Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I welcome, from YouthAction NI, Sean Madden, who is a senior youth worker, and Olivia Davidson-Millar, who is a youth worker. We really appreciate your coming at such short notice.

Mr Sean Madden (YouthAction NI): Thank you very much for having us. As you said, it was very short notice. I got a wee phone call on Monday to ask whether we could do it. You will appreciate that this is neither my nor Olivia's natural environment. Throw us into a youth club or an interface, and you will see us doing our thing and our best work. We have prepared a wee bit on what we see as the priorities for youth work to help tackle the inequalities that are faced by young people. Olivia and I can share information on some of our resource and our work with young people and children and on how we help tackle inequalities. What will work best is if we open up the floor for you to ask for some examples of our work. That is where you will see our passion and the quality of what we do.

YouthAction has an 80-year history of tackling the inequalities that are faced by children and young people regionally. Our top priority is to continue to support children and young people through youth work, ensuring that youth work is an educational right for all young people. The work of the Council for Europe and the European Union on youth matters highlights the value of youth work, with recommendations to embed across all member states. We see youth work as an educational intervention that improves the lives of young people and communities. It is carried out mostly by volunteers and youth work charities and groups. Without that voluntary buy-in, we, as a sector, would be lost. Youth work not only improves the lives of young people but saves the lives of many of them. Many young people are unable to access life-changing and life-saving support or even basic support. We are able to help them access those opportunities.

Young people have many learning experiences to create outcomes and skills to make a positive contribution to the economy and society. We, as youth workers, play a key role in highlighting those positive experiences. Young people build essential skills and, more importantly, foundational skills for life in communication, leadership and resilience. Young people build leadership through volunteering, altruistic activities and activism, all of which are supported by training accreditation and the training that we provide. Youth work challenges the disabling factors that affect young people's growth and development. We believe that youth work makes a significant contribution to many government priorities, including ending violence against girls and young women, building safer communities and growing a stable economy.

Young people need a sense of certainty and stability. That is what we, as youth workers, can provide. We can be that power of one. We can help young people to go on a journey and become the best version of themselves.

It would make it a wee bit easier for us if I opened things up. What sort of questions do you have?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you. I really appreciate you coming: you probably feel like you have been thrown in the deep end. With this inquiry, we are trying to see what we can do to better support all sections of society. The young people with whom you work will not just fit into one pigeon hole. They might be LGBT, from an ethnic minority and have a disability. To what degree can more be done to educate them on their rights and responsibilities in society and on how they can better voice when they feel that they are being discriminated against? What better support could be put in place for them?

Mr Madden: Giving young people the opportunity to be involved in the decision-making processes and engaging with them at a younger age is vital. A lot of the young people with whom we engage are 16-plus. By that stage, decisions have been made. They may not have had the opportunities to meet other young people from different communities and different ethnic backgrounds. Engaging with young people at a younger age will help to open up their ability and their opportunities to engage. That is the most important aspect of helping them to make those decisions and of being involved in that process.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): What are the issues that they talk about? The Youth Assembly, for example, has done some work on mental health, so that is probably an issue that you will mention. Are there any other issues that the young people whom you are with are particularly concerned about and would like to see policy changes on?

Ms Olivia Davidson Millar (YouthAction NI): A lot of the young people with whom we work — I am thinking in particular of the young people with whom I have worked who have come from the care system — are not really involved in a lot of the decisions that are made that have impacts on their lives. A lot of the time, the issue is making sure that they are in the room when those conversations are happening. Often, they are told by a social worker, "These are the decisions that you have to make", but they should already have been part of that decision making. I find that a lot of the time the situation becomes a choice of either this or that. Either way, it ends up not really being a positive experience.

I will give you an example from my own practice. I worked with a young woman who had turned 16. With that comes changes in the social care system. Her choice was between staying in a home or being moved to a town that was two hours away from her community. Her community was actually the youth centre that I worked at. The young women there were her friends and her family, but she was busting to get away from the home, being a young person in care, so she made the choice to move two hours away. Sadly, the result of that was her making an attempt on her life and ending up in a mental health hospital for a long time. To be honest, that has been her life ever since: consistently making attempts and consistently being let down. Now that she is an adult, a lot of that support has been taken away from her. Had she had a seat at the table, and if I, as her youth worker, had been there to advocate for her and ask: "Why would we move this young person so far away? Can we find a solution that allows her to still be part of her community?", it might have made her life less chaotic than it sadly is now.

