Report of the Corporate Director for Children and Adults
Minutes:
Rachel Armitage, Electoral Services Engagement Officer, introduced the report giving an update on the work of the Youth Cabinet, and also work being done to improve civic engagement of young people including a summary of voter registration activity. Rachel highlighted the following information on children and young people’s participation in governance:
(a)
a new annual student conference is being initiated in order to
engage more young people on education improvement issues;
(b)
a Youth Council event called ‘Your Voice Counts’ was
co-produced by young people from Central locality. This included
three workshops designed and delivered by young people exploring
community safety, cleanliness and personal contribution;
(c) two Primary Parliament meetings in June engaged over 150 year 5 and 6 children from 34 city schools on the theme of ‘Building a Whole and Healthy You’;
Rachel then highlighted the following
information on civic engagement and voter registration:
(d)
the Bite the Ballot Scheme encouraged 16-21 year olds to become
active citizens and register to vote. This role has now been taken
on by Nottingham City Council, with additional work on co-creating
new resources with local partners such as workshops;
(e)
future work may expand into working with under 16s, potentially
through Opportunity Notts;
(f)
over 1000 eligible voters have been added to the electoral register
between 2014 and 2015, which is higher than other East Midlands
areas. There are strong working relationships with local schools,
FE colleges, universities and third-sector organisations;
(g)
successful events have included DeDay
in April 2015, which was a final push for voter registration before
the 2015 general election, and the National Voter Registration
Drive which takes place every February. There are also up to 60
young people interested in joining the volunteer programme,
interested in encouraging voter registration and participation
amongst their peers;
The following points were raised during the
discussion which followed:
(h)
voter registration and engagement could
be promoted to skills to help with their citizenship and British
values requirements under Ofsted;
(i)
Electoral Services would not be averse to working with younger
children of primary school age, as citizenship is something that
should be instilled at an early age. Children of this age have
shown interest in voting;
(j) There needs to be some focus on voter turnout, in addition to registering to vote, as nationally there is lower turnout among young people. This will be incorporated into future workshops, looking at the barriers that young people find to voting.
RESOLVED to
(1)
acknowledge and support the achievements of children
and young people engaging in participation and active citizenship
work through the Participation in Governance programme and the work
of the Youth Cabinet;
(2)
recognise the importance of encouraging civic
engagement and voter registration in helping children and young
people become active and informed citizens who can confidently take
part in civic life and make a contribution to democratic
society;
(3) support this work and promote, wherever possible, voter registration amongst its 16+ service users; and provide a lead contact for civic engagement and voter registration who can liase with the Electoral Services Engagement Officer.
Supporting documents: