Issue - items at meetings - CYPOSC work programme

34.1         Members were informed about the future governance arrangements for Scrutiny:

·        A members working group consisting of Councillors Kitcat, Morgan & Peltzer-Dunn were developing proposals

·        The council would be moving to a committee system with decisions being made at cross party committees

·        The final arrangements would be agreed at Governance Committee and Full Council in April 2012

·        There was likely to be 2 scrutiny committees; Overview & Scrutiny Commission and the Health & Wellbeing Overview & Scrutiny Committee. CYPOSC would not exist.

·        Scrutiny would undertake panel investigations and policy development

·        There was no clear legislation for statutory co-optees at present

·        Scrutiny would look to involve as many co-optees as possible in its work.

34.2         Members raised a number of points including:

1.                  Concerns over the elimination of the CYPT Board and CYPOSC. Where would young people’s issues, the development of policies and the scrutiny of council services in a non-political way, be heard id CYPOSC was removed?

2.                  The recommendations and comments CYPOSC made have had implications to children and young people in the city. Priority must be given to children and young people and their matters to be heard effectively in a non political forum. What assurance was there that the monitoring and outcomes that CYPOSC have approved would be sustained and in which forum? It was understood that the roles of scrutiny would be different one. Who would be specifically dealing with children and young people’s matters? Members we informed that there would be a children’s committee.

3.                  The committee heard what effective input members of CYPOSC had put into all the issues covered by the committee and how valuable they had found the process.

4.                  Would there be a forum for discussion over education? The diocesan representative for catholic schools commented that CYPOSC was a valuable way in which schools were represented as there were limited forums that the diocese was involved with.

5.                  A Youth Council representative commented how fundamentally important CYPOSC was to young people and having their voice heard.

6.                  Members unanimously asked how they could put their case forward? The Chair asked the Lead Commissioner to report back.

34.3         Councillor Morgan had written to the Chair asking that Academies be invited to CYPOSC as both the city’s Academies had high increases in their GCSE results. CYPOSC to examine how the council could work with current and potential academies to ensure that good practice was shared across all schools  so that the city and young people could benefit from strong partnership working and educational innovation which would  help build the local economy.

Members agreed to invite both Academies to their next meeting and asked that topics such as child poverty and special educational needs be highlighted within the discussion.

34.4         The other items on the work programme were agreed.