Education, Youth and Culture Overview & Scrutiny Committee 18.06.26

AI-generated transcript — it may contain errors; the recording is the authoritative record.

1. 00:00:05 It is two o'clock, yeah, right. Right, everybody ready? Are we recording yet? Yes, right. Good afternoon to all of you. As most of you know, I'm Councillor Gina Madison, the Vice Chair of Education, Youth and Culture, OSC. I will be chairing this group this afternoon with the more than able assistance of Kerry Shotton from Democratic Services.
2. 00:00:32 i have just returned from three weeks illness bronchitis pleurisy and laryngitis the last of which my husband enjoyed very much because i lost my voice
3. 00:00:44 um i'm still being a little fragile um i'm somewhat short of energy um and do have coughing fits so please excuse all of those in advance and at this point i do wish to thank all of you those who sent me good wishes while i was at home so thank you very much for that our esteemed chair councillor theresa carberry is unwell and is being cared for at home
4. 00:01:11 At this point, I want to pay tribute for the tactful and thoughtful way in which Teresa has steered this group over the last four years. Our thoughts are with her and Ian and Imogen, and I'm sure that all of this committee, all of those present, wish to send all three of them our very, very best wishes. First of all, a welcome then to all officers and members in the chamber and online.
5. 00:01:40 Welcome also to our co-opted members, to democratic services and to our guest speakers. I do wish to mention that at the moment the department is in the midst of an Estyn inspection. The youth service was inspected last week and I believe schools are to be inspected the 6th to 10th of July.
6. 00:02:03 right thank you um this is therefore a busy time for the department so we do particularly welcome the presence of officers and members involved in the inspection and we do appreciate your presence today at this difficult time and we do wish you the very best of luck for the inspection public
7. 00:02:24 I do know, because I've sat here before, that this meeting will be conducted with the civility and courtesy, which is a tribute to our chair, and an example to the children and young people who are the subjects of our discussion. Now, as Councillor Mackey and I are agreed on, because we are of the generation which was not allowed to speak till the grown-ups have finished.
8. 00:02:49 i would therefore respectfully request no interruptions no calling across the room or private conversations uh which i'm sure won't happen in any case um
9. 00:03:03 Can I also ask that questions this afternoon are submitted one at a time for the benefit of those of us who have not quite reached the latter stages of the seven ages of man and woman, but whilst possibly not yet sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything, are possibly sans the memory that we used to have. So questions one at a time, please. And rather than quoting from the papers before us,
10. 00:03:32 Can I instead ask page and line references being a good librarian?
11. 00:03:39 I'm sure I don't need to ask this, but I will need to close down any conversations that begin to reflect on the personal or professional qualities of any officer or member present. I will close down any conversations that go off topic and are not included on today's agenda. This includes me. So if I start wittering on about England's chances in the World Cup after tonight's stunning victory, just say stop her now.
12. 00:04:07 I will close down any conversations that become overtly political. That applies to me as well. And a gentle reminder of the rules of GDPR here. We should not bring up any names or top school topics that are normally the subject of a part two. And as I say, these rules apply equally to myself. Somebody stop her if she starts. And so on to the agenda.
13. 00:04:37 Number one, apologies. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, members. We've received apologies from Councillor Ian Hodge and co-opted member Wendy White. We have two substitutions, Councillor Pam Banks for Councillor Theresa Carberry and Councillor Alan Marshall for Councillor Debbie Owen. And just before I...
14. 00:04:58 and move on and i just wanted to welcome uh lisa allen back to the committee and she you all know lisa she's been a co-opted member for three years her term of office ended um in may um but uh she did uh put an expression of interest in again when we uh the expression of interest was sent out to school governors so just to welcome lisa allen back as a cooperative member of the committee chair thank you
15. 00:05:23 Welcome back. Welcome, Lisa. Welcome, Councillor Marshall, and welcome, Councillor Palmer. Yes, sorry. Apologies from Claire Sinnes, the lead for Healthy Schools and Wellbeing. She's been called to another urgent meeting this afternoon, but we're very well served by Emma McIntyre and Darren this afternoon, but Emma will lead on both reports later in the agenda. Thank you. Thank you. Right, number two.
16. 00:05:51 any declarations of interest no members are indicating check no none received thank you very much uh number three minutes we have two sets of minutes so if we can look first at those dated the 19th of may which begin on page five uh we will go through them page by page we are looking for any corrections for the minutes councillor mackie
17. 00:06:33 Move chair. Oh, right. Right. You know what? People don't want to go through them. Right. OK, then. So Councillor Mackie has moved. So page five, anything on page five, which is nearly all named. Page six. Page seven. Many of these items are on the agenda or forward programme. Page eight. Right. Do we have a seconder?
18. 00:07:07 Oh, sorry, page nine. Page nine. Councillor Healy. Councillor Dave Healy. All those for? That's carried, yeah. Carried, unanimously. Thank you very much. We have a second set of minutes on page 11, which are the calling minutes on Wednesday 3rd of June. Now, I cannot comment on these for accuracy, because obviously this was at the time when I was off six.
19. 00:07:38 Shall we take these page by page for accuracy or correction? Page 11. Page 12. Page 13. Page 14. Does anybody wish to move the minutes? Councillor Gladys Healy. Does anybody wish to second the minutes? Councillor Dave Mackey. Thank you very much. Four. Carried unanimously. Thank you.
20. 00:08:21 Making excellent time here, Arboristow. Perhaps it's the heat. If anybody does become too hot, please do say, because we will open the windows. It is quite humid. Number four, urgent matters as agreed by the chair. I have received none, and I don't believe Councillor Carberry did. No, no urgent matters as agreed by the chair. Number five.
21. 00:08:47 forward work program and action tracking and i understand that kerry is going to take us through this beginning on page 15. brilliant thank you very much chair and members will see the current forward work program shown on page 19 of the agenda and you will see that there's quite a lot of items scheduled for um the future meetings
22. 00:09:12 i just wanted to draw members attention to um the september meeting where there will be an additional report on the youth justice plan and we've had a request if that could be added on to the september meeting since the agenda was published and also just to draw members attention to um the school music service report it was initially down for this meeting and but the theater have asked if they can bring that along with their annual update report and so that they're coming to the committee once
23. 00:09:41 a year and so that's been moved to october so they will bring that report along with their annual update in october and that would be the same they will be together going forward for future and future years i'm not proposing any changes to any of the other items listed in the forward work program um moving on to appendix two which is the actions arising from the last meeting um shown starting on page 27 of the agenda
24. 00:10:10 um you will see that the majority of the actions are completed um in relation to ongoing actions um in response to the request from captain parkhurst um to invite school representatives um to a meeting of the committee in relation to the now with
25. 00:10:31 service um i have emailed a number of primary and secondary heads um some have withdrawn from now with some have stayed with um and um the majority of them have responded to say that they would be happy to come to a session in september so what i'm proposing is that we do it at one o'clock before the start of the meeting so that the committee get an hour and an informal session with those head teachers um so
26. 00:10:59 um yes a number of them have responded to say that they'd be happy to attend and nearly the time i can let you know which which head teachers will be in attendance um and we have the um action in relation to the request from council parkhurst on the report on the legal advice um council parkhurst has emailed me and what information he would like to see in that report and have sent that to the chief officer the elementary chief officer and i'm just waiting for confirmation on
27. 00:11:29 when a report can be brought to the committee so um hopefully after this this meeting um the uh from counselor uh lister about a member briefing session school organizational code we have got i have got a date now for offices for the third of september um so um jenny williams has confirmed this morning that that is that's a suitable date for her as well so and but i will email out
28. 00:11:57 committee members to um confirm that that date um and that's it that's all the updates i have thank you i'm taking any questions yes yes um open for questions counselor lister um i'm raising this now and i realize it's a very busy time for the portfolio um but very topically um the social media restrictions that are going to come in 20 in spring
29. 00:12:26 um next year um i was well i believe without passing judgment on whether i think it's a good idea or a bad idea i believe that many children using social media at the moment it's become a very large part of their lives um and it's a way to socially interact and and sort of manage their daily life it's become part of their lives i think removing it is going to be quite difficult for some people um and i was wondering whether as a council we can have an approach to that um how we can support young people
30. 00:12:56 um with the with the sort of yeah losing of social media sort of recognizing that perhaps participation in groups that um run you know externally to schools and youth groups and and um community activities have perhaps diminished since social media has been on the rise um being ready to kind of show what we have to offer um and yeah and i was just wondering whether potentially
31. 00:13:24 across party working group to to look at this um in preparation with plenty of time before those um restrictions come in in in february whether that was an option um for this committee and perhaps the wider council thank you thank you council list uh chief officer do you wish to respond i do think that's a good idea
32. 00:13:43 yeah yeah thank you councillor lister i mean obviously i think obviously the prime minister has made the proposal hasn't he am i right thinking he actually still needs to get it through the legislative framework so you know we may or may not have a social media ban by the time that process is finished
33. 00:13:57 So yes, I recognise that does have huge implications obviously for our young residents here in Plinshire. I think as well, simultaneously, we've had a notification from Welsh Government, the new Plaid Administration, that they are going to be issuing revised guidance as well for schools on the use of mobile phones in schools. We've been advised we can expect that in the autumn.
34. 00:14:20 So again, we know we'll need to take cognizance of that too. Looking across the room at Emma, who leads our Young Flincher group, I'm sure it's something we would want our Young Flincher group to be involved in the discussion as well, once we have an understanding of where the legislative framework leaves us.
35. 00:14:37 but yes there are pros and there are cons of all these things aren't there so i would be you know more than happy that when we we've got a clear steer on the sense of direction you know how we can you know facilitate those discussions with our young people and obviously through this committee thank you councillor
36. 00:14:56 all right thank you i do think that's an excellent idea and some years ago i did work on the welsh information literacy project which was about enabling students to use sources wisely in books which i think is very similar to the use of social media
37. 00:15:16 No, no other members are indicating, Chair. Right. I did want to ask a question, which I may actually have missed out on because I have been absent. What happened to the school governor briefing that we were going to have on the 19th of May? Well, well remembered, Chair. Sorry. I thought you might have missed it because I've been on it. No, that was something else I was supposed to give an update on. Sorry. Yes, it was deferred, wasn't it? And it is on the Ford Work Programme.
38. 00:15:45 for um october sorry it's been moved back because it isn't given how much uh many reports we've got on the committee it was an information report um so it was felt that we could bring it back in october sorry thank you yes thank you i remember councillor hodge was particularly interested in that search of my memory um the other question i had was to do with the noweth meeting in september and i was wondering if we thought it would be an idea for
39. 00:16:12 Nowith to be actually present at that meeting? No, I think it was just the opportunity for the committee members to speak to the heads so that they could outline how they felt about the service, those heads that had stayed and those that had withdrawn from the service. So yes, I don't think it would probably be good to invite Nowith. It would just be an informal discussion between the committee.
40. 00:16:39 right yes and that's fine if there's any appropriate feedback we can send it through so um right so no further comments on forward work program or action uh tracking um so item six we just need to do the recommendations yes sorry yeah so sorry if we can move back to the uh if we can move back to the recommendations of which i think one off the page there are three
41. 00:17:04 Page 15. Would anybody like to move the three recommendations? Councillor Mackay. Would anybody like to second them? Sorry if I'm missing anybody online. Councillor Marshall. Thank you. All those four? Carried. Carried unanimously. Thank you very much for that. So quite a lot of that. So we now move on to item six on the agenda, which I read with huge interest, actually.
42. 00:17:36 um denbyshire and flintcher joint archive project beginning on page 31 and i think this is is this to be i don't think that either craig or shana here so the chief officer is to present this so thank you very much yes i'm the um
43. 00:17:56 senior responsible officer for this project alongside my counterpart in denbyshire county council so i'm delighted to bring this report to you today which i believe councillor mackie you'd asked for an update on i think some time ago and we indicated that you know there was an update report going to cabinet i am going to presume that the report has been read and i think i'd just like perhaps like to start by saying that
44. 00:18:16 We're very excited about this project. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the councils to secure a significant amount of investment from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to create a new archive building to replace the existing buildings in Harden, in the rectory building in Harden and in Riffin Jail, both of which are full to capacity. In fact, our collections exceed our capacity in both of those buildings. And actually, both of those buildings
45. 00:18:45 whilst appropriately managed within all the environmental controls required in terms of protecting the national record, actually are not ideal in terms of the way in which then members of the wider public can actually access those materials and they be used to support community engagement. So we've been on a very long journey with this particular project over several years now.
