UPDATE: The Policy and Resources Committee approved the proposed savings as outlined below to be put forward ‘unchanged’- which means they are recommending that the council make this saving. We now call upon all councillors across Argyll and Bute to reconsider this before they meet in February to make this decision, and to recognise the huge impact that a lack of youth and adult learning services will have across the area on young people and vulnerable adults. We know they have difficult decisions to make around savings but these savings will severely impact on those who need these services most.

This week the Policy and Resources Committee will consider a report on estimated savings Argyll & Bute Council will have to make next year. One of the proposed saving options is to cut £330,000 from Youth and Adult Learning services, cutting 17.1 jobs (equating to 57% of the team). As you can imagine, this will have a huge impact on the service Youth Services delivers and the opportunities they are able to offer young people.
While we appreciate the council has a duty to deliver on core services, we believe that the programmes provided by Youth Services are vital to our communities and these cuts will have a detrimental effect. Opportunities such as Youth Forums, Scottish Youth Parliament, Newbies, Young Leaders, holiday programmes, GIVE Volunteering Programme, Involvement Training, wider achievement opportunities like Duke of Edinburgh, DYA, YAA’s, Fire Skills and general support and opportunities could all be affected. This not only affects young people but the adults who benefit from such services aswell.

The Community Learning and Development Adult team work with people to enable them to identify their own individual and collective goals, to engage in learning, and take action to bring about change for themselves and their communities. We provide a range of formal and informal methods of learning and social development with vulnerable and often excluded individuals and groups in the community, in the decisions and processes that shape their lives. We again provide crucial services to our community including Health and Wellbeing Groups, Life Skills, Personal Development, Literacies and Numeracy, Self-Advocacy Skills, Employability Skills and SQA Qualifications. Without these services the outcome for our communities can only be damaging and lead to the most vulnerable in society being negatively affected.

The loss of such groups which we believe to be fundamental in the development of communities and individuals  will have a catastrophic impact on everyone in Argyll and Bute