered to take ownership of something that will be so important for their futures, as it covers equalities, health and wellbeing, safeguarding and participation in public life.  The Promise builds on the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, the National Participation Standards for Wales and also the ‘involvement’ duty of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act.

The report outlines the young people of Newport have been instrumental in shaping the Promise by drafting the commitments, leading engagement with groups from a range of backgrounds, and working on the design of the document; this will have involved a lot of commitment and the Cabinet Member thanked them for this work.  In particular Newport Youth Council has led this process from the beginning and has worked hard to involve seldom heard voices.  As mentioned previously, the Cabinet Member was delighted to see representation from the Youth Council in attendance at today’s Cabinet meeting as Cabinet considers the Promise and on behalf of Cabinet the Cabinet Member thanked Newport Youth Council for their excellent work on the Promise.

Going forward, the Promise will apply to all Council services, not just traditional children’s services, and it will influence many aspects of the work of this Council.   As part of the commitment there will be a need to ensure that it is taken forward through the Council’s service planning and performance management arrangements.  A delivery plan will be devised setting out how the Council will deliver on the commitments and how this will be measured, part of this will include involving young people in monitoring arrangements.

The Cabinet Member asked Cabinet to:

1.     Consider the draft Young Person’s Promise and the engagement work undertaken to develop it and;

2.     Endorse the Promise as a set of commitments for how the Council will work with and for children and young people going forward.

This would mean the ‘Children’s Charter’ becomes the first of the key commitments from this administration’s Corporate Plan to be achieved and would also make it one of the first of its kind in Wales. 

Work is being done on a fitting way to launch and promote this key milestone in young person’s rights in Newport. 

Cabinet agreed that young people are the future and it is important to invest in them.  Cabinet thanked members of staff who had worked on bringing this Charter to a positive conclusion.

Decision:

Cabinet endorsed the Promise as a set of expectations for how the Council will work with and for children and young people.