Meeting of the Parliament 12 June 2014
I do not have those specific figures to hand, but I will do my best to answer that question in my summing-up speech. However, as I said at the outset, and as has been reinforced, to her credit, by Alison McInnes, we believe that cashback should prioritise those who suffer. We also believe that it should be available to every youngster, irrespective of their background or postcode.
We welcome the action that has been taken. Cashback has worked with the Scottish football authorities, Scottish rugby and sportscotland in designing 93 projects across 29 local authorities and has provided them with more than £10 million. Thirty-one full-sized all-weather 3G pitches will have been delivered with cashback support. Only yesterday, in Aberdeen, I announced that the next six new full-size 3G pitches will be in Aberdeen, Dundee, Cumnock, Troon, Paisley and Linlithgow.
However, we know that not every young person is a sports fan, which is why we also invested more than £10 million in core youth work and expanded dance, music and film opportunities, through the £2.25 million cashback creative identities project. We also piloted new projects such as the £2.25 million Inspiring Scotland community assets link-up pilot, the £350,000 Angus Council just play pilot, the £1.6 million Prince’s Trust personal development partnership pilot, the £300,000 Prince’s Trust employability awards and the £258,000 Glasgow Clyde College and Scottish Power power skills project.
That reflects the fact that cashback involves much more than high-visibility mass-participation activities. In that regard, I highlight the significant work that is being done by the uniformed organisations, which, through Youth Scotland’s £2.6 million cashback funding, have supported some 6,000 volunteers who have provided more than 433,000 volunteering hours to those organisations.
The cashback partnership with Glasgow Clyde College and Scottish Power drills down and focuses on individual young people to get them off the streets and re-engaged in mainstream further education, and to help them to get accredited training in engineering and get into apprenticeships, jobs and further full-time education. I am thinking about young people such as Lee Perkins, who completed the cashback power skills programme and successfully advanced on to the Scottish Power pre-apprenticeship programme.
The independent report that was published earlier this week examines the way in which cashback projects are changing individual young people’s lives for the better and how that is being captured to provide a national picture of the overall impact of cashback. I am delighted that both the “National Evaluation of the CashBack for Communities Programme (April 2012-March 2014): Final Report” and the case study brochure “CashBack for Communities: Investing in Scotland’s young people 2008-2014” highlight that the programme is having a significant impact.
The report rightly recognises that cashback for communities is a unique approach to investing proceeds of crime money. The initial stages allowed testing of new ways of engaging with young people through an innovative model that adopts an approach that has a strong focus on sports, culture and youth work to deliver diversionary activities.
The approach brings together a fantastic cashback partnership of a range of our national organisations such as Creative Scotland, the Scottish Football Association, YouthLink Scotland, Scottish Sports Futures, the uniformed organisations, Inspiring Scotland, the Scottish Rugby Union and basketballscotland. I express my continued thanks for their significant contribution and thank the local community volunteers whom they work with to make cashback the huge success that it is.
I will say something about the scale and reach of the impact that the evaluation report has highlighted. We have established the cashback model, expanded its reach and strengthened the programme to support project partners to continue to deliver investment in every local authority area and provide a quarter of a million activities and opportunities year on year for young people, regardless of their gender, race, religion or background or where they live.
Significant progress has been made by cashback projects to rise to the challenge of tuning into and delivering on 27 life-changing outcomes around increasing participation, engagement, diversion and protection and ensuring that there are progression pathways for participating young people to ensure that youngsters get the opportunity to develop their potential, attain accredited learning and qualifications and get into volunteering, training and jobs.
The case study brochure tells the insightful and deeply personal stories of some individual young people who have grasped the opportunities offered by cashback.