Agenda and minutes

Councillor Steele, Chair, welcomed everyone to the special meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board which was once again supporting the Children’s Commissioner’s Takeover Challenge (CCTOC) by working with Rotherham Youth Cabinet (RYC), many of who were present today.

He introduced Alex G, who would be taking over as Chair of this meeting, but before he handed over a warm welcome was also afforded to officers, Cabinet Members and others from outside organisations.

It was noted that this meeting was not streamed live and the recording would only be kept for training purposes only for the young people participating.

(Alex G assumed the Chair)

A presentation to introduce Rotherham Youth Cabinet and set the context for the choice of health and wellbeing as the theme for the Children’s Takeover Challenge.

The Chair, Alex G, introduced herself and confirmed she had been a member of the Youth Cabinet since February.  She issued a warm welcome from Rotherham Youth Cabinet and members of the UK Youth Parliament.  She invited other Youth Cabinet Members to introduce themselves and to give a brief history on how long they had been involved with the Youth Cabinet.  They included:-

Tom

Ashaz

Amogh

Alex B

Tilly

Mabrookah

Zac

Giancarlo

Harrison

Hope

Dillon

Nana

Falak

Lilia

A new promotional video was shown providing information about Rotherham’s Youth Cabinet and Youth Parliament. The video set out how the Youth Cabinet worked, how it was made up, decision making having a positive impact on the lives of young people across Rotherham and how it consulted with young people to tackle issues they faced.

The Youth Cabinet provided young people with a voice. The Youth Cabinet had two elected members of the Youth Parliament which were elected nationally. They were elected every two years and made sure that the youth voice was heard.

The Youth Cabinet also assisted with interviewing county directors and commissioning people for the borough. In addition, this included attending civic events like the Remembrance Day Parade.

Every year a new manifesto was developed and launched at the Town Hall and this included issues raised by young people through discussions, and consultations. The aim was to work with people throughout Rotherham in order to create positive change. This could be with elected members, officers and directors from the Council, representatives from schools, charities and even regional mayors and MP’s.

The Youth Cabinet also worked with other young people locally, regionally and nationally to strengthen its voice, such as young people's police independent advisory groups.

The Youth Cabinet also worked with other groups such as the Youth Parliament, South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, Regional Youth Climate Assembly, Regional Ethnic Minority Youth Group and others.

A further presentation about the Youth Cabinet detailed what the Youth Cabinet was all about.  Further information was provided on the Youth Cabinet’s Manifesto 2023/24 which involved over 4000 young people taking part in the consultation.

Health and Wellbeing came out as the issue nationally and locally with the Manifesto’s aims for 2024 including:-

·            Health and Wellbeing.

·            Vaping and Smoking.

·            Climate Action.

·            Anti Violence.

·            Religious Education.

This Take Over Day Challenge was a fun, imaginative and exciting activity to encourage organisations across England to open their doors to children and young people to take over adult roles.  It put children and young people into decision-making positions and encouraged organisations and businesses to hear their views.

This year’s Take-Over Challenge had chosen health and wellbeing as a theme and was broken down into four sections:-

?           Section 1 Vaping

?           Section 2 Mental Health

?           Section 3 Physical Health

?           Section 4 Healthy Eating

The top two issues were mental health and crime and safety. This national result mirrored what young people in Rotherham said and they had voted mental health and crime as the main issues in Rotherham.

During  ...  view the full minutes text for item 44.

A series of questions had been provided from Rotherham Youth Cabinet for partner agencies to answer. A number of recommendations would also be put forward which could hopefully be agreed.

Today’s meeting was being recorded for internal purposes only and the Youth Cabinet would review what had been said and agree an action plan going forward. This would be shared in due course with the aim of a further meeting in six months’ time to look at progress of the recommendations and actions highlighted.

There were fifteen questions put forward which were broken down into categories. After each category, recommendations would be detailed for that issue.

Vaping

1.          What were you doing about reducing vaping adverts in public spacing?

Answered by Gilly Brenner, Consultant in Public Health, here on behalf of Ben anderson, Director of Public Health

The Public Health team were supporting the development of an RMBC Advertising Policy to ensure inclusion of vapes and tobacco related restrictions. The proposed advertising policy would ban any communications or adverts featuring vapes on Council owned advertising space or in our online communications. Public Health were not aware of any space that was owned by the Council that currently did not meet this commitment.

Unfortunately, there was advertising space in the borough that was not under the control of the Council, which made further restrictions difficult. However, Mayor Oliver Coppard had committed to an advertising ban on South Yorkshire public transport, which stopped pictures of food high in fat, salt and sugar, as was put in place by Transport for London, but Public Health and the Council would work together for a broader health approach including vapes.

2.          What were you doing about vape wastage? Had you considered vape recycling?

Answered by Andrew Bramidge, Strategic Director for Regeneration and Environment

To start with all retailers of vapes were required by law to offer a takeback recycling service.

Vapes and disposable vapes could not be placed in your kerbside bins but could be disposed of at local household waste recycling centres. These were then set for recycling and component parts broken down. Residents were advised to remove all batteries before disposal where possible. For more information, a member of site staff could provide advice on where to place vapes and disposable vapes.

This information was supplied on our Council website - A to Z of Waste – Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council

Supplementary - It was asked if it was being made easy for the people who vape, to actually remove the batteries or would they actually know that they had to go to a local recycling centre to dispose of their vape.

Answered by Andrew Bramidge, Strategic Director for Regeneration and Environment

There was great onus on the retailers. All the retailers should have places in the shops that made it clear that vapes could be disposed of responsibly and make sure this was available to the customer.

3.          What was the Multi-agency Tobacco Control Steering Group doing to try and reduce vaping  ...  view the full minutes text for item 45.