For things like that, it is really important that young people are listened to and brought into those conversations when they are happening, because ultimately it is they who have to live with the decisions that are made during those conversations.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Of course. Thank you.

Sean, you spoke about how youth work is about accessing life-changing and life-saving opportunities and training and stuff. Can you give us some tangible examples of how that is delivered and what the key themes are, please?

Mr Madden: Yes. YouthAction focuses on a number of key themes. I will talk to two of them: employability and peacebuilding.

We have young people presenting themselves to us with, basically, nowhere to live. How is that young person meant to go out and look for or find a job, when they have that at the back of their head? We are working with young people who face multiple barriers before they can even get onto that ladder, to try to get sustainable, long-term careers or sustainable, long-term employment.

Young people come to us who, basically, have not eaten in days, have nowhere to live for that weekend or have been kicked out of houses and are sofa-surfing. It is life-changing. We can bring them round to centres and bring them to get put on Housing Executive lists and stuff. It is about knowing where to go to access that help for the young people, being open and willing to go above and beyond, and helping them to achieve and access those sorts of support structures.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you, Sean.

Mr Dickson: Thank you, both. That was very interesting background information, particularly the example of the young woman whose housing and community needs you were dealing with.

To what extent do the young people whom you engage with think about their rights? Do they think about their rights, or do you always have to explain what they may be entitled to and what their rights are? What do you hear young people talk about when it comes to their rights and equality issues?

Ms Davidson Millar: A lot of the young people whom we work with are not fully aware that they are active citizens in our society.

Mr Dickson: Spot on.

Ms Davidson Millar: As people who work in YouthAction and youth workers out in communities, it is our role to educate young people and make them aware that they are part of communities. A lot of the time, even those in the communities do not realise that young people are part of their communities, so it is also about bringing the wider community into those spaces and places.

A lot of times, a wee light bulb turns on for young people, and they go, "I can access that. It is something that I have". They might not have realised that they had that. In journeys that I have gone on, particularly with groups of young women, when they realise what other women have done before them and the rights that they have now, such as the right to vote, they are like, "That was only 100 years ago? What?" It is then about looking at how they might be discriminated against 15 years from now. They may only be 14 now, but we look at the gender pay gap, the lack of childcare and things like that with them. That is the stuff that the young women whom I work with think about. It is important that the young women are aware of those issues, because, when they are done with us in youth services, they will be out in the world making decisions about who the best employer for them is, whether they want to have kids, what that will look like for them if there is no childcare, as well as things such as why the male counterpart to the job that they are doing gets paid more. It is really good that young people are able to challenge that and stand up for themselves.

Mr Dickson: Thank you.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Thank you for coming to the Committee, especially at very short notice; that is what we do to you.

For a lot of people, it is after something has been denied to them that they realise that they do not have a right. Our previous witness panel, which was from the Human Rights Commission, said that between 16 and 18 is an awkward age range. For example, you can join the British Army at 16 but you cannot get a contract for a tenancy unless you have a social worker, a guardian or something like that. Is there something more that we need to do for you to explain what happens here with rights?

Mr Madden: I know that you do this already, but it is about giving young people access and explaining to young people at a younger age. There is no point in engaging with a young person at the age of 16 or 17, when they already think that the whole system is against them. If you bring them in here, the only experience that they have had is the negative experience of formal education and the only time that they have seen someone in a suit, it was a social worker who constantly talked down to them.

Ms Ní Chuilín: I am not talking about bringing them in here. I mean how do we help you? What is it that we in here need to do about gaps in equality if we are to help you to work with children and young people? We are doing a Committee inquiry into gaps in equality legislation. Age discrimination is one of those. You mentioned the gender pay gap, and there are disability and race as well. What would you ask us to do to make better citizenship for children and young people a lot easier?

Mr Madden: It would be providing longer-term funding that is not for one or two years. It can take a year or two to get your feet on the ground, gain the trust of young people and build their confidence. The longer-term initiatives that last for four or five years help us to engage and build long-lasting sustainable relationships in communities. YouthAction is a membership-based organisation, and we have 180 members regionally. We have access to communities and the hardest to engage young people, but if you parachute in and out for four or five weeks, it is not be as worthwhile as an engagement with longer-term sustainable funding that allows us to build long-term relationships and opportunities for young people when they feel comfortable engaging with us.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Have you had any input into the current ending violence against women and girls strategy? For example, are the young girls and young women whom you work with aware of the strategy and have they had any involvement with it?