46. 00:19:07 And when we look at the council plan in Flintshire, it certainly does reflect our strategic priorities around how we support our residents and our communities through our focus on people, on place and on prosperity. The uniqueness of this particular proposal is that we are seeking to cite the new archive building right next to Theatre Cluid at the top of the Civic Campus in Mould.
47. 00:19:34 And it is our understanding that this is the only proposal in the UK for an archive building to be co-located with a producing theatre. And of course, we know that that's a first class offer from Theatre Cluid. So that brings an incredible opportunity to bring archive material to life by using the skills of our strategic partner in the theatre. Some of that work's been undertaken already very successfully.
48. 00:19:58 Yes, absolutely. Red Rock of Bella, we've had mould riots in the town. We've had monologues shown on the BBC based on the records from the hospital in Denby. So when we were looking for an appropriate location to recite the archive that would serve the needs of both councils, then obviously that was a really positive opportunity. And the National Heritage Lottery Fund.
49. 00:20:23 see see that as a real strength of the project that's come through time and time again when we've had our discussions with them whilst obviously they are looking to support us hopefully through the provision of a significant amount of funding to support the physical building of the new archive they're actually not just interested in the building
50. 00:20:45 their objective by providing that funding is for the councils to really expand the use of archives across communities to support our communities their health their well-being uh you know and that's what they're really interested in seeing is how we would use that new facility to widen participation particularly with groups across our communities who perhaps traditionally don't ever use an archive don't know what it's for perhaps they feel you know the archive doesn't represent you know their particular circumstances
51. 00:21:15 So the report hopefully gives you an insight into the work that we've been doing as well around how we would deliver that through the new building. Councils do have a statutory responsibility to protect.
52. 00:21:29 and preserve materials that are vital to the public record. And what's been really important is that, you know, especially in challenging times when councils are having to make difficult decisions about how they deliver their services, whilst we have to obviously do it from a statutory responsibility, what we've tried to do by bringing both Flintshire and Denbyshire archive services together is to create a service that is more resilient.
53. 00:21:52 And they have been operating as a joint service now under the banner of North East Wales Archive now for a number of years. And it certainly has helped, I can say, obviously because I manage the archive service, I have absolutely seen where, you know, colleagues in Denbyshire have come over to.
54. 00:22:09 to harden and supported perhaps when they've been staffing shortages there or particular events and likewise flincher staff have gone and supported um over at rithin so the two teams really are now one team even though they most of the time work you know on their individual sites but you know what will be the icing on the cake really is to bring those two teams together into one central location
55. 00:22:31 in the new build um and obviously that will give us a really efficient model then and the opportunity for that expertise to be shared on a daily basis so it is a it is a very positive development so we are at a critical point now on the pathway for this particular project as the report outlines we've been moving through the various stages um you know rivers one two and three um as we need to do in terms of the development and the design of the project
56. 00:23:00 putting legal agreements in place to formalise the working arrangement between Flincher and Denbyshire County Council. And we do now have a really exciting design that actually is very reflective of the area. The architects use precedent studies to draw on the history of the area, the geography of the area. And of course, you know, we are a very rich...
57. 00:23:24 locality aren't we in terms of of history and and our physical surroundings as well and that's very much been reflected in in the design it is also designed to complement the theatre fluid building obviously a huge amount of investment has been undertaken in the theatre and the two buildings obviously need to to work in harmony which we believe the design does offer
58. 00:23:49 By being co-located as well, it also gives us the opportunity perhaps to maximise as well the opportunities to share resources. So, for example, there is no provision for refreshments and food within the archive because actually that offer is already next door in the theatre. So we wouldn't want to waste money replicating something, you know, and then hopefully what will happen is we will see people visiting the site and moving seamlessly between both buildings.
59. 00:24:16 So in terms of the major milestones that we reached a couple of weeks ago, we needed to undertake a formal review with the National Heritage Lottery Fund at the end of what they call the development phase of the project. There were many of us on a three hour.
60. 00:24:33 presentation with representatives from the national lottery heritage fund where we needed to demonstrate that we had met all of the criteria around the first tranche of funding that they had given us which was around the development of an engagement plan undertaking lots of community consultation and i know i'm delighted to say we are still waiting for the final letter but i am delighted to say that that's that milestone
61. 00:24:58 has been achieved and our presentation was very very positively received so we are now on a critical pathway now towards the final phase with the national lottery where we need to bid for what they call the delivery phase of the funding to actually get the capital funding to be able to
62. 00:25:18 start the build and as this report outlines a number of years ago both Flinshire and Embershire County Councils made the commitment through their capital programs to provide funding as well to create the total funding envelope for the project so having successfully moved through the development phase review we are now in a position to apply for that delivery phase funding the deadline for that is the beginning of August
63. 00:25:45 and then with a view then that the Lottery Fund will give us a decision by December. And if that is successful, then obviously we would then move into the physical aspect of the build. We are conscious then that if that goes ahead, the new building would obviously release two other buildings, one in Flintshire, the Hardin Rectory, one in Denbyshire, the Rithyn Jail.
64. 00:26:10 and there are ongoing discussions about the future use of those buildings. We have engaged with the local members around the potential future use of the rectory in Harden, and we have committed to refresh a feasibility study around that building a number of years ago. That is now underway, and that we will be meeting with the local members to bring them up to date on that once that work is completed.
65. 00:26:35 So I hope that's a useful sort of summary of where we're at. And I'm delighted to take any questions from members. Thank you. Thank you very much.
66. 00:26:48 you know i read this with huge interest i suppose i should have declared some form of personal interest in that i was married at hard and record office and i once worked at the within archives so i do have a couple of questions i'll i'll wait for a moment uh councillor councillor healy thank you very much thank you chief officer for that very interesting report and i've got to say yeah i'm completely supportive of the idea of this joint archive
67. 00:27:18 um being developed and i know clincher and temperature are already working together but to have it all in one building uh along the lines that you suggested i think is um is a very good thing i think the preservation of the heritage is good as a thing in itself but i think it's also beneficial for people's mental health and well-being that they're able to look at
68. 00:27:46 the heritage and see how their own story or whatever is fits within the the wider context and i think that is kind of therapeutic the questions i've got are first of all i'm wondering if you could elaborate on that very interesting idea of something akin to a an outreach service whereby they're talking about going into the community because i would envisage that this perhaps goes involves
69. 00:28:16 going into local community centers or libraries with various resources and documents so that local people can see what is available in the archive and get a kind of taster experience i think that would be beneficial but it may well be that there's other ideas as well as that but the second aspect of that is that you've mentioned reference to getting the capital funding
70. 00:28:45 The question is to be able to deliver all of this and to staff it and to resource it and all that. You'd also need the revenue funding to be able to do it. Otherwise, things including this possible outreach service would just be a bit of a pipe dream. So I'm just wondering about that as well. Thank you, Councillor Healy. Chief Officer? Yep.
71. 00:29:09 thank you councillor healy so yes the service will be and has does already um work on an outreach basis so it's it's doing that through two ways the first thing is actually the use increasing use of digitization so for a number of years now both archive services have been digitizing their resources and making far more available online via the newer website for members of the public to access and that is an ongoing piece of work and it's a piece of work that they've been undertaking at quite some pace
72. 00:29:40 The concept as well is around the new archive building sort of being the hub and there being spokes out digitally as well into local communities.
73. 00:29:50 and you know there is some fantastic technology on the market now i don't know if anybody's seen in these lovely digital tables that people can touch the touch screens and people can access information so you know so part of part of the proposal was that we would be looking you know obviously using things like our library networks as well to have facilities within those um those
74. 00:30:11 those buildings there where people can then access the archive material and then as you say it raises that interest and hopefully then encourages them to uh to access the main building itself but the service itself also recognizes that you can't deliver kind of outreach activity without people so as
75. 00:30:30 the the two services obviously are run with their current staffing structure and obviously there are revenue funding streams already attached to those within both councils but it is envisaged that as the two services become one physically in the building then there is an opportunity to restructure some of the roles
76. 00:30:46 responsibilities within the team we may not need as many archivists for example but we may need more of something else so that's certainly something that the manager of the service has been working through in developing a staffing structure for when the service is operational in the new building and that certainly includes a community engagement officer to take responsibility because actually that's what the national lottery fund are most
77. 00:31:12 keen to see happening how will we use that building and its contents to reach out into the community as you say to support well-being health mental you know mental health issues so but you need people on the ground to do that so yes that is being factored into the plans going forward thank you councillor eli you only think to add i would just come back it's obviously in some of our more remote
78. 00:31:40 rural communities which it would be desirable to reach out to um what they've got to have is a building with wi-fi basically to be able to access the digital table so i think within local communities that is something they would need to look at either to jump on the bandwagon as it were and get on board as far as things like this are concerned and with some areas that that may well be an issue
79. 00:32:10 That's a really good point, Councillor Healey. So what I'll do is I'll make sure that I feed that back in through our project board into the service manager.
80. 00:32:19 and i can't say off the top of my head if they've done sort of mapping of every sort of local community but it's certainly something that we would be needing to undertake in terms of developing that hub and spoke model to know where there are facilities in local communities as you say and if they are you know able to access things like wi-fi so i'll certainly take that back to the project board it's a good suggestion thank you
81. 00:32:42 Yeah, I mean, that would be useful in our very rural world. There are a couple of areas where there isn't any internet access. So, Councillor Mackay. Thank you, Chair. I've got the right button this time. Thank you. Thank you for the explanation, Chief Officer. Very much appreciated. Could I refer to page 33, please, item 104 of the report? And it's probably a silly question.
82. 00:33:13 um in in there it talks of a volunteer in kind contribution which i guess is some sort of well i wasn't quite sure so i wondered if you could give me an idea of what's meant there um now i've looked up this r i b a in the um appendix uh to the report and i appreciate that there are various stages in in a building's um
83. 00:33:44 design and build but to say riba2 to me doesn't help me because i still don't know what we're talking about if i look at paragraph 105 i got a bit concerned because here we talk about riba stage 2 report at risk and then we look further on and we see that
84. 00:34:14 the rib stage two report was completed it looks like again and and i just wondered if if paragraph 105 is sort of um well what is it trying to tell us really that that's my question i'd appreciate i will understand of course because we haven't got a construction person here
85. 00:34:41 that that might not be possible to give me an answer to that sorry i was going to start off with that and the other thing i was going to say is yes members of harden have been involved already as far as the um current repository is concerned but i did believe it was a listed building so i think our options are very greatly can um can train so that i'm doing as you've asked i'm trying to keep my questions
86. 00:35:07 sure i have got another area i'd like to look at later in fact if i may with your um would you like to take those questions first my daughter's training to be an architect i'm not an architect and i'm and i'm not completely completely conversant and actually i do apologize because we i i could have asked the um project manager sean lloyd um
87. 00:35:30 price to be here with her this afternoon but i knew she was all potentially engaged in another meeting so actually um i i asked her to prioritize that because she would be able to give you the answer off the top of her head um i think in terms of the explanation around the river and having to do things at risk you know we have to keep moving forward to get to a point
88. 00:35:50 hoping that actually the funding and everything follows in, you know, in due course. But I will ask Sian to give you the committee a written explanation, you know, around the REBA stages and that particular issue about, you know, having to sort of do that piece of work at risk. Because the danger is obviously we sit and we wait and we don't ever get anything done. And obviously the longer this takes, the more buildings cost because of inflation. But I will certainly get an update from Sian for you for that.
89. 00:36:16 in terms of the sort of the contributions as you can see the financial contributions that you refer to on the volunteering kind i mean both archive services make extensive use of volunteers actually in terms of um supporting the delivery of the service um so i you know i'm guessing that that's that's really what that that that refers to for example they've been doing a lot of work in making the boxes
90. 00:36:39 already to house the very precious materials that will need to be transported for example when we move from one building to the other and you know they they help with a lot of things like that so as you can see there in 104 the majority of the funding would be hopefully coming from the heritage fund application both councils have made a commitment to a capital contribution
91. 00:37:03 And there are a number of grant funding schemes within Welsh Government that archive services can bid for. And we've been very successful in bidding for those over the last couple of years and would be looking to maximise the investment from Welsh Government, who are also, I have to say, obviously a key stakeholder in this particular project and are also very excited about it. But yes, the volunteers make a really important contribution to the delivery of both services.
