To think that closing all these youth centres is like creating a time bomb?

[SaveMYC]

Namechanged as this could make me idientifiable. Naice ham, Pom bears etc...

All over the country, public spending cuts are meaning that councils are closing down youth centres. What will these kids do? Where will they go? What will it mean?

I know the country is hard up, but did this summer's riots not indicate that the one area we can't afford to scrimp is youth services?

GRRRR!

I have been involved in trying to save our local one. We have finalised our business case and the decision is going to be made on the 24th. The many, many hours of work that we have gone to to make this work, I really hope the decision goes our way! We've come a long way - the land was due to be sold off for luxury housing, but now it looks as if we might be in with a chance...

If the council do agree, and if they give us good enough terms that allow us to run it properly, then the young people of our town have somewhere to go. But who is going to take over the others? Or will they just not exist? Where is this 'Big Society' going to come from?

I agree with you. Short term solution but long term problems down the years so not really a saving in money terms overall iyswim. I hope that your youth cenre stays open OP!

I suspect that the youngsters who use them are not the ones who are going to go a-rioting anyway.

Youth Centres are important, very important. If the kids know they have somewhere to go at least it keeps them off the street for a while.

YAsoNBU

Short term gain is always the priority for poiticians of every shade, & it's very frustrating when the long-term effects are so obvious.

Fingers crossed for your application!

Andrewfogg although I agree a lot of rioters were of the rentamob mentality in some areas, I think a lot were of the bored hanging around on street corners type of youngster who is easily carried along by the mob.
If the OP's youth club could stop even a handful of those lads & lasses going off the rails it's worth every penny in my opinion.

It's not just to stop them being bored either, for some youngsters the staff at these centres are the only positive supportive adult influence in their lives outside school.

Hello OP I think I recognise you and good luck with your project.

Andrew a lot of the youth centres also come with very good staff, paid or voluntary, who spend a lot of time engaging with the more marginalised young people through either outreach work or links to services they are involved with, schools, social work, etc. Theres also a change in youth work services so that along with the less structured clubs and so on, there are more specific services such as job clubs, postponing parenting courses, etc etc.

I could weep when I see this happening, I was very small in the 80s but I know a lot of professionals who lived through it all and speak very eloquently about the fall out. Its a false economy and for some of these young people, their youth worker can be the only positive and non threatening adult relationship they have in their life, due to the difference in power relationships between a young person and a youht worker or a teacher/social worker etc.

Bossybritches and rhondajean Thank you for your posts which unlike most posts on this forum may actually lead the poster at whom they are addressed to think again!

Every town needs things for young people be they youth centres, sports clubs, places they can volunteer or organisations.

Ideally they need access to all of the above so they can access whichever they feel is best for them.

I don't agree with Andrew and a lack of places for young people to go will create problems and lead to more people falling in with the "wrong" crowd in an attempt to stop bordom

Andrew, you're wrong - at least in my experience as a youth worker.

It's not just the physical building that will go. It's the structure of all the young people gathering in a safe place with supervision on a regular basis. It's the crowd mentality of "this is a place that's got authority figures, but I can still trust them". It's friendly links built with local police so that, if a copper needs to ask questions, they won't be met with open hostility. It's access to contraception advice, job advice, housing advice.

Then there's the outreach team associated with the club, who will be roaming the streets several nights a week chatting to yp so disaffected they don't even come and hang around outside the club...

Sorry Andrew why does the OP need to think again?

Bossybritches - I think Andrew means that he is thinking again, not that the OP needs to think again, as you and rhondajean have both given very persuasive arguments for the retention of youth centres and youth services (a point of view that I agree with very strongly as well).

Good Luck - the more opportunities to go to youth centres , sports centres etc the better IMO. They need help and support just as much as all the other generations....

there is already proof that the removal of youth services has had a horrible impact in many inner city areas - the boredom for youth is easily countered with gang activities and the rescue activities are mainly voluntary / charity aided

I'm with Andrew on this one - the sort of children that use Youth Centres probaby don't end up rioting

I think there should be more activities for young people but the youth centres I have seen always seemed to miss the mark by about 1,000 miles in terms of engaging the more disaffected kids who needed them the most

Dont agree with this nothing to do bullshit could make a list 100 strong with the different things to do in London that cost under £5 plus the little oniks have free travel
in my la during the summer they produce a 600 booklet of things to do children's clubs that are laid on For 5-16 years as usual its parents who are either working or involved parents who send their children

The club is send my child to has 10 free places to children who parents are on benefits only 2 of those places were taken up.

Whilst the riots were happening in Hakney, manchester ECt the youth clubs were open and ready to go but they still rioted if any one thinks youth club stop youngsters being in a gang your wrong often they can act as a gang meeting place.
Also I find their young who are way of course do go but just often commit their crimes after its shuts

I am sorry to be a realist but a good teacher or youth worker might be able to get touch the odd one or two but really we all know its whats going on at home That really matters

What kind of parents don't know were their kids are at stupid o clock whilest you can clearly see on telly riots going on, when the police the prime mister asked us all to make sure we know were are children are

This will happen again and gain until

The entailment culture that some have is curbed
Until bad parents and chaotic are seriously tackled
And the courts take crime as seriously as they did in the aftermath of the riots

Yet agin people thinking they can change a young persons life with out effecting change with in the family culture
Young people are pure and good it t he adults and environment around them that change who they are

YANBU.

