Youth leaders and politicians discuss young people’s image

Senior youth sector leaders have met with politicians to discuss how best to promote positive images of young people.

They met at the Liberal Democrat party conference at a fringe meeting organised by CYP Now and the National Youth Agency, and covered issues from how spending cuts affect young people and youth services to how to get young people involved in politics.

Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat spokeswoman on youth, told how the best way to help young people make a positive and worthwhile contribution to society was to engage them in democratic processes.

She stressed the importance of making sure all young people have the chance to get involved and also the role that local youth councils and school councils must play.

She said: "I sit on the UK Youth Parliament board. But one of my concerns is about how it engages people, because in the effort to make it a national organisation it has become very selective about who takes part in that democratic process."

Ms. Featherstone also said that schools should invest more in teaching young people about civics, the rights and duties of citizenship, because the subject is often "relegated" to being taught by any available teacher.

David Clark, head of programmes and policy at the British Youth Council, said an important way of promoting positive images of young people was to get more of them involved in volunteering.

However, he dispelled the idea of a civic youth system and said that volunteering should never become compulsory.

He said: "Young people are already volunteering, we don't need another layer of bureaucracy, or to put another brand on it. Let's celebrate the fact that there are already young people out there volunteering and inspiring other young people to do the same."

Fiona Blacke, chief executive of the NYA, warned those in attendance that youth support services could be threatened under proposed government spending cuts.

"When you squeeze on budgets, it's easy to see investment cut", she said.

However, she claimed that these services, along with early intervention and joint working initiatives, must be protected to avoid years of wasted progress.