92. 00:37:32 Does that help, Councillor Mackey? Thank you, Chief Officer. Yeah, I think it does. It's just that I have difficulty understanding where volunteers are appealing and costing. That's all. Sorry, it's just me being me. Right. Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I suppose what they're doing is they're doing some of the jobs that paid staff otherwise would do. So that's the contribution in kind. It releases the paid staff.
93. 00:37:59 to undertake other other tasks or if the paid staff didn't have the capacity because they're already fully stretched the servers would potentially have to pay other people to do it so i think that's where the volunteering contribution makes it makes a difference did you say you had some more yes i did i did have a question on because on in the in that paragraph it talks about that uh the costing is 12.68 million being rel being uh um
94. 00:38:30 being based on a start date of i think it was may this year and clearly from what you've said we haven't started in may um this year is is that likely to have significant impact i mean the inflation in that paragraph is frightening 26 point something percent i think and i've still got a few more
95. 00:38:52 Yeah, no, Councillor Mackie, obviously it is something that the project board is keeping a very close eye on, as we do, you know, with our school modernisation projects as well, because, you know, everything is subject to those inflationary pressures, isn't it? And any delay in the process obviously adds a cost, you know, if we start that later. So it is something being monitored very, very carefully. And obviously we have a, at the moment, we have a defined funding envelope. A designer bill contractor has been appointed.
96. 00:39:21 um they are um providing excellent work for us at the moment and there are lots of conversations about how can we value engineer the design to obviously keep it within the funding envelope so that work is certainly um ongoing and something we're keeping a very close eye on which is why it's important that this we don't have any further delays that we hit now the funding bid milestone of august for a decision by december yeah yeah right now i'm
97. 00:39:52 you want the part the page number i think it's 63 i move to next i'm going to check that uh oh it might be 68 um 67 i think yes um right this is this is this also might cause difficulty i'll understand if if it does but this is a document which i think is a denbyshire document and it it starts off with um um i'm sorry
98. 00:40:24 uh things are not working as beautifully as i like them to do it took it's an impact um assessment report and it starts off by um i'm sorry i'm just needing to move this down a little bit who will be affected by the proposal uh on page 67 um
99. 00:40:50 And it says, local people who use the archive, which I presume means local people in Denbyshire. Now, I expected, as that was the first item that they'd identified, that that would be addressed later in the document. But try as I may, I could not find another reference to the effect on local people.
100. 00:41:18 And as I say, this may be because it's a Denbyshire document and I don't understand how these documents are used and so on. And again, if you'd prefer to answer my question in writing at some future, I would be fine with that. Because I actually looked up traveling from Denbyshire to this site on Google.
101. 00:41:49 it's not easy if you're not using a private car and there's lots of talk in this report about the issues of using a private car and the effect that's going to have on the carbon situation having a carbon effective building but hang on a minute we've still got to use a private car they even talk at one point about how to make an electric car available but you're still going to charge the electric car from something at the moment we tend to use gas for that
102. 00:42:17 So, yeah, I just felt that there would be a description, some sort of reference to that as it's the first point that came up, but I couldn't find it. So if you can find it, please be my... Thank you, Councillor Mackey. In fact, that was going to be one of my questions about transfer. No, it's all right. I had noticed. I mean, obviously it is on top of a hill, which is accessed by a hill. So when perhaps the chief officer...
103. 00:42:47 uh yeah yeah thank you for that observation uh councillor mackie i'm more than happy to take that back to the project board actually um and we can revisit the um the impact assessments okay if that if that would help and then we obviously we can feed back to you um in writing so you're specifically so just so i can be clear about what it is you're asking for are you wanting more detail then around how the location of the proposed building may impact on its accessibility for
104. 00:43:15 for people of both Flinshire and Denvershire, particularly from Denvershire. I think it's a really important observation and we'll certainly take that back. So just to reassure you that the project board is made up of officers and political representatives from both councillors. So Councillor Eastwood sits as the cabinet member for Flinshire and her counterpart from Denvershire.
105. 00:43:53 um sits on the project board as well and obviously he's done a very good job of representing the views of denbyshire residents as you might expect but i think we can certainly we can certainly take that back and i think we've also got to recognize as well haven't we that there are potential developments around that civic campus as a whole once county hall is demolished yes so that i am guessing because of course i am not our
106. 00:44:18 assets manager but i am guessing that mr mr rod taylor who is in charge of of that particular piece of work you know will be thinking about actually the accessibility to that site from from the center of mold as well and i'm guessing there would be opportunities to work with our local transport providers uh in terms of accessibility to that site and obviously the theater the law courts um you know and developments that may come in the future
107. 00:44:45 but again rod sits on the archive project board so we can feed that in as well really helpful observations councillor thank you very much
108. 00:44:55 Thank you. Do you have any further questions, Councillor Mackey? I must say, I do think that's a very good point I had underlined myself about transport to the facility. And I think it does actually flag up somewhere in this report that there are very few bus stops that take you up that hill. So, all right. Thank you. Councillor Dave Healy. I'm not sure if this is helpful, but I think...
109. 00:45:22 i'm right in saying that there is the t8 bus service that goes from writhing to chester and it's bound to go via mold it's not going to come directly up here up up towards county hall or the archives but there is a service as i understand it that will go from written where the old jail is from the war memorial i think it says
110. 00:45:49 Does it? Yeah, walk from the jail to the war memorial, then on the bus to Mould. It was the walk up the hill that I was worried about. From Mould itself. You can't have everything. Sorry, it's a really helpful discussion. Again, I would like to reassure the committee that before this project even started, there were several sites that were considered on a sites option appraiser.
111. 00:46:22 So just to reassure, and actually, and when all of those sites were reviewed, some were in Flintshire, some were in Denbyshire, this site stood out as the most viable and the one with the most potential. And then obviously that has been supported by both cabinets in their decision-making to support this project to progress.
112. 00:46:43 That was several years ago now. It's almost in the mists of time that we went through that process, but those site option appraisals were undertaken in quite some detail. Thank you. So concerns about transport have been noted, and I was actually going to bring that up as a question myself. The recommendations are to note the project. Does anybody else wish to? Councillor Allen Marshall. Lovely. Thank you.
113. 00:47:12 Page 33, 1.04 regarding the funding, it looks like it was agreed in 2019 and Denbyshire is putting in 2 million and we're just over 3 million. So does that amount there include the interest that's to be paid as well?
114. 00:47:41 by denbyshire and by by flintcher and another question which relates to other things we just got discussing it in this in this um committee is are denbyshire residents happy that they're paying for a building that is not in their county it's in flintcher thank you thank you i'll do my best my understanding is that the um
115. 00:48:12 contributions are coming from the council's capital programs um i'm not aware that we've got any yeah yeah credential borrowing or anything like that in relation to this particular project i thought it was coming out of the capitals program but i will go back and check the um capital strategy for the council in terms of that so i will confirm that answer to you uh obviously there's been lots of consultation around this particular proposal um yes there were some concerns raised obviously um
116. 00:48:43 through by denbyshire residents there was um concern raised particularly from the community in ruthyn who felt that you know they were potentially losing an important asset from within the town um but at the end of the day the denbyshire cabinet made the decision that they would support uh this particular project my understanding is that um in order to um facilitate that agreement um
117. 00:49:11 there are plans to repurpose the riffing jail i think through denbush's um heritage service museums and heritage service and that actually there will be a small archive presence retained within the riffing jail and it was on the basis that those provisions were made that um i think the um elected members in riffing were able to you know get the support of the local residents and ultimately the cabinet made the decision can you recall because you were you've been part of the project group as well
118. 00:49:42 No, I don't recall anything more than that. But I do know that sites within Denbyshire were also considered prior to the site being agreed. And this is still the most sustainable one. So the available sites work across both counties. Councillor Marshall, do you want to ask anything? Right. Thank you. Thank you.
119. 00:50:10 Any further comments? I do have a couple of questions myself, but one of mine has already been asked by Councillor Mackey. I will say I do think this is a very exciting project. I'm very sorry to see the closure of the facilities.
120. 00:50:25 at rhythm and harden and i do look forward to a future for the expanded museum facility at rhythm and i did note an advert the other day that they're already looking for partners to run a cafe on the jail site so uh that that was i thought was quite good um archives i actually spent a lot of my working career in archives and they obviously are a very important facility and they're an expanding world with more and more to store and the
121. 00:50:54 Conditions in which they are kept are very, very, very specific. I know about the floods at Rithyn Jail, which actually destroyed quite a lot of the resources there, two major floods there. And I know about the shortage of space at Hardin as well. So I do feel that a new purpose-built building will actually address this.
122. 00:51:16 They are immensely popular facilities. I've known people travel from all over the world to visit archive services, to do family and local history and so forth. So I personally feel this is an excellent move forward tourism-wise. And also in respect of local facilities such as accommodation and hospitality.
123. 00:51:39 another plus is that a new building is going to be totally dda and health and safety compliant which sadly older buildings always aren't so and i'm very pleased to note that one of the target audiences is people with dementia because reminiscence nostalgia and memory is so important to this particular group
124. 00:52:03 I've attended many reminiscent session libraries myself in the public library with words and music, and I've seen how good that actually makes people feel. And I hope that we will see regular reminiscent sessions at the new facility. I do have a couple of questions. Page 43, 4.1 is my first question.
125. 00:52:34 Page 43, 4.1, HMP Berwyn Prison. This flags up the difficulty of working with the prison service due to the high turnover of staff. Can I just leave this with you here? Might it be possible to work with the prison library service? This usually has consistency of service. People who go work in the prison library service are usually there for life, literally.
126. 00:53:04 i believe berwin prison library service is run by wrexham library service and it does have a librarian who held an extremely successful literary festival in 2018 which was covered in the library association record
127. 00:53:20 The Prison Library Service has always been heavily involved in education. I've done literacy sessions myself years ago when I did relief for the Prison Library Service. And in Wales alone in the United Kingdom, every prisoner is entitled to a minimum 30-minute visit to the library every week. So I wonder if I could flag that up there. Is it worth liaising with the Prison Library Service?
128. 00:53:46 um my other question was on page 56 and i was going to ask obviously it has sentimental associations for me and i believe also for councillor eastward an update on the future of the building at harden but i think that's really being covered but if there's anything else you wanted to add chief no no
129. 00:54:10 That's fine. We tried long and hard to get HMP Berwen involved in this particular project because again we saw it as a unique opportunity and again something that we were not aware from our research that any other National Archive had done.
130. 00:54:24 in terms of working um with its local prison population um so unfortunately as you say the turnover of staff made that very difficult to get sort of get that foothold on that continuity but thank you for your feedback around the library perhaps being a more a stable offer so it's something certainly the project board have discussed that we would want
131. 00:54:43 new service to continue to reach out obviously in terms of developing those strategic partnerships so we will take that back and as i say the feasibility um study is being refreshed on the rectory and as i say we will be working with local members and obviously in future update reports we'll be able to give an update on on what's happening in relation to that building once it once hopefully it is vacated
132. 00:55:07 Thank you. Following my own rules, I take my questions one at a time. Page 59. Any update on the future of the staff at both current facilities? Will they all be redeployed to the new facility?
133. 00:55:26 Yes, as I said earlier, the two teams obviously working on their current staffing structures. The new staffing structure for the new building is being developed and there is no intention.
134. 00:55:43 as far as i know that there would be any you know redundancies from that because we've got a long lead in time to this particular project then obviously there's the opportunity through natural turnover to make that transition smoothly from one structure to another you know where there are changes in post people retire you know we could use fixed term contracts for a period of time uh you know but the aim is always to you know avoid um you know any sort of compulsory redundancies
135. 00:56:11 Thank you. Right, another question, which Councillor Healey will probably also be interested in. Page 64, the future of the Badgers set on the site. Any update on the future of the Badgers set? I do not have an update on the future of Badgers set, and I will seek one out for you. We're all very concerned about the Badger, yes, yes.
136. 00:56:38 Thank you. My question on transport has been addressed, actually. And I believe that Councillor Mackie has also addressed my other question, which was about the wellbeing impact assessment. It only applies to Denbyshire County Council. I believe there would be a great deal of overlap, but are we likely to have a flinchier version? Thank you. Yeah, I'll take that back through the board.
