Memorandum 15
Submission from Y Action
1. I am writing on behalf of Y action a
small youth and community group in Winsford, Cheshire. Y action
was established in 2001 and currently has approx.150 members.
The group is wholly run by unpaid workers and promotes life long
learning in a socially deprive community based on an ex-council
estate (eg via a youth club and after school education class).
We believe that the planned proposal will have a negative impact
on the group and the local community in the following ways:
2. A number of volunteers are planning to
do courses relating to their unpaid work so that they can deliver
a high quality service. Under the new proposals some volunteers
will be classed as ELQs students. Given that this relates to unpaid
work and not their current paid occupation and some volunteers
are self-funding we believe that volunteers are less likely to
do this type of training in the future. This means that the quality
of service provided may reduce over time and that the group will
be unable to expand its service into some areas due to lack of
high quality training/education of volunteers.
3. A number of members have asked Y action
to point out that in their paid employment there is an employment
need to train for another degree at the same level. For example,
John Baker (the correspondent for this letter) will be self funding
a first degree in Dementia Studies in 2008 relating to his job
as a general nurse in a private nursing home. This is because
he is unable to get promoted in his current company without it.
John fears that if the company is sold at some point then he will
be made unemployed because he does not have any specific qualifications
in dementia care. This is not an unfounded position (eg his company
is now not hiring nurses without this qualification if they are
general nurses and in the ten years he as worked as a nurse in
various nursing homes three homes have been sold to new companies.
He was unable to go on the MSc because the course fees are much
higher and he can not afford to pay for that course.
4. One Y action member recently retrained
due to having a disability and was a ELQs student while retraining.
Without this training she would have become unemployed.
5. Y action promotes community harmony and
ethnic tolerance and participation. We thus believe that having
an unequal funding situation in the UK will make it harder to
do this eg their may develop an anti-Welsh feeling due to inequality
of funding and other funding policies. This is partially important
in an area such as Winsford that is close to the Welsh border.
January 2008
| 