Ms Davidson Millar: Yes. They are involved. One member of our senior leadership team is involved with the strategy. Again, we do that as part of our practice when we work with young women. We have a resource called 'Bullseye', and we go through it with young women. To be honest, it is part of their lives. It may not always be pure physical violence, but they are still experiencing some sort of violence in their lives. For a lot of young women, it is reality and it is normal.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Coercive control and things like that?

Ms Davidson Millar: Yes, and they do not even realise that they are in that situation. Again, as Sean said, if we have a longer time and are not just running in and out, we can build those relationships with the young women, so that they can say "What you said to me three months ago, I realise that I am living in that". Funding can be directed to an aim that is decided by people like you. Maybe part of the aim is important for young people, but it may be missing another part. It could be violence against young women and girls, such as coercion, but the young woman is mainly thinking about housing because her abuser has the contract for the house.

It is about making sure that all the different angles are covered. We work for a charity, and we are constantly hit with less and less money, and that is the reality of what it looks like. If the age is lowered to 16 from 18, and if young people are educated at 14, it means that when they decide to take a job or make a big decision at age 16, such as university, they are fully informed. A lot of young people say, "Shit, I am 16 now, and I need to make a decision. What do I do now". If they are given time at 14, they will be informed when they are 16, and it will be meaningful instead of the young person panicking about what to do.

Ms Ní Chuilín: No worries. Thank you.

Mr Harvey: My question is similar to Carál's. Sean mentioned violence against girls. What other methods to you use to prevent violence against girls and young women?

Mr Madden: We work with young women, but we also do a lot of work with young men. We have practical resources that our youth workers can pick up to deliver. We are a membership-based organisation, and if a youth or community group on the ground identifies violence as an issue for the young people whom they are working with, they will contact us and one of our specially trained youth workers will work with that group of young people on the ground. Whilst we may not have been out there before, their youth worker will identify violence as a key issue, and we can pick up the resources that we have developed and work with young people to challenge the issue.

Mr Harvey: Do you feel that that is making a difference?

Mr Madden: Yes. It definitely, 100%, is making a difference.

Ms Davidson Millar: We are aware that toxic masculinity exists, and it is normal for a lot of young men. Our role as youth workers is to challenge that quietly in a soft way, and ask, "Why do you think that?", or, "Why do you believe that?". We take them on a journey to change their mind. We have a relationships and sexuality education (RSE) resource called 'Turn the Light On', and when I have done that sort of work with young men's groups, an important bit of it is on consent. I teach young men about consent and that no means no. They are taught that, yes, consent can be taken away and about the realities of what it will look like if you get into difficulties because you have not listened to somebody saying no.

To be honest, it can be an awkward conversation to have, but it is actually incredible, because young men will say, "I didn't know that", or, "I thought that as soon a somebody says yes, that's it". Whatever we are teaching young women, we do the same for young men.

Mr Harvey: Thank you.

Ms McLaughlin: You covered quite a wee bit there. To take it a wee bit further from Carál's question, how do you think that we can increase the capacity of young people to develop their knowledge of discrimination and the protections around it? What more can be done? You talked about ending violence against women and girls, RSE and working with various groups within it. In the correspondence, we have a letter from the Festival of PEACE. You are involved in that, and you made a response to the Programme for Government about the prioritisation of peacebuilding and reconciliation. Is there something in and around that that needs more support and more help, and to give you greater prioritisation?

Ms Davidson Millar: Yes.

Mr Madden: It just goes back to providing us as an organisation with the opportunities to engage with young people. We are really good at doing that. Again, that goes back to funding us for that sort of work. Sometimes that work maybe does not sound as exciting or as needed as other pieces of work, but it really is. I was involved in that Festival of PEACE in Dungannon. There were 85 young people of different age groups from different backgrounds and communities across the region. The beauty of that was the intergroup learning, bringing them together to share their experiences. Not to harp on about the same thing, but it is just about providing organisations that are working on the ground and know what they are doing with the security, funding and opportunities to continue to do what they are good at doing.

Ms McLaughlin: What age group are you working with?

Mr Madden: Our project works with young people aged 16 to 25, but YouthAction works with young people as young as P6/P7, so it is a wide range.

Ms McLaughlin: Right, OK.

