Category Archives: NEET

Buses, eXplore card, NEET, Transport, Uncategorized, young people, Your councillor

Suffolk Young Person’s Travel Card: “I’ll be back!”

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The Suffolk Explore card, cut by the Conservatives in haste, and apparently now repented at leisure

Wow!

Today Suffolk County Council bite the bullet and announce that they’re planning a new discount travel card for young people in Suffolk  “in a bid to remove transport barriers for young people across the county” as the Cabinet Member for Transport so disingenuously puts it.

Yes that’s right. Although the press release doesn’t mention it this is the very same Cabinet member who abolished the Explore young persons discount travel card  in April 2011 halfway through the academic year. By doing this he knowingly placed huge – in some cases insurmountable – transport barriers  between  opportunities for employment and education and  a whole cohort of Suffolk’s young people.

Once again we are back in TopsyTurveyland.

When the Explore card was cut in 2011 (as part of the New Strategic Direction ideology and supposedly on grounds of ‘cost), the Liberal Democrats warned that it was a terrible thing to do in a rural county at a time of economic instability and would cause significant damage to the educational, work and training prospects of the 55000 young people who used it.  And it did.

And the Conservatives heard full details directly from Suffolk Lib Dem councillors, from schools and colleges, from parents and – most of all – from thousands of the young people affected .We all told them  that scrapping the Explore card would – and did – cause huge problems to those who wanted to get an education and a job –with huge longterm implications for Suffolk’s budget.  But the Cabinet member for Roads and Transport memorably replied, “you can’t spend a pound more than once.’

In that year SCC underspent by £13m of our pounds – enough to fund the Explore card many many times over . 

As academic standards in Suffolk have slipped and more and more young people became NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) it seems that the point has finally got across.  Thank goodness the Conservatives are now prepared to make a U-turn before they cause any further damage, even if they can’t bring themselves to admit that this is what they are doing.

Bringing back this card is obviously a successful outcome for the Suffolk Liberal Democrats ‘ work, and, more importantly, for all the young people and their families who have been lobbying for the restoration of this card since it was withdrawn. Yet we are left looking at the damage caused in the last two years and wondering why it has it taken so long for the Conservatives to admit it.  Why on earth didn’t they review the Explore card costs rather than cutting it completely- as they did – and leaving many young people struggling to get to college and employment?

Let’s be frank: young people’s travel is an issue that should have been extremely important throughout the years, and not just when the Conservatives are looking at the May elections!  The cynical opportunism of the entire exercise is breathtaking!!

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Looked-after children, NEET, Social care, young people

Change a Suffolk Child’s Life Chances

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Suffolk Adoption Agency is urgently appealing for more people to  consider adoption, and provide a permanent family for Suffolk’s looked-after children.

At the moment there are 27 children in Suffolk who need  to be adopted if they are going to have the same chances in life as their peers. 

Why is this?

Simply, we mean well by ‘care’ , we do our best, but right across the UK ‘looked-after’ children remain the most vulnerable  in society.  And although they need the most support, nationally the outcome for such children is dreadful.  35% of children in residential care leave at 16 and 56% before they turn 18. Almost half of those leaving care at 16 are not in education, employment or training when they reach 19. Nationally, children  in care are more likely to end up with worse exam results, to have poor mental and physical health, to be convicted of crimes, and unemployed or out of education.

All for the want of a family.

And this is simply because a ‘corporate parent’ is not and cannot be a parent.  An organisation – with the best will in the world – cannot replace a domestic bond.  It cannot love, it cannot nag, it cannot hope or fear or turn up proudly for graduations or weddings, or or remember birthdays and Christmas as a parent does.  And a parent is not just for Christmas – a parent is for life – for practical and emotional support in both directions through good times and bad. Who does a young person who has been a child in care fall back on?

For some ‘looked after’ children,  return to their birth family is simply not an option.

In Suffolk, 27 children are waiting to be adopted. The Suffolk Adoption Agency is particularly looking for families for children aged  over 3, for sibling groups and for children with disabilities.

National Adoption Week is 5-9th November. If you think you could change a child’s life changes, call 0800 389 9417, or go to the Suffolk Adoption Agency website 

eXplore card, Just 42, NEET, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council, Woodbridge, young people, Your councillor

“Attention – this policy is reversing!” U-turn on young people’s travel

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Hurrah – direct action and real democracy has finally paid off.

Yesterday – fifteen months after their short-sighted,  mean-minded and pennypinching  abolition of Suffolk’s Explore young person’s travelcard (halfway through the academic year, let me remind you!) –  the Conservatives on Suffolk County Council have announced a U-turn.   SCC will now be developing  an Oyster-type card “to help provide reduced travel costs for education, training and work-related travel” for young people, because – as Leader Mark Bee acknowledged -travel is such a problem for young people in our rural county.

As my son would say, no shit, Sherlock!

What Cllr Bee says is perfectly true. But it  is  hardly news. It’s now exactly a year since the County Council received that  6,000 signature petition and the personal representations from a huge range of people (including some very vocal, determined – and polite – members of Woodbridge’s Just 42) telling them just this!

When  the Conservatives originally argued the necessity of the Explore  cut on the grounds of cost, they were too shortsighted to recognise the costly damage it would cause to the educational, work and training prospects of a whole cohort of young people.  This harm was clear to anyone who looked at the facts rather than the ideology of the New Strategic Direction.  Indeed, in the middle of last year the Conservatives heard this information directly from me and other Lib Dem councillors, from schools and colleges, from parents and – most of all – from the young people affected.

We all told the Conservatives that scrapping the Explore card would – and did – cause huge problems to those who wanted to get an education and a job.  But -as the Cabinet member for Roads and Transport so memorably said -“you can’t spend a pound more than once.”   In such  circumstances, the wise idea is to choose carefully what you do spend your pounds on in the first place. This was the same Cabinet that agreed the expenditure of really quite a lot of pounds on Suffolk Circle.

Thursday’s announcement is welcome news – but sadly it is too late for some.  And the current announcement – despite the fanfare – is currently limited to Ipswich.Yet  Scrutiny established  at the end of last year that the young people living in Ipswich remained  best supported by bus services after the Explore cut. It was those in the rural parts of Suffolk – those with large distances to travel and no access to cars or petrol -who were most badly affected.

Now that this decision has been made, I urge the council to go beyond spin on this occasion and to roll out this new Oyster-type scheme as quickly as possible. We we need to reverse, wherever possible,  the harm they have caused and are continuing to cause to the next generation of Suffolk!