137. 00:57:07 Thank you. Those are all of my questions, actually. Any further questions? Any online? No. Councillor Mackay. I'll be very brief. Just in relation to the comment about the use of the jail on page 73 of the document.
138. 00:57:31 under economic development it says the heritage services plans for an expanded attraction at ruthyn jail using the vacated space will have a positive economic impact in ruthyn with increased foot footfall community space cafe local engagement this will attract football to clewood street and improve the economy in this part of town i don't know if that was any any help about what was going to affect them
139. 00:58:01 thank you yes thank you councillor mackie um as i said i used to be based in within archives and there is very little down in that part of the town actually so hopefully it will i mean there isn't a cafe in that part of the town so hopefully it will have a positive impact so um any further comments notes questions um if not can we look at the uh recommendations we have four
140. 00:58:31 which are on page 32. I think I'll move them together. Would anybody like to move the recommendations? Councillor Dave Healy. Anybody would like to second the recommendations? Councillor Marshall. All those in favour of the four recommendations? That's unanimous, Chair. Unanimous. Thank you very much. That was an absolutely excellent discussion. I really learnt a lot from that. Thank you very much.
141. 00:59:00 But can I say I'm sure our colleagues in Denbyshire would be really heartened actually by councillors wanting to actually focus on the impact of communities in Denbyshire as well. And I think that's a real testament to the way in which we work here in North East Wales. We will certainly feed that back. Thank you. Very exciting project.
142. 00:59:28 um agenda item seven young flint share and you will report page 91 report of the chief officer for education and youth oh at this point i'm going to delegate i am going to delegate to ever back entire from our healthy schools team uh and uh darren is here as well and darren's been an integral part of the offer for young flincher so uh over to you ever thank you so much thank you
143. 00:59:55 And so referring to the report, it has been a fruitful year. This is the second full year of young Flintshire with the model of young people 11 to 18 in Flintshire. And as you'll be aware, it is compiled from the Youth Council, as well as representatives across all our secondary settings, including our special and PRU. And this model has evolved this year. So what we have gone through in this academic year is each.
144. 01:00:23 academic term there is a full day that's taking place at Tidori Sant in the chambers that we're sat in now and that consists of workshops in the morning followed by a formal meeting after a lunch um and that's what that those days are based around are the three priorities that we will
145. 01:00:40 come on to in a moment and an opportunity for any other projects that are taking place and other out agencies that want to engage with young people can come and do so then aside from the face-to-face full day events that we do we have developed a monthly model and that's
146. 01:00:57 originally we set out to do a hybrid model so we'd be based here and online but it has evolved to an online monthly meeting opportunity and that's how the involvement and feedback from young people is that it's taken place and that's been really effective another avenue of engaging with young people directly aside from
147. 01:01:16 those meeting opportunities is across and different teams really in education and youth play youth as well as my team helping schools we've been going out to support school councils and as well as youth settings as and where they've requested us to go and support and we've also gone and supported on and participation and learn a voice with school staff as well there going forward
148. 01:01:40 So bringing on to the priorities that I've mentioned, these were identified from the three-issue survey that took place in spring 2025, and they focused on antisocial behaviour and criminal activity, substance use apologies, and lack of shared spaces and entertainment. So they were the three areas that young people identified from the survey that they'd like to focus on, and Young Flintshire as well as Youth Council have gone away and looked at those. In response to that, what took place is in the autumn
149. 01:02:09 face-to-face day meeting. Flinshire Youth Justice Service and Flinshire Sorted ran a number of workshops and very interactive active workshops with different inputs from different interventions and preventions and it was great to see all these different activities taking place across this building and it was really positive feedback from young people understanding what is out there.
150. 01:02:31 and engaging in feedback to support the serious violence duty plan and and all of that side of things that are going on we've also had input from the office of the police and crime commissioner for north rails as well to support on that and um relating to some for some other data that was collected allen's school went and took
151. 01:02:54 um ownership over a community vaping awareness project and work really well with the and town council on that as well so in just as that model that was showcased to the rest of young flinch and they really did appreciate how there was a direct school community awareness around vaping through young people assemblies they did parent evening and
152. 01:03:16 workshops and opportunities for parents to get engaged over vaping and the awareness around that they've also undertaken mold market stands so they're having sort of a really heightened awareness project and young people really found that effective of taking one topic and focusing on school community but also going reaching out to the community so that's the model that other school sessions and settings are really keen to pick up on and so does that
153. 01:03:45 looking at priority one and two and priority three lack of shared spaces and entertainment that is a continuation of one that was also identified in 24 25 and as well as supporting the local and place groups and continued work in partnership with breathler and it's also evolved this year into creative spaces outside in the community but also in the school community and um support on that there's been development of the three issue survey which currently
154. 01:04:15 is not the free issue survey it has evolved with young flinch of development and also supporting the place efficiency assessment so on that note i'm just going to hand over temporarily to darren to talk about the survey as well as the third priority that's evolved with play yeah so one of the things um with the place efficiency survey is obviously statute on us and authority to make sure that we undertake that what we want to be making sure is that we are getting enough of children young people's voices
155. 01:04:44 in flinch a part of that and we were successful last year in the sense of um if we look at ranking within wales we were in within the top five with the number of children young people that engaged as part of that survey and between secondary and primary we were we were just under 1300 and so that was good but what it has shown is that we actually need to get out there and get more children young people voices and so we're going on to um younger flinch here
156. 01:05:14 um it's up to you well we can so what we've done then is we've started attending some of the young flinch and meetings gathering feedback from young people around their opportunities to play as well and i came into one of your meetings and asked all these young people so how many of you play and no hands went about one hand went up very very begrudgingly um and then when we went through well who plays football who plays napole who plays on the nintendo and
157. 01:05:41 whatever they call these digital things lots of hands come up and open some really good conversation then around their local spaces the school yards the school grounds what was missing what was good what was not so good and being able to take that back and feed that back to the relevant people has been really good um so yeah i think that's it for me isn't it
158. 01:06:02 yeah so um with the the three issues that's now evolved into healthy happy safe that's live now it's been developed so there's it's easy access for 11 5 to 11 year olds and in a language that's user friendly for them and then 11 to 25 year olds we're actually looking at a 5 to 25 year old age and spread there and that will support on engaging and topics around safety community and feedback that can be localized to support
159. 01:06:31 port going forward and as um as well as enhancing and identifying project topics for young flinch and young people to i prioritize it's also helping to inform you know portfolios involving play sufficiency and everyone involved there and young people have been involved evolving that process to this point so it's very exciting if i can just jump in there i think the one positive link from it as well is is where participation and play sufficiently now we're starting to sit them side by side
160. 01:07:00 so that both are blending into each other and we've had a conversation recently about there is a place efficiency monitoring group but actually participation is a massive part of the place efficiency monitoring group so we've had discussions you know of potentially merging those into one for partners and stakeholders to all get involved in yes thank you
161. 01:07:19 And so around the priorities there, the main three priorities of work, but there have been additional theme workshops and projects taking place. So the climate change strategy, young people were involved in that in 24-25, and Ben Turpin has been carrying on that and keeping young people up to date. So it's great to see ongoing information sharing and getting involvement. And the project there that's...
162. 01:07:42 being developed for November this year was a Youth Climate and Nature Summit that Ben and his team are going to be leading on and we'll support. We've got the belonging strategy and participation strategies young people have been heavily involved in. Young Flincher directly, but also reaching out further to young people for focus groups on both of those. So it's been really good to have that involvement and their perception and perspective on the involvement of
163. 01:08:09 those really important pieces of work and from a youth council perspective and what the work they've done they've been involved in a number of sub-projects but a recent one and that is really interesting is the development of a youth the youth fund project and that's a funding program where young people can apply for small grants and the flintcher youth council will as part of
164. 01:08:34 young Flintshire are going to be looking at the applications that get put through there and come up with a group decision on what the allocation of funds would go to support and so that could be someone having access to a particular activity outside school or if they're really keen to set up a new group and they need resources for that as well so it's really pleasing to see this all of these opportunities that are coming together and that young people
165. 01:09:04 a direct directing and supporting and taking that facilitation of the priorities and guiding how we can support the facilitation of having their voice heard being that um following the you said we did approach and being able to feed that back and then the next meeting is coming up next wednesday so we've got a very exciting morning haven't you darren that you're going to be leading on
166. 01:09:29 you'd like to pick up on that one yeah so it's based on what we from the last um meeting we attended and the next one is going to be around looking at article 31 and what article 31 means to them you know it's it's ensuring that children have got the rights to play rest and relax what what is their understanding of those three things and then for them then we're going to work with them to start creating you know what would be their ideal space within there
167. 01:09:59 whether it be the local school or the local area that encompasses all those three areas. And we're hoping then that that feedback, as that comes back to us, is something that we can use to discuss with schools because we're getting a lot of schools getting in touch now saying, you know, we need support during lunchtimes and so on and so forth. So the team will go out. Actually, we could be saying, well, your children are telling us this. If you were to get this or if you were to put this out, you know, this would support them. And, you know, we think that in high school,
168. 01:10:28 that you know having an an open yard and a few 4g pitches is exactly what young people want or actually when you sit down with them they want a hell of a lot more they want more spaces and you know that's covered they want benches they want areas you know so it's not all about that being active and and that play it's around having those opportunities to sit relax and rest with their friends as well
169. 01:10:51 And then as previous year's report highlighted, this year would be a focus on what would younger flinch look like. So Darren and his team have been looking at that model and it's been evolving and it's evolving in various ways. And it's also really key around the transition project that we've recently been involved in going forward as well. So if you want to pick up on the younger work now. I think I need to bring you in the sense of Emma's lead.
170. 01:11:20 yeah exceptionally on a lot of this it wasn't for eminent and the young flintcher team that you know where all this gets highlighted that you know this may not have come about um it probably would have at some point but the younger flintcher like i said earlier really you know we we're taking voices of of 11 to 15 11 to 25 year olds we're doing things with them we're making sure that we're we're listening to those voices and we do that as a play team in practice and but actually how can we make sure that what young people are thinking what they want
171. 01:11:49 is you know that we're able to drive that forward for them so we've set up younger flintcher we've done some pilot sessions within schools we've incorporated games we've incorporated data debating debating um which we will give them a subject and it could be a very random subject and they'll debate it but we split this we'll split them your for your against regardless to what you your personal feeling is at the moment this is what you're going to debate and it's all around you know that positive listening
172. 01:12:19 being able to respond positively you know not for them to feel that they are being listened to the response we've had from these have been really good but what that's then allowed is they've they've all of a sudden had this little bit of confidence so when we get them into the smaller groups with the facilitators to try and really draw out what it is they they want to tell us about their local communities and so on that we've actually got a lot from that so what the staff do is the staff will make they will scribe during that
173. 01:12:45 children will put you know they'll do their post-it notes or they'll draw on to flip chart paper that comes back and then we put together an action plan really of what are the key things that are coming through from there and then the idea is once we started action in there we'll revisit the school revisit those children and say look you know you said we did you've we've listened this is what we've done so far and so we are at the early stages of that and but from september onwards and we've had a few roles that have changed and participation has become a main role within
174. 01:13:15 well in both but one for school month communities you know this will drive further as we go through the next academic year thank you any questions well thank you very much darren and emma there's so much of interest in this report um any questions councillor mackay thank you chair thank you right thank you for the report uh i'd like to slow things down a bit okay
175. 01:13:48 You've covered a lot of ground, and I think you covered it too quickly for me. And I think the report went too quickly for me, if you don't mind me saying that. So, 45 young people, that's when it says 104. Could you give me an idea of what these 45 people look like? What age do they cover? How long do they stay with you for?
176. 01:14:16 You say that they have met with you for engaged over the school year. How has that gone? Because I'm aware that young people have certain pressures which they encounter through the school year. So I'd like to know something about that group, who they are, what they are, the problems they encounter, how they go.
177. 01:14:43 I have been involved in young people becoming involved in things, and I am aware of what tends to happen depending upon their age. So that would be my first question. Give me an insight into this group, which is what the report's about. We'll take that first then, Kat. And then I have got a little bit more. Thank you. Absolutely. So I think...