Mr Madden: That event in Dungannon did have young people from maybe P7 and first year right up to the ages of 25 and 26, so it was a lovely section of young people. Obviously, we did not have the P7s and the 25-year-olds in the same room, but we were able to facilitate the discussions in the same way.

Ms McLaughlin: Would you say that a lot of your work is around education, developing the capacity of young people to understand their rights and their place in society?

Mr Madden: Yes, it is definitely around education.

Ms Davidson Millar: That is embedded in our whole practice. Youth work is education; it is just informally done. YouthAction is a rights-based educator; that is what we do. For us, it is our bread and butter. We just go in and work with young people. It is our job to support young people as best we can. We can give you loads of different stories of discrimination that happens to young people. You are asking what you can give us, and Sean is right: it is more support, be it just giving young people spaces to come to and be heard or giving us access to resources that can be used, and then, as Sean said, funding. It is just needed. It is just the reality of what we are in, really.

Ms McLaughlin: Thank you very much.

Mr Gaston: Thanks very much for coming along this afternoon. A number of questions have touched on things that I would like to explore with you. You work primarily with 16- to 18-year-olds, and sometimes with ones from P6 upwards. At what age would you recommend that we need to start to educate young people? At what age do they become interested, and where do you see the responsibility lying? Obviously, the parents have a responsibility when they are bringing their child up, and they have a right to bring their child up in whatever way they see fit. They then go on to school. What responsibilities do schools have, and where do you see the cracks in that young people are maybe not aware of their rights? How do you get young people interested? That is one of the biggest things. They have to reach a certain age before they become interested.

Mr Madden: I think that young people are interested in knowing about their rights from a young age if you engage them properly. If I am delivering a training course to young people aged 16, 17 and 18, I am going to do it differently from what I would do for young people who are at primary school or in first year or second year. It is all about how we do it, how we approach it and how we tailor our sessions. I think that young people are open to learning from a young age. To give young people credit, when you engage with them at a young age, they are like sponges; they soak everything in and ask questions. We give them the best answers that we can, and we support them and give them the best guidance that we can.

Ms Davidson Millar: Something that makes youth work so special is that we build relationships with young people. That could be one-to-one, or it could be in a group. We do that through providing food for them, doing some games, taking them on a trip, or it could be into those bigger discussions about their rights and all of that. We take them on that wee journey, and we build relationships with them. That is how we are able to start educating them on rights. We will not necessarily walk in right away to a group that we do not know and say, "Right, do you know about your rights?". We take time with them. We get to know them. We get to figure out what makes them tick, or what they do not have a clue about at all, and ask, "Well, do you know about this? Do you know about that?". We work out what they care about, what they do not care about and what is important to them and what is not.

Mr Madden: We will use different tools. For example, YouthAction has a performing unit called the Rainbow Factory, which engages over 450 young people from the ages of eight or nine. It works with maybe 200 or 225 young people per week, and it uses issue-based theatre to help young people to explore and look at their rights. We also engage with sports teams and sports clubs. Youth work is a tool that uses many different methodologies to engage with young people to try to let them engage with us as confidently and safely as possible.

Mr Gaston: What has come across really strongly is that you get alongside them and do life with them. Would that be fair to say?

Ms Davidson Millar: Yes.

Mr Madden: Yes.

Mr Gaston: I am critical of Stormont from time to time, but one of the things that it really excels at is the education officers in the Building bringing young people in to try to introduce them to politics and what happens here. I am a massive advocate of that. Once you get people in and you start to break the ice with them and introduce them to it, they start to open up and develop an interest. Do you believe that, at an early age, the conversation should be introduced, whether that be at primary school or in further education? Would you like to see that built into the curriculum? Would you like to see more youth workers on the ground in order to do that? Should there be more places where children and young people can go?

Ms Davidson Millar: Yes, because then it will not seem to be the big scary people on the hill making all the decisions. The young people will feel as though they can come here and have their voice heard. As youth workers, we would not feel as terrified of sitting here if we were in amongst it a wee bit more. We are in communities day in and day out; we do not do this very often. It is maybe more terrifying for us than for others whom you have met today. It is about opening the doors a wee bit more, having those conversations and being welcoming to children and young people.

Mr Kingston: Thank you for coming, especially at short notice. You touched earlier, Sean, on special educational needs (SEN). I am on a school board of governors. I am interested in your views on — whether or not you are involved in this yourself — alternative education models for pupils for whom a traditional class setting does not provide for their needs and does not work for them. How do you see that working? Are you involved in any models like that? If you have been involved, have you seen progress in pupils being able to return to a more normal class setting?

