Blogs

As the ambassador programme completes I may finally be getting the hang of this networking lark having come away from the reception on Tuesday with some really useful contacts. It was a great evening and I’m only sorry I had to dash back to Leeds on the last train and couldn’t join my fellow ambassadors for a celebratory drink.  We’ll all work hard I’m sure to keep in touch and keep the momentum going.  What I’ve really loved about the programme is how inspired I am by the o...

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Your know your in trouble when you're reduced to an acronym... just ask any NEET BAMER N.E.E.T. = Young person Not in Education Employment or Training.           There are currently up to a million ‘NEETS’ in the UK aged under 25, and around 200,000 of those are between the ages of 16 and 18 (one in ten 16 – 18 year olds) Nearly half of them have an excuse and a note from their mum, they’re either travelling, volunteering, at her majesty’s le...

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I defected from the public sector in 1999 and started up Unique Coffee Bar because I thought there was a better way to work with young people than the Youth Service – although I have to say if the Youth Service hadn’t given me a secondment and kept my old job open for three years, Unique probably wouldn’t be here now. Unique was 100% grant reliant at first which I soon realised wouldn’t be sustainable. We created an Alternative Education course which we sold to local schools and that pu...

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Despite the commitment to public sector reform from all political ­parties, it is still unclear which ideas will dominate as we reshape public services in the coming decade. There are calls for locally-based, co-produced and self-directed public services, but there is an easier approach to reform that is much further advanced: super-commissioning, or the aggregation of different workstreams and small contracts into ever-larger contracts for high-volume services, delivered mostly by big natio...

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