Making youth a priority

COUNTY PLANNING A YOUTH CENTRE?

The interesting new information is  that the County seem to have costed a Youth Centre and are now collecting money towards it, Perhaps its time for them to start talking to the town about their plans because we are still in the dark about it!

£1m for a new Chippy Community Centre  WOW!

Youth clubs for juniors (ages 9 to 13) and seniors (14 to 19), counselling services, health and fitness activities, advice and guidance around drugs and alcohol, performance arts and multi-media access

The Integrated Youth Support Service will support vulnerable groups through prevention and early intervention methods, with a particular focus on youth crime and anti-social behaviour

 Adult Learning programmes including parenting classes, IT courses, job-related sessions and access to qualifications such as GCSEs and NVQs

This very ambitious outcome is a bit different from the idea of a standalone Youth Centre which has been discussed in the town for the last couple of years. We have been lobbying hard for  money from a very stretched OCC budget to try and get a new Youth Centre but have only been moving slowly up the county priority queue. The Town Council recently made an offer to sell one of its own properties to contribute to the cost of a simple building costing around £250,000. Even this was proving difficult to achieve - given that the property market has collapsed. Things changed dramatically earlier this year when Councillor Hilary Biles persuaded Louise Chapman - who is the OCC Cabinet Member in charge of Youth Services - to come to Chippy with her Children and Young Peoples Services Team and listen to our case. Around the same time the Department for Children, Schools and Families announced a big new scheme which made grants available to local authorities who were developing innovative approaches  by "co-locating" social services on one site that had previously been supplied in different places. This was because there was evidence that this "co-location" approach produced better and more cost-effective results. Moreover, it was expected that such facilities would best be provided on or next to school campuses. This was a "competitive" bidding process and any proposal would be in competition with others from all around the country. Louise and her team saw their chance. They were already working on a big grant application to this new fund for a scheme in Banbury so a Chippy Centre was included in the programme. Applications had to be in by the end of March. There was a lot of fast action involved. Congratulations to them. The special needs of Chippy added to the fact that parts of the town have a high Social Deprivation score provided the basis for a strong case. They put together a superb bid and won! This was really smart work. In one step we had jumped the County queue!! Hilary and Louise had proved a couple of really canny operators. We were lucky to have them pressing our case.

What everyone in town needs to understand is that we only got this money because the proposal made was to locate several social services on one site. We get a fabulous new £1m building that will house a Youth Club but only on the strict conditions that the new building must also host other social services and must be located on an accessible site close to the school. The challenge now will be to provide within this overall plan a Youth Centre with as much of its own identity as possible - hopefully with its own entrance and direct access on to a games playing area. A detailed Planning stage must now follow and the County have promised consultation. However completion is due in 2011 so there won't be too much time for talking.

This is a terrific new addition to the town's facilities. Things are really moving forward.