Report to the People
3rd November 2003
Investing Time in our Future
Who says all politicians do is talk?
Not,
though, that this stops me reinforcing it from time to time.
Last
Tuesday, for example, I addressed the Annual General Council Meeting of the
Inverclyde & District Battalion of the Boys Brigade.
Now I know the BB prides itself in teaching its members self-discipline,
but I did worry that forcing them to sit through a talk from a politician might
be a character test too far.
Still,
it gave me a chance to highlight some of the interesting evidence the Scottish
Parliament’s Education Committee has recently received from uniformed youth
organisations such as the BB. There
are, the Committee heard, some 30,000 volunteers in uniformed organisations
across Scotland. Of these, the
Guides (or “Girlguiding Scotland” as it’s apparently now known) have
11,000 adult volunteers and 1,500 young leaders.
The time they give amounts to a million voluntary hours every year –
equivalent to 550 full-time jobs.
But
it’s when you consider the role played by youth organisations such as these in
giving young people self-respect and keeping vulnerable youngsters on the
straight and narrow, that you appreciate the true value of the work done by
their volunteers.
Not,
of course, that we should single out the uniformed organisations.
Take the volunteers about whom I was speaking in the Parliament not 24
hours later: those who sit on the Children’s Panel.
As
I mentioned in a Private Member’s Debate on Wednesday night, children’s
hearings do not, as some mistakenly believe, simply deal with young offenders.
They are also there to look out for kids who need care or protection.
And what has made the hearings system endure for over three decades is
the unstinting work of its unpaid trained volunteers.
The
fact that we have so many people ready to give up their time and help out other
people’s kids destroys this nonsense about community spirit being dead.
It
is, though, only fair that the government should support them in their efforts.
And to do that, we need to be able to answer the volunteers’ when they ask us
why we can find unlimited funds to deal with children who are already in trouble
but little to keep them out of it.
Back to Current Reports to the People
[ HOME ] [ News ] [ Report to the People ] [ Interact ] [ Links ] [ E-Mail ]
[ Copyright ] [ UK Online ] [ Scottish Parliament ]