178. 01:15:11 going back to the start of young flinch when we did a pilot and that was over a two-month period and to do the pilot at that point it was the engagement with the schools and with the youth council the youth service to get those young people face to face together and at that point the schools you'd have a member of staff who would bring those young people to the face-to-face events because that's how staff visits would run
179. 01:15:35 And then what we've done is the involvement of young Flintshire is for that communication with those young people directly, I can now contact the young people without going through the school, for example. And so the communication, the engagement side from school learners directly is much higher now because officers are having that direct contact with their parents, their carers, the young people.
180. 01:16:01 So we can do that engagement regularly. We can email, we contact to keep the communication going. For the face-to-face events, we did consult school staff and young people on how it was best to do the face-to-face events in school time, outside school in half term, after school face-to-face. And it's also...
181. 01:16:24 and the outcome of that model that we've gone and done this year and the evolve the involvement of it it's really effective for schools as well so we've got health and well-being leads in our school settings and they um have historically once a term come for a health and well-being lead meeting
182. 01:16:41 So they will bring the young people to the face-to-face events in school time as young people preferred that model and it's saving on supply costs for school and having lots of staff coming out. So from the communication side, that's how we are arranging those opportunities. And we are also having face-to-face events in half term in the Easter holidays where we can, as officers, oversee evolve and coordinate with those families and carers.
183. 01:17:09 young people congregating and meeting here for those activities and so that's about trying that's around how we are meeting them and keeping the regular communication and organizing those sessions in school and out of school the young people themselves out of the 45 involved we are looking at having there we've got three learners from each
184. 01:17:31 secondary setting from the school council representatives and at a time two stroke three will attend those meetings of the face-to-face and then we've got representatives from youth council and youth council and is open for all young people from flintcher and the age range we're looking at specifically for young flinch is 11 to 18 and so we have young people currently 12 to 18 who attend on those members
185. 01:18:02 so it's the that's what we're looking at the young people who are coming and the representation across youth council and the school councils there might be more information that's needed from that yes councillor murkey thank you thank you chair 105 um uh on page 94 uh remembering that the chair asked us to give page numbers um you list um
186. 01:18:32 there's been a survey 253 responses which must be good for any survey and we've got three main areas that came out of that one is anti-social behavior and criminal activity and then substance misuse and the third one is lack of shared spaces entertainment
187. 01:18:57 If I go further on, paragraph 106, you describe how you covered the first of those with various information. And also, I don't feel that we've actually been told about this shared spaces.
188. 01:19:24 you talk about the play development team input um but i'm not sure that they are actually they may be providing the sort of spaces that young people are looking for but i don't i didn't get that from reading the report perhaps i didn't get it right um happy healthy safe survey analysis basically i'm saying what are these shared safe spaces
189. 01:19:52 that the young people have been identified to the young people, which is what they asked for in the survey. That's really my question, I think. Thank you for that question.
190. 01:20:06 and so currently we have evolved three issue survey and the previous years it has gone out in the spring with the involvement of the healthy happy safe and because this time round and the healthy happy safe has actually gone under the consultation engagement hub so if you go on the function county website we've now gone through smart survey so we have changed the approach which has meant that it's come out a bit later than what we would previously have scheduled it to go out of so for priority three it is not fully um
191. 01:20:36 completed i suppose there's not been as much progress because we are currently with that looking at that with the survey there is previous
192. 01:20:44 um work that started on something very similar to do with spaces in 24 25 and that has continued to take place i can give an example of that now so flint high school has engaged with their local community team that grethburg oversee and and funnily enough it's being hosted this afternoon in flint high school their most recent group and myself and darren not attending but and we've got other members who are and what they do is they work with other um
193. 01:21:13 teams other agencies in the community they engage with young people and there's young people from flint high and as well as the school council lead involved in that group and they are doing the sort of the local direct work with young flinture reps with those young people on the directly community spaces these um working groups there's not one for every local area in flint shed there are more as time is evolving but it's those community groups and bridging
194. 01:21:41 those links with young people that is having impact on the one that was on this similar priority that was identified to 24 25 so what we could do to and demonstrate further work in that area is provide a summary of what engagement young people have had on the ground level or the local level in these communities where they have been bridged up if that's it
195. 01:22:05 to sort of explain that further and so with currently the survey is live and it's going live until the third of july and the young flincher will be looking at the data so far next wednesday to sort of see what's being picked up and it it might help that we share the survey questions as an action so you can see what sort of the questions that are are being asked to give a bit of insight into what the information will be places and and it's going to provide further information around
196. 01:22:34 the spaces of those young people and how they feel in their communities from the information that's collated there and so you've got that and from the place efficiency link it's opening that channel it's raising awareness with young people with families with communities on the power of that information and how important it is across all portfolios to you know take note to use this data that's being collected to help inform the actions for place efficiency and how services operate going forward
197. 01:23:04 i'm engaging using that as a participation input i think it's important just to note there sorry just quick it's important to note there as well is that through all this work we are linking up a lot of these surveys so rather than having five six different surveys asking exactly the same thing
198. 01:23:20 we are we are linking them all up together now so you know it's it's definitely a work in progress on that as well isn't it yeah and to just um fully clarify another development in the operation of young flinchers last year the members ran until the end of july so once schools closed we did have the influential members come into tdw sound to do some project work
199. 01:23:41 But when we get Young Flincher members signing up, there is a sort of a period of how they're working with us under those remits. This year, the feedback was to extend it to the end of August. So over the summer, there's more opportunity for young people to get involved with Young Flincher, Flincher projects, council projects that are operating in, in the summer.
200. 01:24:05 If they would like to add things to their CV, they want to get involved a bit more, come and see, come and get involved with other projects. So we have extended the membership until the end of August. So we can continue that communication with them in the summer holidays, where previously from learners' perspective, it would have been that school staff link to engage with learners in a school. Whereas now the module is we've got learners across all the schools who...
201. 01:24:30 we can still engage with who they've got the opportunity to still get involved directly until the end of august when schools aren't necessarily you know doing that every day um i think what councillor mackie's possibly asking is what's the difference what's the impact where is it making a difference i think that's what you that's what you're fundamentally asking councillor mackie aren't you and i think you know what the team are trying to say to you is that in order to get to the point where
202. 01:25:01 tangible differences are made there has to be a huge amount of engagement with young people first to really understand you know what their issues are what the issues are in their particular community what's working well there what isn't working well so that's why there is such an emphasis on really having those high levels of engagement but whether we could help and i suppose as well then it's how how that information is then fed into services like wetler so they may be offering i don't know
203. 01:25:27 something on the mug a picture on a wednesday night in flint but actually if young people are not using it why are they not using it and then an opportunity then for those discussions with wetler about how they may be able to change their offer so is there anything really tangible that we can share with the committee where you said and we did that something particularly around you know the places that young people hang out i think that was the an issue as well perhaps you didn't reference actually it's a change in use of language older
204. 01:25:55 children don't like the word play they associate that with younger children so i think you've even been having conversations is how you describe that activity in a language that for those sort of more teenage years is a bit more cool i've encouraged them but is there anything tangible that we can share with the committee that as a result of that engagement something different has happened i can give you two quick examples um we've got a provision up in pettiford
205. 01:26:27 that was started it was a summer play scheme originally and through talking to young people of that area not necessarily the children because there was young people that were attending they felt they had nothing in that area there was nothing for them to do throughout the year throughout the winter months and so on so we committed and we saw some funding we committed to putting a provision up there and it's a small rural community up there and we can get 25 to 35 kids there every week and actually
206. 01:26:54 10 to 12 of them are young people from the age of 12 to 15 you know and they enjoy they engage every single week the staff that go always come back with some really positive conversations they've had with them you know and so on and equally the same in in the most scenario you know we've got a provision there we have young people that come to attend them they come but you know they come they they take part they engage with staff you know and we've we've committed
207. 01:27:20 to keeping them services there purely for that reason because there is a want and i think like claire was saying earlier they don't use the word play they are coming to hang out or actually they're doing exactly the same as what the younger kids are doing but they're just doing it in a different way they're doing it in their way aren't they so there is that there is that ongoing work
208. 01:27:38 we're starting some consultation work down in the queen's ferry area with t callon and over the next couple of months you know you know we'll work with those young people that attend there and those children attend there to see what what sort of provision is that they want in that area and what it looks like because it's important that we know what they want and how they want it to look like than us just jumping in and putting the provision in there
209. 01:28:06 Councillor Mackey, have you finished? Did you have any more questions? Right, thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor Mackey. Councillor Fran Lister. Deal. I love this. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the report, and I especially enjoyed hearing you speak about, well, the collegiate way that it's working and how it's grown so much since this time last year. I think we might have had a young person here talking about Young Flintshire last year, and it just feels like this year that that's moved on again.
210. 01:28:34 and that the whole of young furniture is growing in the way that you would want it to grow and um like you were just saying now about tangible results we don't necessarily need them right now what we need we don't want to pay lip service to what the children want we want to really listen and make sure that there's long term and and it done properly isn't it and i feel i feel very confident that you guys are achieving that um so thank you i i had one question it was quite similar to uh councillor mackie's actually about the 45 young people i'm concerned is that
211. 01:29:04 representative fully representative of society have you got like equal number boys and girls minority groups represented is it all from schools or are you able to include children who are perhaps home educated or children who might be receiving education you know through through a different way and special needs as well and just yeah I just really want to know because I know you know through schools if you pick your
212. 01:29:29 if every school is going through their school council you've generally got very engaged children already that want to come and do this which is great but really for young flincher we want to we want to make sure that every young people feels listened to not just the ones that would be listened to anyway if that makes sense um so yeah we're just wanting a little bit more information about the diversity of the group really um and then oh actually i'll come at the second point so far removed from that do you mind answering that one first and then i'll come back
213. 01:29:57 Thank you. We'll come back to second question, Councillor Lister. Thank you. Yes, so we can provide that information in more detail. From the model, we've got the school representative to attend. Youth Council is, does, sorry, the setup of Youth Council is that anybody can apply to Youth Council in Flintshire. The youth service team do also go directly and reach out to other.
214. 01:30:27 young people groups or the officers who work directly with young people who may not directly engage with school or they are having support elsewhere there are areas where there is more representation or high representation than other young people groups and that we're aware of and there's also plans in place and how to strengthen that engagement but ultimately all the information that is
215. 01:30:54 pulled or collated from the events just get shared something that i may not have highlighted in the report as i'm talking about the reports is how this year we do now have a full website it was just school mice hovered learners who led on the development of the logo and they actually led workshops for young flintcher on that and it's a stunning logo and there's so much information behind
216. 01:31:18 the journey of how it got there as well but from a sort of a branding perspective a young flint should the identity they've got a logo they've got their web pages and we're now um we've also
217. 01:31:31 they've also been designing merch and not merchandise but you know like pens and promotional things and things for them to help take notes and things like that as well so having that ownership of the identity of young flinch is there so it's growing in that respect as well and being known more and so you've got that side of it so there is from a representation perspective yes we do go through school council and it's not it was in that 24 25 and the pilot apgs who
218. 01:32:00 the plan model that you need to set up was the associate people governors but young people fed back at the end of 24 25 that if it's the apgs they tend to be the ones who are doing the exams they have a lot going on in school so don't they suggested not streamlining it to be apg so 25 26 has been anybody on school council it can be an apg but if you nominate amongst your school council reps of who
219. 01:32:25 and those those representatives can be it's a bit more open then you look you're getting more breadth of the age range as well because apgs do tend to be year 10 upwards and we do have some young learners and young people on the group
220. 01:32:39 and from youth council not everybody on youth council is comfortable in a formal environment or coming to face to face so youth council operate the youth and the content that's raised from their workshops or their meetings gets fed through we have had representation this year from youth council members and it's almost just because the model is in place and young people are understanding what that model is and so we seem to be having um building up these relationships and it is it's quite um
221. 01:33:06 a big thing building relationships when you're not seeing everybody day to day as you would in a school setting so it's important you know from that first face-to-face event in the year each year of influential that there is team building that the you know it's not very very formal directly to begin with and the relationships that get formed and the rapport even from straight away and the engagement officers bring so that everybody does
222. 01:33:31 mingle and get on with the projects is is fantastic and even to the point in after lunch when we have different representation from learners chairing the meetings on the day so it's not as though they didn't want a formal and chair vice chair set up of the regular you know every time it's the same chair they switch so it's um very fluid
223. 01:33:55 Councillor Lister, you have another question? Yeah, I've got a couple. Jotting notes down. I really do like the idea of the younger Flincher as well. And I was just, you know, can you see younger Flincher becoming to the same extent as young Flincher? Being a parent of a nine and seven year old, they have a lot to say and they have a lot of thoughts and to give them that forum.