Ms Davidson Millar: I am going to talk about a group that has already gone though the education system and maybe some other training as well. When I created that wee group of young people, who are probably aged 19 to 24 and have autism or ADHD —.

Mr Kingston: Post [Inaudible.]

Ms Davidson Millar: Yes, post. We were able to see that the young people maybe got a decent education or decent training, but, when it came to being able to build friendships, get a bus from A to B, handle their bills or maybe, one day, have a home of their own, that young person at 19 was a lot different to another young person at 19 who did not have autism. We have had to take that wee group of young people on a journey. They started with us last year. Most of them just got taxis because they were scared to get buses or anything. Now, most of them get buses in and out on their own. We took them on that journey. We said, "OK. We will meet you at the bus stop. We will get you on the bus. We will walk you to the place". Now, they are a lot more independent, because they are able to see that they can be. One young man had nothing to do at all. God love him; he is the loveliest young man. When he talks, he says, "I have friends now. I come here every Wednesday and I have a group of people who I know are my people." He never had that before, because maybe he was just in and out of school. He would be classified by the world as "difficult". He is not, but that is how he feels he is. For him, being with us in that wee group is the first time in his life that he has been able to be totally himself. We just let him be who he is, because that is who he is and he needs to find peace with that. He is now an adult, and he needs to work out what that looks like for him in the world.

Again, because we work with older young people, obviously we know that there are issues with education. There are more needs for young people with SEN. It is out there in the news all the time. More needs to be done there. More schools need to be created, or whatever. I do not know — I am not the right person for that — but I think that there should be more partnership with the wider youth work sector and specifically SEN youth workers, because there seems to be a bit of a gap there when it comes to that holistic approach.

Mr Madden: Those young people identified that they did get formal qualifications in school, but, after school, they had nowhere to go. After school, they were alone. They were in their bedrooms. They had no relationships. I suppose that that is the beauty of youth work. We were able to take a step back and not concentrate fully on the formal qualifications, but provide them with a safe, caring environment where they would flourish and have something to look forward to every week. We have worked in schools, Brian. There is no point in our going in and duplicating the work that you are doing. It is about supporting it and providing aftercare and additional support for the most needy young people. The young person who Olivia is talking about is very friendly with the president of Kosovo. He had a meeting in our building, and that young person was giving him knuckles and high fives not so long ago. I have never seen a young man smile and appreciate it —

Ms Davidson Millar: That opportunity.

Mr Madden: — as much as he did. It is about working in partnership, collaborating, not duplicating the work, and providing the best experience for young people.

Mr Kingston: The school where I am a governor, and other schools, will work with youth providers to try to find models that will work for the pupils and help them to get the best from their education.

Mr Madden: Brian, sometimes it can be as straightforward as taking the young people out of the school environment and delivering Open College Network qualifications (OCN) or other qualifications in a less formal environment. It may work for a youth worker to go into the school. Each young person's journey is different. It is about us collaborating and working in partnership as much as we can.

Mr Kingston: Have I time for one other question?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Yes.

Mr Kingston: Maybe it is not the age group that you work with mainly, but I want to ask about looked-after children. I do not know whether you are directly involved with them. We hear that there is a shortage of foster families. What are the needs of children in those circumstances? I do not know whether you are involved in that line of work — the support that is needed and all the complexity of young people's lives and family circumstances.

Mr Madden: I am sure that there are probably people who could speak better to that. However, I can say that we work with young people from that background, and we work with them in the same way that we work with everybody else. If any young person comes to us, we will engage with them by doing a personal development assessment to see what additional needs they have and how we can provide support and guidance for them. If that flags up an issue, we will try to put stuff in place to overcome those barriers. To be fair, we are probably not the best people to ask about that. We engage with young people from that background, and we engage with them in the same way as with any other young person. Thanks very much for the question.

Ms Sugden: Thank you for coming in to give us your views. I suppose that, generally, it is quite difficult for young people, even the general public sometimes, to realise what rights are not being fulfilled or what they would even advocate for us to be doing as legislators. It is about interpreting what is happening to them in real life and every day. What are the young people saying to you that they are frustrated with in public services, whether it is the police, education or access to other services? What are you hearing from them that suggests that they are not getting what they should, not being treated right, or not being fulfilled in a way that anyone else, of any other age, is?

