Agenda and minutes

The Committee noted that Councillor Tony Page had replaced Councillor Jo Lovelock as Reading’s representative.

As Councillor Lovelock had been vice-chairman, the Chairman proposed that Councillor Page should be appointed as vice-chairman of the Joint Committee.

RESOLVED that Councillor Page be appointed vice-chairman of the Joint Committee for the remainder of the municipal year.

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Any Member with an Affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

There were no urgent items of business.

To approve the minutes of the last meeting held on 26 September 2017 and receive updates on any issues not covered elsewhere on the agenda.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 26 September 2017 be approved as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

To provide Joint Committee with an update on the Elevate Berkshire European Social Fund Programme.

Key Updates:-

•           Item 1 – Update From Central Team on Key Projects

•           Item 2 – Partner Updates

•           Item 3 - Performance and Funding

•           Item 4 - Project Change Request

•           Item 5 – Future projects

The Committee considered a report providing an update on the Thames Valley Berkshire Elevate programme.

Emelye Janes highlighted a number of points arising from the report which covered the following topics:

Item 1 – Update From Central Team on Key Projects

Item 2 – Partner Updates

Item 3 - Performance and Funding

Item 4 - Project Change Request

Item 5 – Future projects

The Committee noted in particular that:

·                     Kennedy Scott had won Slough Project 1- A contract for £170,000 to engage and support 390 eligible young people into employment, education or training or to gain basic skills, with a particular focus on supporting those from an ethnic minority (BME) background.

·                     Slough Project 2- A contract for £40,000 to engage and support 40 lone parents into education, employment or training was being re-advertised following an unsuccessful first procurement exercise, but it was also noted that the high cost of living in Berkshire and the DWP’s definition of lone parents made meeting the targets more challenging.

·                     During October- December 2017, Elevate Berkshire and West Berkshire had commissioned Projects with Purpose to undertake some research into how best to attract and engage with young people with a view to moving them into employment, education or training and test the theory of setting up an online peer led programme but the conclusion had been that a digital service in isolation would not work as the young people were very vocal about their continuing need for in-person services, with huge value put on being able to ‘trust’ the person providing that service.

·                     Projects with Purpose had proposed a potential pilot model but there were concerns around funding a pilot with ESF money which would not directly deliver against the programme targets.

·                     The partnership had agreed that lessons could be learned from the Projects with Purpose report with regard to digital marketing and better outreach and engagement with participants using digital channels.

·                     Traffic to the Elevate Me website remained low in some areas and, as the Projects with Purpose report had pointed out, more could be done across the programme to promote Elevate and engage with young people in more meaningful ways online.

·                     Focus groups had been held with young people to identify what was good about Elevate, what could be different, or what else they would like to see the programme doing.

·                     A digital marketing apprentice was to be employed to build the online presence of Elevate Berkshire, improving the content of the ElevateMe local websites and working with partners to increase outreach via social media.

·                     The central team was to source some digital marketing training for Elevate staff so all partners could become more proactive in this area.

A summary of progress from each of the following partners was also provided:

Bracknell Forest

Prince’s Trust

Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead

Adviza- Reading

Ways Into Work

West Berkshire

Wokingham

An oral update was provided in relation to Slough.  The main points made were that:

Bracknell Forest:

•           The Council was embedding Elevate in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11.