Agenda item

The Young Mayor and Advisers have been invited to address the committee on a topic of their choice.

The Chair welcomed Adam Abdullah – Young Mayor and Josh Brown-Smith – Chair of the Young Advisers to the meeting. He explained that once a year, the Committee invites the Young Mayor and Advisers to address the committee with an open brief.

The Young Mayor provided a summary recent activities as follows:

1.    Setting up a Young People’s Climate Change Forum to support the council’s aim of being carbon neutral by 2030

2.    Participating in activities which led to Lewisham being awarded a trophy for being the best rambling neighbourhood in England.

3.    Meeting the Goldsmith’s University outreach team to negotiate use of the library for Year 11 students who need study spaces. The university had been supportive in principle and work was being done for formulate a proposal

4.    Contributing to the Democracy Review and Early Help Review

5.    Participating in question times in schools with Councillors and the police.

6.    Developing a social media strategy to improve communication between the council and young people

7.    Working to develop a Curriculum 4 Life to work with schools to better deliver life skills such as budgeting, finding employment, careers advice etc

8.    Working on the Lewisham Alumni Programme. This enables young people in Lewisham aged 18-30 to give back to their schools through mentoring, sharing experiences, offering career aspiration talks. One of the aims of the programme was to inspire success and to offer hope beyond poverty and violence.

9.    Budget consultation. There were common themes between budget consultation and the Curriculum 4 Life, including improved education on drug use, SRE and mental health support.

The Chair thanked them for their contribution and invited questions from the committee. The following was noted in discussion:

1.    The Young Mayor and Advisers were able to access the appropriate decision makes in order to make their proposals a reality, but felt that young people in general were not empowered to influence decision-making. This was why they had created a Climate Change Forum – to help empower young people. The Young Mayor and Advisers wanted a statutory requirement for youth consultation.

2.    When asked for their views on permanent exclusion, the Young Mayor and Adviser opposed permanent exclusion, preferring instead a restorative justice approach to resolving issues at school. They felt that institutional racism meant that permanent exclusion unfairly affected some children more than others. It was their view that internal exclusion could sometimes be necessary for ‘cooling off’.

3.    The Chair invited the Young Mayor and Advisers to consider the published review and respond.

4.    On mental health, the Young Mayor and Adviser felt there was a lack of awareness among young people of support services and that schools needed to do more to support mental health. They also felt schools needed to do more to support young people in general, for example instead of saying a young person “has the potential to do well” they should support that young person to realise their potential.

5.    In their experience, young people experience a lack of cultural sensitivity when they do access mental health support services, particularly since around 70% of the school population in Lewisham is BAME.

6.    Both reported broadly positive experiences of Lewisham secondary schools, however they felt the culture had to change to get the focus off improving exam results. Firstly, the pressure on students to improve grades was leading to mental health problems, and secondly it had prompted students to snapchat about being at the bottom of the league table.

7.    The Young Mayor and Adviser wanted to see students represented on school governing boards, as well as more BAME representation on governing bodies, so that Governors share the same lived experience as the children they make decisions on behalf of.

8.    The committee heard that smoking weed is widespread among young people in Lewisham but it is a taboo subject at school. The Young Mayor and Adviser felt that proper training for teachers, investment in PHSE and open, blunt conversations in schools needed to be encouraged around staying safe and what to avoid. Talk to Frank (drugs advice) and Compass (online health and wellbeing advice) were referenced as examples.

The Chair thanked the Young Mayor and Adviser for their time and invited them to attend a joint meeting of the CYP and Healthier Communities Select Committees on 17 July to discuss BAME mental health inequalities.

It was RESOLVED that the views of the Young Mayor and Adviser be noted.