Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children – in the Senedd at 2:32 pm on 5 April 2017.
Okay. Well, one of the local organisations I’ve referred to you, which is delivering an internationally developed, world-class service, is the Eagle House Youth Development Community Interest Company, working in Snowdonia, based on Anglesey, and their young achievers programme, helping to tackle offending by supporting young people upfront. They’ve run two successful contracts with job centres, and continue to deliver across north Wales for them. They’ve also been contacted by local education authorities across north Wales to provide residential behavioural development courses for schools, but they’re still fighting to get their work with prolific offenders, and reducing the offending, off the ground, even with the support of the police offender management unit and probation, and they ask for a meeting with you. Now, I fully appreciate your response, when you said that you provide funding directly to the youth offending teams via local authorities, and it’s for them to commission that service directly from Eagle House. But I ask you again: will you engage directly with them to see for yourself how effective this sort of local network intervention is? And I know you can’t force local authorities, but you can certainly highlight good practice that they may wish to consider. Will you do so?