Listen to what young people actually want

Mr Williams suggested the council should have a good idea about what young people want following the recent consultation on the Youth Service.

The consultation was asking young people what sort of youth service they want.

Based on the responses I saw and the cabinet meeting at which the decision was made, the view of young people was that they wanted to retain the more supportive elements of the youth service (the targeted service), which we have done.

That they valued youth workers over buildings and that they specifically wanted to retain Bass Connections.

What we did not hear from that consultation was what young people in each of our communities wanted in terms of youth services.

There were lots of young people at the cabinet meeting and they were, to an extent, organised.

They did not however reflect the views of all of Wiltshire’s young people.

I spent a lot of time during the consultation talking to young people in Salisbury and the most frequent comment I heard from them was that they had not heard of the Youth Service or the Unit and that they did not think anyone was providing the services they wanted.

The new model we are now working to is aimed at providing services that meet the needs of young people in each community area (Area Board).

The old model for the youth service focused on providing a certain range of service.

In Salisbury about nine per cent of young people used those services (and that figure is too high as it includes people attending Bass Connections, who come from outside of Salisbury and also outside of Wiltshire. For a universal youth service to only be providing services that nine per cent of people use does not strike me as meeting the needs of young people.

We (all the councillors representing Salisbury) do not know what the other 91 per cent of young people want do see in terms of activities for young people.

The only way we can find that out is to ask the young people of Salisbury what sort of activities they want to see being provided.

There is a group which wants to use Bass Connections but that is a relatively small group.

In some of the villages in Wiltshire youth groups have been set up which attract 80 per cent-plus of the young people in those villages.

If we are to come anywhere close to achieving that in Salisbury we need to focus on asking young people what they want and not just carrying on with services that only appealed to nine per cent of our young people.

Richard Clewer

Wiltshire Councillor St Paul's Ward Salisbury

Portfolio Holder for Housing