Chamber
Plenary, 20 Feb 2003
20 Feb 2003 · S1 · Plenary
Item of business
Arbroath CAFE Project
Well done to Andrew Welsh and even better done to the CAFE project. Like Irene McGugan, I was enthused by the presentation to the cross-party group.
We can learn some lessons from the initiative. There are a lot of good individual projects throughout Scotland, which other members have mentioned. There are certainly plenty in central Scotland, such as the Edinburgh City Youth Cafe, which is just round the corner from the Parliament. There are a lot of good examples, but there are not enough of them. As a country, we just do not develop. We need perhaps five times as many youth facilities as we have at the moment and they need to be more evenly spread.
It is a great strength of the CAFE project that there is heavy youth involvement in the management. That is very important. Those involved have hit on imaginative things, such as the football project, which I think has tremendous potential. What we have to crack, and what the minister has to crack, is a way of developing things from the bottom. I entirely agree with other members that we do not want to parachute in. There is no point in dropping a nice new football thingamy on a group that is sound asleep and does not really want it. We have to enthuse people to go for this project, or for other projects, and we must give them financial support.
We have a tricky problem with national policy and getting Government money into local bodies. We have to encourage the local authorities to do that, and some do it much better than others. In addition to what local government does, we must have a direct line to existing youth facilities and to allow us to encourage more facilities.
We could have a million of these football stadia for the cost of one jail—I have not done the sums, but I imagine that that must be right. We do not need a million, but we need a lot more than we have. I hope that the minister will have a programme ready, so that when it is demonstrated in a few months' time that the programme works, we can offer the facility to lots of other people, provided that they have a viable local group to take it on.
We also have to develop more groups, get more young people involved and get more adult volunteers. It is unfortunate that the present climate deters a lot of people from volunteering. I do not mean the cold outside, but the blame culture and the need to have insurance cover and to fill in thousands of forms before people can help. We have to protect our young people—that is fair enough—but we have to do it in such a way that we do not discourage adults from helping young people. In my experience, we can get adults to help with children of primary school age, but it is difficult to get adults to help with teenagers, because they are afraid of them. We have to crack that.
A lot of lessons can be learned. I hope that the minister can think how we can best deal with the issues. If 0.01 per cent of the relevant budgets of health, sport and police were put into this sort of work, it would revolutionise Scotland. We have to take that approach. Prevention is better than cure. We have to provide something positive for young people to do and credit should be given to the CAFE project for doing that.
We can learn some lessons from the initiative. There are a lot of good individual projects throughout Scotland, which other members have mentioned. There are certainly plenty in central Scotland, such as the Edinburgh City Youth Cafe, which is just round the corner from the Parliament. There are a lot of good examples, but there are not enough of them. As a country, we just do not develop. We need perhaps five times as many youth facilities as we have at the moment and they need to be more evenly spread.
It is a great strength of the CAFE project that there is heavy youth involvement in the management. That is very important. Those involved have hit on imaginative things, such as the football project, which I think has tremendous potential. What we have to crack, and what the minister has to crack, is a way of developing things from the bottom. I entirely agree with other members that we do not want to parachute in. There is no point in dropping a nice new football thingamy on a group that is sound asleep and does not really want it. We have to enthuse people to go for this project, or for other projects, and we must give them financial support.
We have a tricky problem with national policy and getting Government money into local bodies. We have to encourage the local authorities to do that, and some do it much better than others. In addition to what local government does, we must have a direct line to existing youth facilities and to allow us to encourage more facilities.
We could have a million of these football stadia for the cost of one jail—I have not done the sums, but I imagine that that must be right. We do not need a million, but we need a lot more than we have. I hope that the minister will have a programme ready, so that when it is demonstrated in a few months' time that the programme works, we can offer the facility to lots of other people, provided that they have a viable local group to take it on.
We also have to develop more groups, get more young people involved and get more adult volunteers. It is unfortunate that the present climate deters a lot of people from volunteering. I do not mean the cold outside, but the blame culture and the need to have insurance cover and to fill in thousands of forms before people can help. We have to protect our young people—that is fair enough—but we have to do it in such a way that we do not discourage adults from helping young people. In my experience, we can get adults to help with children of primary school age, but it is difficult to get adults to help with teenagers, because they are afraid of them. We have to crack that.
A lot of lessons can be learned. I hope that the minister can think how we can best deal with the issues. If 0.01 per cent of the relevant budgets of health, sport and police were put into this sort of work, it would revolutionise Scotland. We have to take that approach. Prevention is better than cure. We have to provide something positive for young people to do and credit should be given to the CAFE project for doing that.
In the same item of business
The Deputy Presiding Officer (Mr Murray Tosh):
Con
The final item of business today is a members' business debate on motion S1M-3860, in the name of Mr Andrew Welsh, on the Arbroath Community Alcohol Free Env...
Motion debated,
That the Parliament applauds the pioneering work of the Arbroath CAFE Project which provides an invaluable service for young people in the area; notes that a...
Mr Andrew Welsh (Angus) (SNP):
SNP
My purposes in initiating this debate on the Arbroath CAFE project are to praise its achievements and to encourage others to see the potential that is offere...
Mr Keith Raffan (Mid Scotland and Fife) (LD):
LD
I congratulate Andrew Welsh sincerely on securing the debate. I share his enthusiasm for the Arbroath CAFE. It is precisely the kind of project that needs to...
Alex Johnstone (North-East Scotland) (Con):
Con
After a long, hard day at the legislative coalface, it is nice to come to a subject on which we can find some consensus—and we can perhaps take a little enjo...
Mr Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD):
LD
I add my congratulations to Andrew Welsh on securing this debate and compliment him on his thoughtful speech, to which I listened with great interest.Andrew ...
Irene McGugan (North-East Scotland) (SNP):
SNP
I add my congratulations to those that have been offered to Andrew Welsh and to the young people of the CAFE project—not only for the work that they do, but ...
Donald Gorrie (Central Scotland) (LD):
LD
Well done to Andrew Welsh and even better done to the CAFE project. Like Irene McGugan, I was enthused by the presentation to the cross-party group.We can le...
The Deputy Minister for Social Justice (Des McNulty):
Lab
I, too, congratulate Andrew Welsh on securing the debate on his motion. I got to know him well when we were both members of the Scottish Parliamentary Corpor...
Meeting closed at 16:54.