Ms Davidson Millar: The first thing that comes to my mind is access to counselling and mental health services. A lot of the feedback that I get sometimes on mental health services is very negative. A lot of the times, again, they do not feel that they are a part of the conversation, and often they are not being fully listened to. Sometimes, young people feel that they are being overlooked or not listened to when they are talking about their emotions and how they are feeling. It is almost like: "Sure, you are young; you will be fine." What we see, day in and day out, is that young people are more anxious now than ever before. They have more mental health problems than ever before. I think that that is a jump-off from COVID. Anxiety is massively up. That ability to connect with others is very different now. Things like mental health services and access to counselling have been affected. We have a really good resource called 'Life Maps' that we use to build positive mental health for young people to try to counter the negative that we see all the time. Providing something like that shows young people that it is not always about having depression or having anxiety. It is, "Let us have a good day." Is it your messaging? Things like that would be really useful. Suicide rates for young men are some of the highest, if not probably the highest, in Europe. We need to tackle that front and head on, quite honestly. I find it quite frustrating at times, constantly going to mental health conferences and seeing the same people who care about it and nobody else. It would be really nice to see some of you guys there at some of the events that we hold every year for World Mental Health Day, talking about the reality of six suicides a week. That is not OK for a country as small as ours.

That is probably not the full answer, but I think that there needs to be more backing. We need to listen to young people's experiences of mental health and their experience of using the services, in particular, and we must find a way to make those services more young-person-friendly.

Mr Madden: On the ground, Claire, some of the other issues that are raised include the benefit system. Young people do not really know how to navigate it. There is a lack of employment opportunities. Young people still talk about digital poverty. Something that YouthAction NI is really good at, as we are regionally based, is rural youth work. Young people from rural communities find it hard to access travel and opportunities. I was in our Fermanagh and Enniskillen office yesterday. Eight of the young people have just completed an OCN level 2 introduction to animation. Only 30 people in the whole region have it, so it is an amazing achievement. However, if it was not for our youth worker picking up those young people and bringing them home at night, they could not make it into Enniskillen. It is about those practical issues that I am sure all young people face on the ground. They are the issues that come up day and daily.

Ms Davidson Millar: In relation to employment, young people are constantly being abused through the use of zero-hours contracts and trial shifts. I was speaking to a young person recently who had done five trial shifts and did not even get the job. They were long shifts — six-hour shifts — and they did not get any money for them.

Ms Ní Chuilín: That is illegal.

Ms Davidson Millar: That is not a one-off; it happens all the time, because young people do not know their rights. I do not think that it would happen to somebody who is older, because we would say, "Hold on a minute. Pay me my money. I worked for you". Things like that need to be highlighted — or eradicated, but I do not know whether you can do that. That would be good, because it is young people who are falling into the gaps of those more sinister zero-hours contracts and things like that.

Ms Sugden: Thank you; that is useful. If you can think of any more examples, pass them on to the Committee, because you are highlighting where the frustrations are and where the young people are being discriminated against. As you say, they are not getting the same access to services, because they do not have the information and they do not know their rights. It is all linked.

Your work with young men and boys in relation to the ending violence against women and girls piece is 100%. I am a big advocate for peer support and having people whom they look up to and work with communicating those messages, because I do not think that they are going to listen to government advertisements or people who, ultimately, they do not respect. I understand that. The work that needs to happen to change attitudes will be done by the like of your organisation. I am asking you to pass on anything more that you can think of — 100% — but you need resources and support to be able to do that. I will put my support behind that. Thank you.

Ms Sheerin: Thanks to you both for coming in today. Stop putting yourselves down, because you have the lived experience. You are working with young people and can give us not just the theory but the reality with regard to rights for young people. I have found your contributions really helpful.

In the previous question and answer, you touched on mental health and the rate of anxiety. The question that I want to ask falls in with what Brian asked about the classroom and traditional education settings. More and more queries are coming into my constituency office about children who are experiencing extreme anxiety, not presenting at school, struggling and needing a child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) intervention. It almost seems that there is a postcode lottery and that the speed with which they can access help, and the barriers that they come across when trying to get that help, depend on the school that they are in. Will you speak more to that? You mentioned COVID. Are there other factors at play? Why is this becoming the pandemic that it is becoming?

