Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340-352)
MS SOPHIE
LIVINGSTONE AND
MR PETER
SHIMWELL
17 OCTOBER 2006
Q340 Lyn Brown: Can I take you on
to employment. A Government submission to this Committee stated
that nationally there are no higher than average levels of temporary
employment in coastal towns. Is this your experience?
Mr Shimwell: Not at all. I think
it is quite clear from the evidence that has been given before
that the seasonality of work is really destructive, especially
if you consider young people. Young people born in coastal towns
are paid very low wages, often much less than the national minimum
wage. They are not employed on contracts; they are not employed
on the way they look; they are not employed on where they live.
I think it is very difficult for a young person to enter the employment
market in a coastal and isolated town. I can think of a specific
example which is linked to transport. I attended an interview
in the summer with a young person from one of our projects who
had got great experience working in restaurants and pubs, and
he was not taken on at a holiday camp purely because he did not
have his own transport. That was the only reason that the employer
gave him. That is a terrible disadvantage, that you cannot even
grasp the opportunities because the public transport is not reliable
and, therefore, it is seen that the young person will be unreliable
themselves. So, I would not agree with what the Government is
saying there.
Q341 Lyn Brown: Can you talk to me
about training? Is it easy for young people in coastal towns to
access training? You have touched on the issue of transport.
Ms Livingstone: It depends a lot
on where their local college is situated. I spoke to a young person
who lives in Torbay Foyer who is attending the college in Paignton,
the next town, which is eight miles away, and it costs her £20.00
a week to travel to college, which, when you are on benefits,
leaves £26.00 to cover everything else. She is still doing
it because she is incredibly determined to go to college, but,
obviously, for young people who have got self-esteem issues or
motivation issues, that can seem like an insurmountable barrier.
Again, in Eastbourne, £2.60 a day for a young person to get
to college from the foyer, and they cannot get a free pass because
they are 1.95 miles away from the college and you have to be two
miles away according to the bus company rules. Again, young people
are hit by these sorts of issues time and again. Foyers work actively
with the Learning and Skills Council to provide life skills training
programmes, but we see that very much as a gateway into further
training and education and young people are hit by transport and
benefit issues when they get to the point that they are ready
to go to college.
Q342 Chair: You say you work actively
with the Learning and Skills Council. Have they proposed any solution
to the problems that you are describing which are essentially
affecting access to the training courses?
Ms Livingstone: Not in terms of
where colleges are situated. What we have done with the Learning
and Skills Council is develop a national qualification called
the Learning Power Award, which is a life skills qualification
which will help young people develop life skills, budgeting, self-esteem,
all the things you need to help live independently and then move
yourself on. For some young people even walking through the doors
of the college can be a huge issue, so the Learning Power Award
that we have developed with the Learning and Skills Council is
to help them get to that point, but then we have not come to any
conclusions or solutions with the Learning and Skills Council
about then getting them to college where that is difficult to
access.
Q343 Lyn Brown: You have mentioned
transport and transport costs as a barrier to training and employment.
Are there any other barriers that you think we should know about
for young people in coastal towns as to training and employment?
Mr Shimwell: Certainly housing
in general and having the move on access, especially to social
housing, for foyer residents. Foyer residents are in foyers either
because they are homeless or they are unemployed, for whatever
reason, and it is not easy for young people of 16 to 25 to enter
the private rented sector. In fact, private landlords do not want
to touch under 25s because it is high risk, and in these small
coastal towns, rural towns, where there is very little accommodation
that is appropriate for young people, it is very difficult. At
the end of, say, a two-year stay in Foyer the next step of moving
that young person on into independence, that transition, is the
key. Again, on a local level, perhaps various foyers around the
UK have made agreements with their local authorities to move on,
but it is just not enough because in most of the areas that we
are discussing there is a chronic shortage of social housing.
The move on in Cornwall is particularly pertinent because of the
high prices of rents, especially in the summer—there are
lots of summer lets, and then winter lets the local people back
in—but it is very difficult for young people to enter the
housing market, the rented housing market.
Q344 Dr Pugh: The association between
drugs and coastal towns goes back to the Second World War if not
before. It is not specifically a young person's issue, is it,
particularly Class A drug use?