224. 01:34:17 would i think be um absolutely brilliant um so yeah i'm just um interested where the younger flincher could grow to to this kind of thing as well and then just finally on that being a parent of a seven and nine year old um i noticed the survey the other day it's just gone out hasn't it on the council's website is that the healthy
225. 01:34:37 happy healthy safe survey and i noticed it on my social media after the children have gone to bed i went to click on it and then i realized it was something that they needed to fill out so i'm just wondering how do you make sure that that survey gets to those to those pupils because by the time i woke up in the morning i'd forgotten and we still not done it kind of thing so it would be useful if schools could perhaps share it as part of their mailing out so that that we do see it at the same time at a time that's appropriate for them to to fill out um and finally
226. 01:35:07 your work your workshop next week is it next week that's planned is there any chance that elected members can observe if we're dbs for flinching we have s still observing
227. 01:35:27 No, not keep away, but what we don't want to do is to overface the young people with too many adults in the room. It just so happens that when Estyn indicated the two dates for them to come and do their preliminary visits as part of the inspection process, that the day of the young Flintshire, which obviously has been a key strategic priority for us over the last two years, were in session. So I did discuss with the lead inspector, because normally they would interview a group of young people anyway as part of that process.
228. 01:35:56 So it's serendipitous. It wasn't formally created to happen on the same day, but it has. So actually, there will be members of Eston observing on that day. So I think to have too many adults in the room might be, but I mean, I'm sure perhaps we could have a conversation perhaps even...
229. 01:36:15 perhaps with one or two, because I think, again, that would demonstrate the commitment of our elected members on this committee to the Young Flintshire proposal. So, Emma, I'm more than happy to have that conversation. And perhaps if we could have perhaps even just one or two nominations from the committee who would be available next Wednesday morning, you know, if young people, because I've said to Emma as well, it's really important, obviously, that we advise the young people that there are going to be adult visitors to their meeting and that they are comfortable with that.
230. 01:36:43 but i i would be more than happy to try and find a way to facilitate as long as it's not too many i put my name forward if that is because i just sounded just so brilliant and so in tune with yeah the sort of challenges we face with young people to listen to how you work with them and it does just sound very exciting and i'd like to see it but if it is possible um yeah and i guess all of this links quite nicely too
231. 01:37:12 what I said right at the start about the social media ban or potentially. And I think Young Flinch will have a big part to play in, yeah, in kind of addressing those difficulties and trying to capitalise on, you know, the benefits of not being on your social media, doing nothing all the time and making sure that the groups that are on offer...
232. 01:37:33 meet the needs of the children that we've got now because society has changed a lot since the rise of social media and perhaps the choir you know whatever it is that was popular before the rise of social media isn't the same thing isn't appropriate now but to use flinch young flinch's involvement and to be really prepared for that so that there isn't that period when the ban hits i'm quite i'm very concerned i think that when the ban is announced that we isolate a lot of children that have
233. 01:38:00 come to learn how to socialize and be friends through a computer screen and don't know how to do it and i think the council has a really important role to make sure that that we we help children through that and and yeah thank you thank you was there anything you want to pick out from council list just comments thank you just on the younger flintcher um model so we are looking at how we can evolve that to become something similar to young flintcher but obviously the 69 primary schools so
234. 01:38:30 it's quite a bigger thing so we are looking at potentially putting that as a cluster model to begin with and then we'll you know be a bit of a tiered thing i think it's going to be but we are definitely looking at it because you know when i've sat in them young young flinching meetings you know it is that impact of being here seeing people seeing how you selected members you know they might not see it but they've got that feel of how our council and so on works and how voices can be can be heard so uh yeah so we will be working on that
235. 01:38:59 I think Councillor Eastwood wants to come in at this point. Thank you. Yeah, I really do hope that the younger Flincher does continue to grow as it does. But of course, the children in our primary schools can take credit for starting young Flincher because it was their visits to me as chair that gave us the seed of the idea to have and to develop something for the secondary school children as well, didn't they? So we can thank the primary school.
236. 01:39:27 children already for their contributions whilst i've got the mic i'd also like to commend the team because you work incredibly hard as always but as has already been picked out this isn't a lip service exercise is it um i think back to the first meeting that we held the pilot one and to the the more recent ones that we have and the change has been significant hasn't it and that's all come about because you've actually listened to the young people you've listened to the
237. 01:39:57 teachers and you've really worked hard to bridge the obstacles to actually reaching out to all our young people so the people who are home educated the needs that you know so much thought goes into how to reach everybody not just the ones who are in school so i'd just like to formally say
238. 01:40:19 i'm really looking forward to meeting next week i can do this one and um to carry on because i can see that feeding into the participation strategy into the belonging strategy into all the different officers working together to kind of increase that engagement with our young people and i think that if you go to 104 the fact that the officers and young people want to spend more time in these meetings is a true testament
239. 01:40:46 to how it's working and how they feel their voices are being heard it's worth their while to engage fully with the council it's just worthwhile for the officers to engage fully with young people and i think that's the best testament so you um anything else councillor list uh no thank you councillor pam banks online welcome pam thank you chair um first of all i'd like to congratulate them
240. 01:41:18 the team on what they do in Mostyn and Penafort. The amount of children that go to the clubs that they have there is absolutely amazing and they're all happy, they all enjoy it and as you know there ain't really a lot in Mostyn or Penafort for the children to do and they do look forward to it.
241. 01:41:47 you know when it's on so thank you for that the other thing is chair i'm gonna have to leave because i have to go to my dad um and give him his medication um but it's been a interesting meeting even though i hated school but um yeah thank you very much for for your help thank you chair
242. 01:42:12 Thank you, Pam. Yes, I know your dad, your dad's lovely. So anybody, any comments on Councillor Banks? Just in response to communications regarding the survey, schools have been signposted the survey to cascade that information out. It has been on social media and we will re-cascade that information as well.
243. 01:42:42 there is communication around and if i can just come back to council of banks just as a thank you as well for my team for the support that we get from you know both those community councils as well i know the team really enjoy their time up in those areas so it's good to hear that you know you're hearing other children and young people are enjoying too thank you very much yeah you do do feel free to go when you have to pam so uh councillor alan marshall uh thank you jeff uh thank you very much for this report um i don't
244. 01:43:13 hope you don't mind if i be a little parochial um my ward is tried in so we're high up in the mountains a bit of a plateau um people can ride their bikes bit on the flat bit but when they go down downhill to coach halloween and stuff like that they've got to get back again on a very steep hill um so we've got two schools in the village um and the scolterig
245. 01:43:42 and the children there go off to mascaramon mold allen and castle allen secondary school we used to have a youth club that got closed a couple of years ago we've got a playing field which probably needs to be renamed the hanging out field maybe there's the playing facilities there are determined by middle age
246. 01:44:12 members on the community council they decide what they guys are going to play in there is a sheltered area which i think used to have solar powered lights broken years ago there's a mugger which is a playing field area no lights on that so in winter can't do anything um the devil has plenty of worker idle hands as we know
247. 01:44:41 the we've got some very good children in the village um and really what i'm going to ask you is have you dealt with the the children from these schools about thriving yourself because the community council and i i don't get any feedback the community council is looking for projects to do to enhance the village the playing area or the hanging out area
248. 01:45:10 you know sort of could we put the lights in solar power lights in this little sheltered area um and that's about it yeah if you can help us with that thank you thank you any comments we do do we have been into a scotteryg um quite a few times um scot park obviously i know the head there as well so i can open some conversations with them on if we can maybe go in and do a bit of consultation i think we need to know from the community council what they want from that and you know when
249. 01:45:42 with regards to provision we um send an email out to all town and community councils in november october november and to ask if anyone wanted to fund the summer play scheme within their communities and you know so there's that opportunity as well through obviously we don't receive a budget so you know provisions in communities are based on you know funding and so
250. 01:46:09 we haven't got one up in the trading area but you know we we are open for discussions if there is a need for that area as well yeah we've had the school package and children come with with a headmaster and saying what they'd like you know they've got concerns about road safety outside the the schools they wanted the defibrillator broke so sent off to germany for repair so they wanted that back and they've had a few other things
251. 01:46:43 um i forgot what i was gonna say um yeah so if if you can give us any idea oh fit fed and red we've got that so is that to do with you no this is somebody else so we welcome any sort of thing like that because we we help support that as well thank you
252. 01:47:08 Perhaps you could contact Councillor Marshall if you know of anything that would help. So I have no further speakers noted. So I do have a couple of questions actually.
253. 01:47:20 um first one uh which goes back to councillor mackie's point uh page 94 uh 105 the lack of shared spaces and entertainment we want more youth friendly spaces where young people can socialize enjoy activities without feeling unwanted or unsafe um i did want to flag up at this point and darren will know this uh that he's recently along with matt from the youth service
254. 01:47:48 helped to launch a tremendously successful youth club at trelawney village hall and this is in partnership with the trelawney community association it's run by enthusiastic parents and volunteers but matt and darren have been extremely helpful in helping to find resources and funding and guidelines and advice and also training
255. 01:48:15 I've heard excellent reports as well of a similar youth club in Broughton, which Councillor Chrissie Gee was telling me about. So I suppose my question here, could you assist other councillors in setting up similar facilities?
256. 01:48:36 in in there in their wards um i just want to say here i was a tetralounded youth club a couple of weeks ago i pop in about once a month and during the whole two hours i was there not one single young person pulled their phone out and looked at it there was such a variety of activities for them to do and for two hours not a single one of them looked at their mobile phone
257. 01:49:02 um so is this something that you might be able to assist councillors to set up if there is you know enthusiasm a place and volunteers and so on thank you yeah i think that chilland runs a prime example on that you know it's we know capacity is not what it used to be and we want to support more provision for young people out there and if we've got budding volunteers within communities like the one in chelounid of course we'll come out and support you know
258. 01:49:29 may not be able to always offer financial support but when it comes to things like training resources you know advice support that we can we can offer them so yeah it's definitely a conversation we'd be happy to have i mean i do recommend this model to anybody who's uh interested uh my second question is on page 97 and it is to do with
259. 01:49:52 Our youth club at Trelawney, but also I know that Councillor Chrissie Gee is interested in this. The youth fund, paragraph 1.111, where young people can apply for small grants. These applications are discussed by the Flinshire Youth Council, available to individuals and groups. I do think that's something that some of the people who attend our youth club might be interested in.
260. 01:50:21 And we were wondering who the contact would be for that and what the process would be. Yeah, so that is a new initiative. It is currently set up in place, but it's not officially been launched. And the intention is it to fully launch in September, but they will be doing a pilot in the upcoming months. So I can put you directly in contact with the officers who are overseeing it to explore that.
261. 01:50:52 promotional guidance and um information more that we can send on as well for that lovely i'm very interested in seeing that so i know with councillor chrissy g and possibly councillor marshall but i will bring that back to this committee at a later stage so thank you those were my two questions um i have no further questions so um
262. 01:51:15 noted uh so if we can look at we have one recommendation on page 91 that we note the contents of the report and we're assured by the progress of the participation model uh do we have somebody who'd like to move that councillor lister yes yes and uh do we need to vote on that or can we just councillor list is moving that we just need a seconder for that
263. 01:51:43 All right. Anybody like to second Councillor Lister's recommendation that we change assured to congratulate Councillor Gladys Healy? All in favour? Thank you. Unanimous, Chair. Unanimous. So if we can go back then to our amended recommendation, can I have a mover for that? Oh, I think you took that one. All right then. That was great. Right.
264. 01:52:08 now then it's five to four um so i suggest that we only have one item left but i do suggest we take a comfort break at this point uh ten minutes if we come back at five past four is that sufficient for everybody are you everybody okay with ten minutes right lovely thank you very much i'll see you at uh five past four thank you emma check what it was that you were assemble if possible thank you
265. 02:04:19 paid the wheel sorry we're back um we're back right welcome back everybody and thank you for an excellent first uh first half of the meeting
266. 02:05:14 We're moving on to Agenda Item 8, which we'll find on page 103. Now, I will say this very carefully. Welsh Network of Health and Wellbeing Promoting Schools and Healthy and Sustainable Preschool Scheme. Claire Sinnott can't be with us this afternoon, so this is going to be presented to us by Emma McIntyre. So, thank you very much, Emma. Thank you.