Ms Davidson Millar: Part of it is probably to do with the fact that there is a lot more poverty. We have a lot more young people coming through the door who are hungry. We always say that youth work is a cup of tea, a bit of toast and a wee chat, but that is becoming an absolute necessity. Every session that we run —

Ms Ní Chuilín: You have to feed the kids.

Ms Davidson Millar: — has to involve food. A lot of times, our programme costs do not cover that, so how do we make sure that that is included in the funding that we get? If you are not getting fed, that will have an adverse effect on your mental health, because you are going to school hungry. How are you going to be educated? How are you taking anything in when you are starving? You are not going to. Would you want to go into school and watch your friends eat lunch that you cannot get? Addressing things like that and what is going on in relation to the poverty situation with families is another important thing because, ultimately, they all affect one another. Not all young people will be upfront about that right away, so it is on us to build that relationship and to observe and say, "I noticed that young person had seven slices of pizza, but the other person whose mummy and daddy were able to provide a breakfast and lunch only had two". In that situation, we will tell them to bring the rest of the pizza home, or, the following week, we will buy an extra pizza for that young person. It might end up in a conversation that ends with you giving them £10 to fill up their gas, especially if it is a young person in care who does not know how to do that. We end up doing things like that, where we have to literally meet the physical needs of the young people with whom we work. I have done shops for them; I have done a food shop for a young person. I have filled up the gas or electric for young people. All of that affects their mental health. Not having the right money or the skills to deal with things such as saving your money and spending it correctly affects your mental health.

Mr Madden: When a young person comes to us — we are not a school environment — the three things that we try to ensure for each of them is that their travel is covered, their childcare is covered, if needed, and that they have been fed their lunch when they are with us; that might be the only meal that they have that day.

I will go back to the levels of anxiety. The access that young people have to being online and to social media has a massive a part to play in that. There is a lot of negativity, in mainstream media and online, around young people. As an organisation, we highlight the good news stories about young people. Other youth work organisations do that particularly well too. Young people say to me, "We are constantly told on the news that we are this or that we are involved in that at the weekend". If they are told that, they will end up doing it, so we want to highlight the positive stories around young people contributing to society. During COVID, young people were the shining lights. Many older people and people in the communities could not have got through COVID without young people's interventions. It is about continuing to highlight those stories. Yes, there is a lot of negativity online, with young people constantly being told that they are doing this or that wrong, but we are trying to flip that to let young people see what they are doing well, and we are really trying to highlight that for wider society, so that people might think, "Do you know what, I can walk down to the shop past that wee crowd of young people. They are just standing there because they have nowhere else to go".

Ms Sheerin: Thanks for that. You touched on a few things. The whole social media thing when it comes to talking about rights, including the rights to freedom of expression, free speech and all that is an issue. I have dealt with cases where parents have contacted me about bullying situations, people suffering and all of that. It always strikes me that, in the past, somebody might have been bullied at school and that, while it was horrific and really damaging in some cases, there was almost an element of it being contained within the school setting. Now, however, the bullying follows them home and into their bedroom, and it is not always seen or heard. The impact of things such as Snapchat, Instagram and comparison with other young people — I do not know how much you hear about that or about how people's right to say whatever they want can sometimes really affect other people.

The second thing that I wanted to ask about was political participation and whether you are getting feedback from the young people with whom you are involved on the votes at 16 campaign. Do young people want to get involved in that? Have they any interest in politics and can they see themselves getting involved?

Mr Madden: Thank you. Those are two good questions. The first one, 1,000,000%: young people face issues online so much more now. I deliver safeguarding training, and some of the examples that we hear from our members in the community about coercion being used would frighten you. Young people may have shared pictures, and people threaten to show those pictures to their family or friends if they do not pick up money, run drugs or do this or that for them. That is happening in our communities.

On the votes at 16 campaign, I would say that the majority of young people want to lower the voting age to 16. We find that you need to let young people know how wide politics is. You need to let them know that, if they cannot get a job, it is because of politics, and that, if they were able to vote at 16, they might be able to make a difference. It is about letting young people see the wide variety of ways in which having that say could impact on their lives. As a youth organisation, we try in particular to do that.

Yes, I could not agree more about the issue of people having access to getting online. That is one of the biggest issues for young people at the minute.

Ms Sheerin: Thanks so much for that. Again, thanks very much for the work that you do. I appreciate your coming here today; I found that helpful. Keep up the good work.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): That is a good point on which to end. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.