Mr Shimwell: No, I do not think
it is. I am not really sure whether there is an abundance of evidence
that says that the drug or alcohol issues in coastal towns are
worse than any other areas of the UK. What I would say from my
own experience is that I think there is a bit of backdoor peddling
in through the ports, where there is less security and less monitoring
of drugs coming into the country. Certainly in Cornwall and the
south-west, where we did not believe we had a significant problem
with drug issues around the ports, around seaside areas, and especially
during the summer months, there seems to be an availability of
Class A and Class B drugs. Whether or not that is any different—
Q345 Dr Pugh: How would you characterise,
amongst the young people that you know of, the pattern of use?
Is there a heavy use of Class A drugs or is it largely recreational
drugs?
Mr Shimwell: It is unlikely that
most of the young people that we work directly with in foyers
would be on a drugs programme because of the support that is available
to them. Most of our support is around education and training,
so a young person who has got a drug or alcohol dependency would
be unlikely to be living in a foyer, but certainly of the young
people that we come across and that we deliver advice and guidance
to, there is certainly a significant number, I would say. Again,
I do not think this is purely a coastal problem, I think it may
be exacerbated in some coastal towns, but I think it is a national
picture, and rural areas are the same. As to drugs coming into
rural areas, I would say, it is just as severe a problem as it
is in some of the inner cities.
Q346 Dr Pugh: In terms of the problems
across your desk, which is the bigger problem: alcohol abuse or
drug abuse, or hard drug abuse?
Mr Shimwell: I am sorry, would
you repeat that?
Q347 Dr Pugh: In terms of the problems
across your desk, is alcohol the major problem?
Mr Shimwell: I think alcohol is
the major problem, to be fair, that we are dealing with on a day-to-day
level—I think drugs are probably secondary—because
alcohol is so widely accepted, cheap and available everywhere.
Q348 Dr Pugh: In terms of interventions,
are you familiar with any very successful interventions? Do you
think the Government should do more specifically for the kind
of areas we are talking about here?
Mr Shimwell: In Cornwall we have
got a very good drug and alcohol service and we are supported
very well, and I certainly feel I would be able to signpost a
young person to a number of good services. Nationally, I am not
sure if that is the case.
Ms Livingstone: To echo your points,
foyers do not work with high support needs for young people on
the whole. Therefore foyers would not generally take young people
with a drug dependency. Having said that, foyers are all independent.
In Aberdeen they have something called the Life Shaper Programme
which is for young people who have been on Class A drugs, and
it has been very successful. To come back to the issue about the
prevalence of drugs, HEART Foyers, who operate a foyer in Felixstow,
said the foyer does not suffer disproportionately from higher
drug use despite their situation, their location. However, we
did run a homelessness prevention programme called Safe Moves
in Felixstow and they did have a very high number of people referred
to that programme with drug issues. They probably do not then
end up in the foyer, because the foyer has not got the capacity
to support them, it is not set up to do that; so the picture you
will get from us about drug use in these areas is slightly distorted
because of the nature of the programmes that we run, the projects
that we run.
Q349 Dr Pugh: In terms of serious
alcohol abuse, are you picking up the national trend of it occurring
earlier, in much younger children?
Mr Shimwell: Certainly, yes.
Q350 Anne Main: Mr Shimwell, can
I take you back to what you said about the seasonal problem with
drugs coming in through the ports, which is a particular coastal
issue?
Mr Shimwell: Yes.
Q351 Anne Main: Do you think there
is some sort of role for government intervention to make the ports
less accessible for drugs? You have not suggested that, but that
is the correlation I would draw from what you have said. If you
believe that is a problem, is it borne out statistically in any
other coastal areas that there is a significant drugs problem
at certain times of the year coming through the ports?
Mr Shimwell: It is a reasonable
suggestion, is it not, to put resources where the problem lies?
Q352 Anne Main: I am going on what
you have just told the Committee?
Mr Shimwell: My experience is
in the south-west and in Cornwall. Certainly more interventions
into stopping drugs coming into the UK would be an advantage.
I cannot really comment on the national picture, whether nationally
there is a problem around ports. I think there certainly is around
the south-west, Cornwall, Torbay, Penzance, in particular, and
I would say that the knock-on effect of drugs coming into those
areas is waiting times on drug and alcohol rehab, programme support
and key work, so an early intervention would be a reasonable suggestion.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed.
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