Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans she has for strengthening the duty on local authorities to provide youth work services.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
DCMS officials are currently reviewing the statutory duty and its associated guidance to assess its effectiveness after a call for responses from key youth stakeholders. We will publish the outcomes of the review in due course.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what her strategy is for ensuring that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller young people are reached by youth work in England.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Local Authorities have a statutory duty to secure sufficient youth services in line with local need. Before securing such services, local authorities are required to take steps to ascertain the views of young people in their area and must take those views into account when deciding on the services to be provided. Funding for these services come from the Local Government settlement, which was over £12 billion last year. DCMS are currently reviewing the guidance associated with the statutory duty.
DCMS funds Universal Youth Services that are open to all young people and is investing £560 million over the next 3 years in a new National Youth Guarantee, so that by 2025 every young person will have access to regular clubs and activities, adventures away from home and opportunities to volunteer.
Phase One of the Youth Investment Fund, administered by BBC Children in Need, has delivered £12 million of funding this year to over 400 local youth organisations in levelling up priority areas in England. Five organisations working with Gypsy, Roma and/or Traveller communities were awarded funding. The grants have a total value of £202,346 which represents 1.7% of the total amount awarded. Phase Two of the Youth Investment Fund is expected to open in summer 2022.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much and what proportion of the funds allocated from the Youth Investment Fund have been to organisations working with Gypsy, Roma and/or Traveller communities.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Local Authorities have a statutory duty to secure sufficient youth services in line with local need. Before securing such services, local authorities are required to take steps to ascertain the views of young people in their area and must take those views into account when deciding on the services to be provided. Funding for these services come from the Local Government settlement, which was over £12 billion last year. DCMS are currently reviewing the guidance associated with the statutory duty.
DCMS funds Universal Youth Services that are open to all young people and is investing £560 million over the next 3 years in a new National Youth Guarantee, so that by 2025 every young person will have access to regular clubs and activities, adventures away from home and opportunities to volunteer.
Phase One of the Youth Investment Fund, administered by BBC Children in Need, has delivered £12 million of funding this year to over 400 local youth organisations in levelling up priority areas in England. Five organisations working with Gypsy, Roma and/or Traveller communities were awarded funding. The grants have a total value of £202,346 which represents 1.7% of the total amount awarded. Phase Two of the Youth Investment Fund is expected to open in summer 2022.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent discussions officials in her Department have had with their counterparts in the Department for Education on the adequacy of youth work training places.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
DCMS is the department responsible for the youth sector workforce and is committed to supporting its development. DCMS funds the National Youth Agency to set professional standards, qualifications and a curriculum for youth work, including a new youth work apprenticeship and free-to-access training. DCMS bursaries have fully-funded hundreds of individuals to gain youth work qualifications who otherwise may have been excluded due to cost.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the NCS Trust Annual Business Plan 2021-2022, published on 27 May 2021, and the announcement by the Government in the December 2020 Spending Review of almost £100 million of funding to deliver the National Citizen Service (NCS) and invest in youth facilities, how much of that funding he has allocated to the NCS Trust for the purposes of delivering that business plan.
Answered by Matt Warman
Of the almost £100 million of funding announced in the December 2020 Spending Review, £60.8m was allocated to the NCS Trust. This was in addition to £35.2m of funding that had already been allocated to NCS Trust for the purposes of delivering its 21-22 Annual Business Plan.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the NCS Trust Annual Business Plan 2021-2022, published on 27 May 2021, what target the Government has set for participation in the year 2021-22.
Answered by Matt Warman
For April 2021 - March 22 we have delayed setting annual participation targets for the number of young people participating in the NCS programme. This is because of the uncertainty caused by Covid and the need for NCS Trust to change the way it is delivering services. We will be setting participation targets shortly as we now have more certainty over the services that can be provided by NCS Trust.
While residential programmes were not possible due to Covid last year, NCS remained focused on offering young people valuable opportunities, resulting in 85,000 young people taking part in groups in NCS activities and hundreds of thousands accessing NCS digital content.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the NCS Trust Annual Business Plan 2021-2022, published on 27 May 2021, whether the range of NCS experiences is offered all year round.
Answered by Matt Warman
NCS Trust runs a series of different programmes at different points throughout the year. These include:
NCS Changemakers groups which run year-round in the majority of local authority areas.
NCS part-residential programmes, normally delivered largely through summer holidays and the autumn. These programmes will not run as normal in 2021 because of covid precautions, and will be replaced by a variety of day trips focused on activities to boost skills for life and work alongside an enhanced digital offer.
NCS Skills Booster personal development programme for schools, which launched in 2020. Resources are available for use year-round, including in schools, who can also draw down sessions delivered by the NCS network of delivery partners in term-time.
NCS as the national partner for the pilot of the UK Year of Service, where young people aged 18-24 will take part in 9-12 month work placements in their community, and will access wrap-around training and support to help them become world and work ready.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether his Department made an estimate of the running costs of the UK Youth Parliament by budget heading prior to inviting other organisations to bid to run it.
Answered by Matt Warman
DCMS monitors and reviews its grants in line with best practice. Before competing the grant for 2021/22, my department reviewed the previous UK Youth Parliament programme grants to estimate the grant recipient’s running costs for the 2021/22 programme using high level indicative budget headings.
By competing the grant for 2021/22, DCMS invited applicants to demonstrate how they would deliver the programme using the funding available, and were invited to demonstrate how they would secure external funding and partnerships to supplement the DCMS grant, as in previous years.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much of the Youth Covid-19 Support Fund has been allocated so far.
Answered by Matt Warman
£15.6m of the Youth Covid-19 Support Fund has been allocated. All applicants have now been informed of their outcomes, and the transfer of funds is nearly complete.
555 youth organisations have been awarded funding, including 544 small, grassroots youth groups and services, and 11 national and umbrella organisations. The full list of successful organisations will be published after the pre-election period (w/c 10th May 2021).
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to Answer of 19 April to Question 180550, on voluntary work, (a) what is the definition of a core participant; and (b) what proportion of core participants completed the whole NCS programme from start to finish.
Answered by Matt Warman
Core participant numbers reflect the young people who took part in the part-residential NCS programme during the relevant seasons. Participation numbers in other NCS activities are not counted towards this figure.
For section (b) of this Question, please refer to my answer to Question 184499.