267. 02:05:42 Yes it's a meeting report covering various avenues that the Health Promoting Schools team support on and just like to highlight first of all that the Promoting Schools programme has been in place for over 20 years and it's currently awaiting another launch of the focus areas and the new standards and in the previous report 2024 we did anticipate that the national framework would be launched April 2025 however it has been delayed.
268. 02:06:12 and we are still awaiting final sign-off from welsh government following the recent change in government how our current revised implementation timeline has been extended with the anticipation and deadline or starting point will be october this year
269. 02:06:28 so in the meantime we continue to provide consistent high quality support to all school settings to ensure that learner and staff health and well-being remain central to do that and that's aligning with the national strategic priorities set by public health wales and a shared set regional priorities against six north wales local authorities that are in the report and we summarize where we've gone with those avenues as well
270. 02:06:54 and with our local priorities 25 26 that does including supporting the national standards and so we have been involved in that process and the refinement getting ready for the implementation as well as a big focus on the whole school approach to emotional and mental well-being and which we're really proud with the continuation and support of school settings and the engagement that we've got from school communities with that so with the whole school approach for emotional mental well-being framework
271. 02:07:22 Currently, we have over half of schools in Flintshire that have begun the second cycle of this process. So 58% have reviewed and updated their self-assessment audits. So they are going again through the audit process of looking at health and wellbeing, specifically the wellbeing of their school communities to set objectives that they can focus on across there. And 26% have reviewed and updated actions and implementation plans as well.
272. 02:07:51 continuing forward with this we're going to ensure that every school has not only got the robust action plan for this program but is working actively towards delivering it as part of a sustained whole school approach to health and well-being so currently and the intention is that this program will continue with the new standards coming in and with well-being being the central focus today tomorrow and going forwards
273. 02:08:15 staff well-being has been a focus area um across 24 to 26 following the analysis from all the audits across our settings so to support schools with staff well-being being a particularly focus area and we supported on the development of staff and well-being toolkits and we've worked collaboratively across other
274. 02:08:35 and national agencies local agencies and teams within the portfolio and the council on a signposting resource that all schools now have available electronically and visually on their settings to signpost staff to
275. 02:08:50 And the key thing I like to highlight about the support of relationships and sexuality education is we have been working with a clusters approach with all the school settings previously to support the RSC codes and implementation, the awareness, the training of staff in settings and the development of creative lessons.
276. 02:09:08 from october 2025 there was the introduction of the new welsh government rsc provider coach and so we have worked directly and very closely with them looking at the delivery model that they're providing is um ensuring that alignment and also we're not avoiding that you avoiding duplication of support so the majority of rsc support is now going through that avenue for schools and then we are keeping up to date on the progress of that and liaising with our culture advisor for venture so
277. 02:09:39 the journey from schools and cluster support with the focus of rsc has evolved and it's now developed into health and well-being and focus cluster approach and we've had two meetings as such this academic year we've been working with um our partners so we've got vcu hb health protection education support for staff well-being and that's we've had a lot of engagement workshops there we've also had um
278. 02:10:05 darren's team play development team coming in and doing a focus on that risky play looking at play that and what play looks like in school settings which has been a really big uptake of school staff interest on that and taking it back to their settings going forward
279. 02:10:22 A focus area with food and nutrition. In the last few years, we have done a lot of work with food and drink provision in school settings with Learner Voice and work closely with secondary school representation learners coming together to look at that and develop menus and that engagement and healthy eating messaging. And supported schools establishing, in some cases, re-establishing stag groups, their school nutrition action groups as well, where they will look at their...
280. 02:10:50 community focused messaging and also feed into the governor's report around healthy eating messaging as well the food and fun program in flint share is still continued to be a success with its launch 2018 and through that we currently continue to expand so this year we've got 11 schools seven primary two special and two secondary with 12 cohorts confirmed this summer
281. 02:11:15 which is demonstrating the brilliant engagement and ongoing commitment to supporting learner health and well-being and also the impact that can have on transition and the journey from primary to secondary schools as well and the relationships that get built. SHERN has been in place and we've been supporting SHERN in Flintshire since 2017 and our secondary schools continue to participate in the survey on a two-year cycle this has been further strengthened
282. 02:11:43 and with our primary introduction of SHERN and we're currently and at the moment nationally there's an invitation to uptake for this autumn which is the third round of primary SHERN. In the last primary SHERN in 2024 we had 10 out of our 64 primary schools that took part
283. 02:12:01 and so the invitation now is to increase that going forward however what's really interesting about the primary shurn offer is that it does focus a lot on transition questions and the schools that have been engaged with shurn primary have already started these relationships with their secondary on transition and using that data and recently we've had primary schools share their experiences of how that data is helping the transition program with their secondary and supporting learners secondary data and
284. 02:12:31 identified that substance misuse is currently a key priority going forward and it's interesting that aligns with the information that's coming from young people in the survey that young flintcher and took part supported on last year so we're continuing to focus on that going forward and um vaping has also increased as well and over the last few years with cannabis offer too so we're going to continue our work with jamie warr and nikki evans and from
285. 02:13:00 youth justice and lunch sorted looking ahead and so we're really keen to improve the primary sharing relationships and to promote that and it has gone across the courses as well so our secondary health and well-being leads are supporting primaries with that side of things our engagement with healthy and sustainable preschool scheme has continued to grow with 55 settings now participating in 2026.
286. 02:13:27 So that's been increasingly aligned also with Curriculum for Wales with the input that we're supporting there and the Flying Start frameworks. As a result, the review of the scheme is currently underway as well, so just acknowledge where it's up to, if there's any amendments that can be made, and to fully integrate wiser with early years' priorities. Across partnership working...
287. 02:13:50 with national frameworks is key across all of the work that we're doing and it's also as well as national partners it's working collaboratively within the council and on different projects as well and collaborative working has definitely enhanced in the last few years we have been working on and coming to the end of the key the anti-bullying program working with a number of primary schools and that's been shown as a very proactive preventative approach
288. 02:14:17 adopted through our primary provision and we're just at the point now of collating all of that information and to feed back and looking at continuing some of those aspects going forward next year period dignity and has evolved dramatically and what we've been doing there is looking at the period proud flinch of branding adopting that from welsh government what a big substantial development there is the outreach to communities that we have developed
289. 02:14:48 over the last few years so for example from 24 to 25 we've been working with 81 community settings and that's um looking at food bank provision sports centers and now um 25 26 we increased dramatically to 132 and again that's by outreach looking at communities and using quite an innovative approach to allocating funds for period dignity grants as an e-voucher um system rather than putting the money directly
290. 02:15:16 into the accounts per se we've also been doing a lot of outreach work as well so we predominantly we do support school settings but we've been doing more community work we've been attending markets and attending libraries and promoting our um healthy school scheme but also period proud flintcher and starting these conversations in the community about the provision that we can support children and families and young people and continuing from there
291. 02:15:45 with the young flinch that we've been speaking about already this afternoon we've been working collaboratively across teams to support on that as well and it's been really good to see that engagement we've also been supporting on the policy development across school settings as with other teams across the council and particularly something that's been asked for for schools during this academic year's well-being policy and that's currently near
292. 02:16:10 to the end and ready to send out but we are just tweaking it and we've had feedback along the way and it's important that that came from the audit from the whole school and emotional mental well-being that schools have identified that well-being policy would be really effective use and support for their setting while writing one individually so that's been a key development that's also supporting the belonging strategy and focusing on relationship side and relational approaches
293. 02:16:38 To support all of education in youth and schools, we've undertaken a comprehensive audit of essential model policies for schools and a central Padlet resource has been developed. And this has supported schools to have easy access to all key policies in one place with the policies where there are model ones from the authority that they can adopt. And we've had really positive feedback from head teachers, SLT and staff in school settings saying what is...
294. 02:17:05 an effective use is having all these policies in one place so from an operation perspective it's been a very helpful exercise all around and it's supporting schools in not working out on their governing bodies and looking at policies where how what and structuring it that way as well so hopefully in a nutshell that summarized a very messy report but i'm happy to take questions
295. 02:17:28 Thank you very much for that, Emma, particularly doing it at the last minute. And again, actually, there's loads of really interesting things in this report. So where do we have any questions? Councillor Fran Lister. Thank you. It was a very meaty report and there's just absolutely loads in here. I don't know whether it might be.
296. 02:18:01 helpful to break some of those down into different reports in future because it was always like i'm going to focus in on one thing and loads of detail and and you still you can't really address everything within this report but um sorry i am going to focus in on on 1.06 the staff well-being um one and we talked previously about young fincher doing everything like
297. 02:18:22 thoroughly and and really well and and not paying lip service i feel that this pays lip service to a really ingrate a very serious problem in schools at the moment um having posters up to remind staff of about uh well-being resources does not change the fact that a lot of staff in school are under immense pressure due to diminishing resources and that's that's a political decision and that's you know that's on us really and i just
298. 02:18:48 I just feel like, yeah, that particular part of this report is paying lip service to a problem that we need to look at in a lot more detail about how we look after our staff in our school. Our head teachers, a lot of us are governors in school. We know exactly what the pressures that they are working under and it's just not sustainable. And if we haven't got a good workforce.
299. 02:19:14 We're not going to be educating our children in the best way. So, yeah, that's really all I wanted to say. But thank you for the report because there's so much other lovely stuff that's going on. The very first bit, oh, where was it? Yeah, the relationships and sexual education. I almost feel that that is a report in its own right to find out a little bit more about what's going on in schools. And it would be nice to have that in the future, maybe. Thank you. Thank you. Does anybody wish to respond? Emma, thank you.
300. 02:19:45 Thank you. I think regarding staff well-being and the poster itself, the signposting to the author and the resources and provision to support staff from that poster, aside from the poster, has been cascaded. We have had agencies come in. Education support has been really crucial to some of our school settings. So the educational support, if you're not aware, and I can signpost further information, provides coaching.
301. 02:20:13 six sessions for leadership middle managers and above they can come in and work with schools directly and they are doing pilots in some of our secondaries and primaries at the moment where they will go in and speak to us they will support schools with a detailed survey of specific questions and to find out staff stresses and areas to focus on and we've currently last week had a secondary where education support team went in and spent two hours with the whole of the slt team to really just home in on staff well-being and it is a very um big
302. 02:20:42 important and sensitive topic and that's where teams such as education support have got that funding from Welsh Government have got that time allocation and will go and have availability to go into all schools to do that and all that needs to happen is signposting schools to them or schools can go directly to education support
303. 02:21:06 statistics are given to local authorities on the uptake of that and we are in regular contact monthly contact with education support to see what what what's the feedback generally without schools being named and the areas that are being picked up on and things like that so there is there are avenues there it's not being taken by all schools but there is provision there and we do our best to raise that awareness but from the feedback we've had on the ground from staff
304. 02:21:32 of their experience with those support avenues as well as having the provision and of the school counseling team the psych team there's so many avenues that schools are utilizing as a school community but also as individuals that are out there and so within the means that we have the you know within education and youth provision and occupational health
305. 02:21:55 others uptake and there is provision but it is it's like you say it's with messaging it's getting the communication you can have a poster but is the poster going to have that direct impact of connecting and more to that i mean that's wonderful that the resources are there to treat the symptoms of a problem that is deeper than just there are too many members of staff um experiencing difficulties in their well-being for it to be oh let's just
306. 02:22:23 give you know this is your support when you're when you're under this pressure it's about how we choose to resource our schools and yeah and try to alleviate the immense pressure that a lot of the staff are under because of underfunding um and and because of like extra things that are coming into education now that haven't had to necessarily be addressed you know there's just a lot of pressures aren't there um and it's about looking at how as a council
307. 02:22:51 We resource schools so that they can cope with that better rather than just treating the problem, you know, the symptoms of people who are struggling with their well-being. OK, thank you. Thanks, Councillor Lister. Thanks, Emma. I mean, I do know when I talk to colleagues, which is some years ago, we have access to a lot of resources, including the emotional.
