Taff Youth Forum

Taff Youth Forum

YEPS are fully committed to supporting young people in RCT to have a voice in their community and make a positive difference to where they live and for those around them. We aim do this with 3 local youth forums in Rhondda, Cynon and Taff that you can now join.

If you are aged 11-25 and live in RCT you can be a part of one of our Youth Forums and work on community projects, support services tackling key issues and receive training that can help with vital skills for the future. More importantly YOU can have YOUR say on what happens where you live and on the key decisions in your area.

What is a youth forum?

A youth forum is run and developed by young people for young people. Youth forums exist to represent the views of young people, giving them the opportunity to be heard on their ideas, opinions and needs. This creates a space where young people can discuss issues, engage with decision makers such as youth workers, governance boards and staff of other organisations, and contribute to improving and developing services for young people.

Why join a youth forum?
  • Gain/Increase confidence
  • Learn new skills
  • Make a difference
  • Build new relationships
  • Add it to your CV/college applications/UCAS
  • Be empowered and take a lead in decision making
  • See your ideas come to life
  • Earn rewards 
  • Because it’s fun!

To join the Taff Youth Forum click here to book your place.

Dates:

  • 17/03 – 5pm – 7pm
  • 14/04 – 5pm – 7pm

Venue: YMa 28 Taff St, Pontypridd CF37 4TS

Staff Lead: Louisa Walters / Rhys James

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Louisa’s Contact details: 07368 127408 / (louisa.walters@rctcbc.gov.uk); 
Rhys’ Contact details: 07825 675704 / (Rhys.James@rctcbc.gov.uk);

Taff Forum Meeting 17/02/2025

Attendance: Alfie, Eilidh & Via

Staff: Louisa & Christie

Discussion on roles and responsibilities.
  • We discussed the roles of a Chair person, Vice Chair, Secretary, Social media manager and treasure. We have the roles of Secretary, social media manager and treasurer up for grabs due to young people who are no longer attending.
  • Action: Louisa to put in the group chat which roles people want to using a poll
Community Issues discussed
  • Taff Trail lighting – the young people would like to see lighting on the Taff trail between Pontypridd and Glyncoch as it is pitch black.
  • Contact Street Safety Team – Safer streets to ask for help and map of the location to highlight the unlit areas.
  • We will complete a survey that will be used to ask the community and young people about their opinions.
  • We will send the survey to Ynysbwl Community Group & Young carers Group
  • We will use a QR Code with a poster
  • Questions that we could ask are:
    • How often do you access this trail?
    • What do you think of the lighting on the taff trail? Good, very good, adequate, poor, very poor.
    • How do you think this could be improved?
    • Do you think there should be more lighting? And why?
  • Action – EM to complete research questions for a survey that will be put out to all schools and the community to get their opinion about street lighting.

A discussion around the lack of provision for young people in the Pontypridd Town Centre as there has been a number of ASB incidents. We discussed maybe having a 14+ youth club in the centre of Ponty to help with ASB. Louisa and Rhys had a meeting with the YMA to hopefully hold a youth club in the building but this in its very early planning stages.

Next Meeting on the 17th March 2025 where we will be helping Eye to Eye Counselling with their research through answering their questions about their service.

_____________________________________________________

Taff Forum Meeting 20/01/2025

Attendance: Miley, Khandi, Tori, Alfie, Callie, Eilidh, Jacob and Dylan.

Staff: Louisa & Rhys.

Welcome/catch up:

We welcomed back returning forum members and the forum welcomed a new member. We started the session with a catch up and discussion on what everyone has been up to over Christmas.

Activity 1: Group Contract

We revisited our forums group contract with a focus on Respect, Participation and Empathy. We used these words to form our group contact, then each of us signed it to agree that we will show respect, empathy and be participative.

Activity 2: Why have a youth forum?

During this activity we went back to basics! We discussed why have a youth forum, this was done by reading out a number of reasons of why we should have a youth forum and we discussed/debated whether we thought each reason was either: Very Important, Quite Important or Not Important

Discussion: Resources and Projects

We discussed and identified different resources that we would like to have during our forum sessions. We chose a variety of things like board games, arts/crafts and our mascot named Jeff. Next, we talked about different projects that we would like to do.

We identified different issues that we would like to tackle in our community like: –

  • Street lighting on certain parts of the Taff Trail
  • Lack of youth club/youth activities in Pontypridd town centre
  • Vaping

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next Session on the 17/02/25, we will be revisiting the roles and responsibilities of each forum member and we will vote on who takes on each role.

Share

GOT SOMETHING TO SAY?