DDs youth club is under threat, it's a mixture of SN kids and deprived mainstream kids, it's been amazing for her and them helping to build real bonds and understanding. One of the lads going there is 22, he has severe learning difficulties and it's the only chance he gets to socialise really, and the kids and staff love him. He's known as 'old timer'. Where the hell will he go ? and the rest of them ?

curwy aha thanks I see now with he benefit of more tea!

Maypole of course you are right & parental involvement (or lack of) is a bit factor for a lot of these kids, but even if only those 2 in your kids club are kept off the steets & supported, then long term that's 2 more children who have a chance to break out of the cycle of dependancy & ignorance & ultimately 2 more adults who hopefully won't cost the taxpyer as much!!

If you take say easter house council estate in scotland say which has around 27 thousand homes on it its rife with drugs, many of the fathers are absent in jail or involved with crime.
It has higher than average amount of children on the cp register and higher on average amount of children in need

And very high unemployment

Do you really think the behaviour of the children is down to not having a youth centre really I think you will find even if thorp park was opened up their the young people would still have the same issue

In my la they had opened a 1.6 million youth centre/gym in one of the trouble estates their with in 6 months half the children who it was built for are banned due to rule braking including weapons,drug taking/selling wearing gang colours, some poor sod was stabbed out side during the summer and due to the staff not being able to grantee the safety of the young people or make assurances to the residents who had no end of hassle at kicking out time it doors are closed for the meantime

I often find my local gazzete very even handed of these matters so very inclined to believe what was written on the matter

The young people in my la had a spanking new youth centre they got what they wanted then they set about over 6 months destroying the assurances the youth works and he council made to residents and spoiling what was something for them with a murder

I work for a youth charity; our service is information,advice and guidance, we work closely with youth centres. In our area, the county council Youth Service is withdrawing from running youth centres, but are going to be allocating funding for voluntary and community organisations to run them in it's place. THis is a competitive process, with around £220,000 available for our region of the county - I think over £1 million in total. And this represents a saving, so you can imagine how much they were spending previously. The main issue is that this is causing competition between local charities. Without going into too much detail, it is leading to organisations deciding to develop their work into new areas in order to get the funding, which is causing friction between services which had previously worked in partnership. Also despite the fact that the funding is supposed to be given to local organisations to run services, some major charities like Barnardos have put in to run services on a county wide level. Which is somewhat contrary to the whole Big Society rhetoric of local services run by local people.

On the subject of the Big Society, it is obvious that the GOvernment knows that how difficult it is to deliver services exclusively through volunteering - their Family CHampion scheme, which was meant to involve "thousands" of volunteers kicks off soon...all run by paid staff, with volunteers to be recruited "at a later date"

Bossybritches22 sorry but the amount youth workers and these centres cost we can't just keep them open for the one or two children who might be helped

Its much better to pick up the chaotic families by the scruff of the neck lay on compluserey parenting classes, relationship counselling cooking classes ECt then you save that kids whole family not just the kid

When you set out to change the whole family dynamic you do a much better deed in my view that trying to just change the child

YANBU - it's not just Youth Centres it's many support agencies for children and young people - this government seems to view them as acceptable collateral damage - how to you engage young people and prevent the things that lead to anti social behaviour if you have no workers or centres in whitch to do it?

We know who these families are when the children are small why wait till their 16 a walk through youth centre doors

Personally I think the needs to be focused on chaotic fannies with children under five or just after mum finds out she having a baby

Did anybody see this video on the Guardian website around the time of the riots?

Good luck with your youth club OP

Why should the trainers and the youth be like his parents why don't we find this boys parents and get them to do their bloody job

And if we are saying the parents have untterly failed to parents then the question then is where is ss and why do these people still have hold of the kids

Maybe because people choosing to be involved in something - making an active choice to engage and work with other people is a better way of effecting long lasting change than acting like the SS and forcing people to do things the way YOU think they should - that surely breeds resentment and resistance

surely it's better to bring people along with you than force them?

I can only speak for the situation in my la. Our youth centres are currenly under threat with a saving of 500k to be made in the next year. Having worked in several of the centres accross our area I have to say in my opinion the cost of running them is not justified. Out of the 5 YCs in my area only 1 has a good attendance - mostly down to the dedication of the manager using creative ways to encourage YPs through the door.

The other 4 are lucky if they get a handful in on an evening. The hardest to reach and most disaffected are all banned from the centres for drugs/violence etc so are out in the estates causing problems in the community anyway.

The other thing that I find silly in my area is the recording of who attends. Our Youth Service at the moment do not have a way of recording outcomes for these young people to show how the Youth Service have helped them progress. This could be as important as supporting a young person through a qualification or assisting with independant living skills - the main aim of YCs I think should be helping these young people work towards being socially mobile in later life and be able to make well informed decisions - not just playing pool week in week out all night. Each of our YCs costs the LA around 30k a year in rent - I think our youth centres would have been gone long ago if it wasn't such a flash point with the local MPs (residents moaning about anti social behaviour - you better not close the youth centre letters to the local MPs - MPs dont want to lose votes so keep the YCs open) when in fact in our area this is way off the mark, from my experience closing the YC wont make any difference to Anti Social Behaviour in our area. I feel for the few who attend regularly who have made friends and enjoy those hours out but being realistic the cost just doesnt justify keeping these centres open.

Just my opinion though...........:)