308. 02:23:16 well-being hub but this in itself could be the subject of the whole report couldn't it so um councillor dave healy thank you i appreciate it could be well perhaps it should be the um subject of a further report and perhaps as a as a part two i i'd like to support councillor lister in her flagging up
309. 02:23:44 the issue of staff well-being and i think that there are cases of staff that are looking for some more support in addition to signposting and in particular i would say that some of our head teachers particularly with the budget cuts that they're having to make and the staffing restructuring that could lead to redundancies or people leave losing their tlr or whatever
310. 02:24:14 i think they are under immense pressure with regards to this and the possible backlash from staff and from unions and i think one of the things that is being requested on the part of some head teachers at any rate is perhaps it would be helpful if the authority strengthen their hand in this difficult situation by having say
311. 02:24:45 a staffing template for schools for a particular size so that if you're a school of this size you have this number of staff this number of TLRs in a significant secondary school for example you have this number of people who are IT assistants or IT coordinators or whatever people non-teaching staff or what have you
312. 02:25:14 that there is some template for a staffing structure that could stefan's strengthen the hands of their head teachers in making the difficult decisions that they're having to do in restructuring their staffing in order to move towards make some moves towards having a balanced budget uh because that is i think a major staffing thing
313. 02:25:45 What I've found in schools in Wales is that, I think it's embedded now and it can't be altered, there is a different staffing structure in secondary schools than there is from schools in England, and it is to some extent more expensive. And that is because there's a tendency to have another tier of middle management, learning area managers or heads of faculty,
314. 02:26:16 I was one, head of humanities over geography, religious studies, RE, and other subjects as well. And then I became a learning area manager doing the same thing. But when I moved, when I was in two English schools in England, they didn't have that. The heads liaised directly were heads of departments, and they didn't have that additional level of management. So it works, but...
315. 02:26:44 Within the context of Wales, what you've got is areas of learning experience, which are on a kind of faculty or learning area basis, and that needs to be coordinated. But that must be, I think, something specific to Wales. That means we have a more expensive way of managing secondary schools than would otherwise be the case. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's the case.
316. 02:27:16 Thank you, Councillor Healy. Does anybody want to respond? Chief Officer. Yeah, thank you, Councillor Healy. I mean, I think obviously we know in Wales we actually have a different curriculum structure, don't we? So that's the starting point for schools. We offer a different curriculum model. We have local management of schools and actually it is for headteachers and governing bodies to determine the appropriate structure within their schools rather than the local authority impose a standard template because every school is different.
317. 02:27:46 its community is different, its makeup is different, its building is different, the number of pupils it's got it's different, so it would be impossible I would say for the local authority to issue a standard template because those decisions have to be determined locally and that's the purpose of the local management of schools, that's what the legislation provides for.
318. 02:28:05 I mean, I know our head teacher colleagues are well supported by their school improvement advisors. That's their first point of contact in terms of that representative of the local authority school improvement team. And they, you know, a lot of the conversations will be around, you know, what's your curriculum offer? What's your leadership and management structure that's going to help you, you know, deliver that, monitor that, ensure it's being effective. Obviously, they get support as well through our finance and our HR colleagues as well.
319. 02:28:32 And, you know, I'm not underestimating the challenges that our schools face. We have a very constructive school budget forum meeting this morning, didn't we, Councillor Eastwood, where some of these issues were discussed. So I don't think we can ever get to that model of one size fits all. I'm in no position to make any direct comparisons in terms of cost. Of course, we've got, you know, in the main, we have, you know, local authority structures for education services in Wales and England. We know there's been significant diversion now, haven't we, with academy structures?
320. 02:29:00 uh and things like that so again it's a bit apples and pears really isn't it in terms of making those comparisons when schools are facing budgetary challenges you know we are very um aware of that we try to ensure that we are again signposting and you know we i don't use the word monitor that sounds that sounds sinister it's not because of the good relationships that we have between offices and schools we are aware when colleagues are finding it tough
321. 02:29:27 And we do our best to wrap our support around them in terms of the contact with officers within the portfolio, directing them to the appropriate experts in mental health and wellbeing, whether that's through, as Emma said, the use of the education spot. It's a really, really good offer that they make for schools. We have our employee assistance programme, which all Finchel employees can access.
322. 02:29:52 And they can do that individually and confidentially. And of course, again, we have our occupational health services. And again, that's incumbent upon, you know, the senior managers thinking about that for their staff. It's incumbent on the chair of governors as the line manager of the head teacher to consider in their regular contact with head teachers. Is that an area of support that perhaps they feel that individual needs? We have conversations every day about our head teachers across Flintshire and our head teachers are very good.
323. 02:30:20 at supporting each other our head teachers are also very good at flagging to me and senior officers if they are worried about a colleague and they want to check in that we've picked up that perhaps a colleague is finding things really difficult so you know i recognize what counselor list has been saying we are working in an extremely challenging landscape um and we will continue you know to do our best you know to support you know the health and well-being you know of all of our staff um but fundamentally we all know there needs to be more money in the system
324. 02:30:50 But, you know, again, there are structures around those schools that are in a deficit budget position. You know, we have regular meetings with them. They are called challenge and support meetings. You know, and there are mechanisms around that to make sure that actually there is an understanding that when the school has made all the difficult decisions that it can make, there comes a point where we have to say, well, we're going to have to live with that deficit because actually it would result in the curriculum either.
325. 02:31:15 not being sufficient or the safety of the pupils and the staff not being sufficient. Believe you me that we have had those conversations where we've had to say we have to accept that deficit plan as it is now because the school cannot reasonably make any further adjustments. So I don't know if I've answered your question, but it is a really complex question. But I don't believe that a one-size-fits-all model is ever going to be successful because it has to be responsive to local circumstances.
326. 02:31:45 Thank you. Did you want to speak there, Ahmed? I'm okay, thank you. Sorry, I don't know if you're indicating so. Thank you. Councillor Alan Marshall. Thank you, Chair. We've got a number of schools with low pupil numbers. This results in some teachers having to teach multiple years in one class. Do these teachers suffer from stress and is it affecting their well-being?
327. 02:32:28 We don't track that or aware of the overview of the landscape of that. I am aware of settings that I've liaised with and that model is taking place with some year groups or across all year groups and the conversations that I've had with staff or school staff collectively in that setting around that is it's quite
328. 02:32:50 it's it's another journey and there are some staff who have been doing that for a number of years and it's the way that they do deliver the curriculum and they're used to that there's some stuff due to the low numbers that may be taking place in some settings who are becoming quite new at that delivery when they've been used to doing one year group so there's a lot of peer support from the settings i'm aware of where they are saying oh you've been teaching two-year groups at the same time how do you go about that from a management planning
329. 02:33:18 and perspective and but there's a lot so amongst the clusters or amongst staff and school staff and flint share there's a lot of collaborative working it's a lot of peer-to-peer support and learning from each other and it's really nice to see that that's the everyday working people aren't protective of the way of working they're very adaptable and but that's not something that we can that i can sit here and say we've done an oversight of what that is well-being wise
330. 02:33:47 From my observations, that's what I'm aware of. Did you want to speak, Chief Officer? No, I think Emma's answered that question, really. All right, is that far? All right, Councillor Marshall. Councillor Gladys Heli. Thank you, Chair. I've got a question, but I have to say something as well. We are talking of tears. I, in my old age, I would hate to see our education go.
331. 02:34:20 like our health with tears of managers and this and then we who suffers who suffers in the end as we have seen in the health it's the patient and i would hate to see our children because of tears suffer in their education secondly my question is here you say uh we have got uh occhi health in education are you using
332. 02:34:51 the health or key health or have you got your own occupational health no all flintcher services use the flintcher occupational health service no it is a flintcher council resource yes so flint counter council supports an occupational health service which all employees of flintcher can access including our school's workforce thank you uh councillor dave mackay
333. 02:35:26 Thank you very much, Chair. I want to support exactly what Councillor Lister has said about the report and about what's happening out there. When I was managing staff, there were certain situations which were triggers. If I heard that one of my staff had been in tears, then, wow!
334. 02:36:07 I would have been on that in a flash. Because that should never, ever, ever, ever happen in the workplace, in my opinion. There's no doubt at all that our school staff are under immense pressure. And that isn't in the report. There is no doubt at all. And it's because of the financial situation.
335. 02:36:41 It's because our schools are trying so hard to provide the best level of education they can within a reduced budget. I think everything Councillor Lister said is my experience and the things that come to me as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mackey. Does anybody wish to respond? Chief Officer.
336. 02:37:20 Thank you Councillor Mackie and we know that this issue around school funding and the impact that that is having on the curriculum and on our workforce not just in our schools might I add but actually within the portfolio every portfolio in the council where we as members of the council are constantly asked to make further efficiencies in terms of our of our teams and the services that we can offer
337. 02:37:43 to our schools that wasn't the purpose of the remit of the report the remit for the report was for you to understand the role of the health promoting schools team and the things that under their funding arrangements they are required to deliver on and as you say they deliver a huge amount all of which do i believe contribute positively to the well-being of children in our schools and also to the well-being of staff but it wouldn't be appropriate for emma to be in this report commenting on
338. 02:38:10 that wider implications of funding we have other reports that bring that kind of information to you but the two obviously are inextricably linked but i will just from from a clarification point of view no no no i i absolutely understand that you know you're a you're a long-standing member of this committee and a dedicated governor and you know as many members of the committee are and you know firsthand the difficult decisions that are being made in schools every day
339. 02:38:34 but schools again it was recognized in the school budget forum this morning you know were you know very positive about the decision made by the council not to top slice school budgets this financial year and to obviously recycle the funding as well from what effectively should have been taken out of the school's quantum
340. 02:38:53 in terms of the reduction in pupil numbers not being taken out and being recycled back in in terms of trying to support some the pressures around additional learning needs so yeah none of us underestimate the challenge of the circumstances but I think what this report shows you and it's this is a very small team of very how many people in the team Emma I'm gonna say four four um no
341. 02:39:23 not full time no so four members of staff supporting 78 schools and 55 preschool settings as well to promote this scheme which is obviously comes through public health well so i think they do a tremendous amount of work um across you know a huge audience really and as you can see from the report you know the different aspects that they they are required to deliver on
342. 02:39:52 uh because of the grant funding that we come into the does come into the council so um i you know i welcome your recognition of the positive work that the team uh the team are doing and you know they do make a difference because actually if we think if that team wasn't there how would any of that be addressed there wouldn't be the resource to do that so uh thank you very much indeed thank you i mean it is a very full report you could almost have a separate report on most of the year
343. 02:40:20 uh most of the uh items in it um i do have a couple of questions myself and the first is to do with 1.21 on page 103 um toilet strategy toilet project 1.21 page 111 sorry
344. 02:40:45 um i mean because there is a lot of misinformation about toilets and so on uh my question is about toilet passes uh would this be predominantly to cover medical causes and menstruation is that what toilet passes would be predominantly for thank you yes toilet passes is in response to medical conditions and menstruation and
345. 02:41:11 for toilet passes yes we do have some settings who are using toilet cards as a tracking system so we do have some examples but at the moment we are pulling all of that information together to provide schools with summaries and we're working on a wider project across secondary provision to look at what the approaches are that are being used thank you my second question is to do with the fact that i note um
346. 02:41:42 On 2.01, page 112, funding is confirmed until 31st March 2027. Do you expect funding to continue after that date, or will there be an exit strategy? The grant funding for this programme is always on an annual basis, so we tend to find out the February, March time.
347. 02:42:09 preferably in principle at Christmas, but confirmation then. But we do intend it to carry on, especially with the new standards, because that's showing that there's longevity to the programme going forward. Thank you very much for that. I have no notes of any further speakers, so if we can move back to the recommendations. We have two on page 103. Number one is that we are up to...
348. 02:42:36 updated about the current work programmes delivered by health and wellbeing, which we have been in a very full fashion, and that we formulate our conclusions and recommendations based on the information in the report and the discussion. And we have had a lot of discussion about this. Do I have anybody who'd like to move the recommendations? Councillor Lister, thank you. Would anybody like to second the recommendations?
349. 02:43:05 Councillor Gladys Healy. All those for, against, abstentions? That's carried. Thank you very much. And so we conclude the meeting. Thank you all very much for your attendance, your excellent contributions and your courtesy and kindness, which has really carried me through this meeting at a time where I'm not feeling...