Agenda and minutes

Councillor Members of the Youth Cabinet are asked whether they have any interest in any item on the agenda and if so, to formally declare that interest.

Councillor Dean declared a personal interest in Bury Council, as his partner’s employer.

The Minutes of the last meeting held on 8 September 2022 are attached.

It was agreed:

1. Amend HRH the Queen to HM The Queen.
2. Subject to the above amendment, the minutes of the meeting held on 8 September 2022 were agreed and signed by the Chair.

There were no matters arising.

Daniel reported that he had met with Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester and discussed making transport free and improving inclusivity in education.

Daniel reported that at the last Youthforia meeting they discussed black history month.

Heather reported that the skills strategy had been discussed at the last informal Youth Cabinet meeting. The Youth Members had written a list of 15 skills and put them in order of what they felt was the most important issue. Heather asked Youth Members if they felt that the list of skills were in the correct order of priority. All Youth Cabinet Members developed 3 groups and gave ideas on how each skill could be achieved.

It was agreed:

1. To swap team work (7) with being able to think independently and rationally (5) on the skills priority list.
2. Heather Walton to type up and feed the information from the group work into the Council’s skills strategy.

A discussion took place around the topics and issues that the Youth Members would like to bring to Youth Cabinet. A top issue the Youth Members would like to discuss further is career education.

Heather explained that the Circles of Influence event is a yearly event which brings together young people from all high schools across the borough. The Youth Cabinet work on the event 6 months prior to it happening and picked 5 tops issues to be discussed.

Heather shared with members the final set of key findings and advised that the Circles of Influence report will be a standing item of the agenda going forward. The key findings will go to the Strategic Partnership Board for discussion and any updates around the key findings will be shared at Youth Cabinet meeting.

Councillor Morris asked the Youth Members about the offensive and discriminatory language which is not being challenged in schools. A discussion took place around the use of discriminatory language in schools, Youth Members gave examples of issues in their schools. Councillor Dean asked the Youth Members what councillors and schools can do to resolve the issue. Youth Members suggested staff training and setting up a committee in schools to combat the issue.

Councillor Smith advised that in relation to point 8 in the key findings ‘young people feel that support from their peers is difficult to access and they would prefer support from professionals’, 33 professional mental health workers will be employed across Bury schools.

Councillor Smith thanked all the young people involved with the Circles of Influence work.

It was agreed:

To share the Circles of Influence final set of key findings will school governors.

All Youth Cabinet Members were invited to take part in the debate, there was a side for and against whether the resignation of a prime minster should trigger a general election.

It was agreed with a majority vote that there should be a general election if a prime minister resigns.

It was agreed:

1. The next debate will be ‘should it be illegal to have your Christmas decorations up before Halloween’.