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Youth service easy target
• THE youth service is an easy target and when money is short the first to be cut.
This happened to the Ingestre Road community centre some 12 years ago and the reason given was Acland Burghley school had a youth provision and Parliament Hill had a youth provision so there was no need for us.
The Acland Burghley provision is now closed.
We have run a youth club since 1975 and in all that time there is nothing more necessary in the local provision than to keep young people off the streets but 18 months ago our Big Lottery funding finished and, within the year, the estate became a dispersal zone as the youth were hanging around in groups being noisy and were looked on as a nuisance. People are wondering how gangs get formed. This is part of the answer.
Young people need a safety valve to sort out their problems and the youth club is where they get the opportunity to talk them out.
The hours young people spend out of school are just as long as the school day.
Without the provision that Castlehaven and Queens Crescent community centres provide they are on the streets at the mercy of the drug dealers and gangs. We have seen this in our area.
Councillors should unite across London boroughs and make the case for youth with the government to give the boroughs funding for youth provision that is related to the hours they are out and about.
It should also be ring-fenced. The youth service is the forgotten service. You have SureStart for the under-5s, you have the after-school clubs for primary age, all funded from the public purse. Yet when it comes to the difficult, growing-into-adult years, we are short-changed.
Youth work has always been difficult but today it is exceptionally difficult as society has changed so much.
We must learn to respect youth workers and learn to respect their input into society and stop cutting their jobs.
Jessie Ellis
Ingestre Road Community Centre, NW5
Club funds policy is unclear
• I WOULD like to take issue with Councillor John Bryant (Scare story, April 17) over funding for general youth work in Camden.
The reasons why some youth clubs were funded and others not are totally unclear.
We at Queen’s Crescent, who run with GOAL (Gospel Oak Action Link) the only youth clubs in Gospel Oak, have been given no reasons why our bid for funding was turned down.
We do not know to which projects in central Camden all the funding went, who is to benefit or why their bids were accepted over ours.
I have tried to look for this information on the council website, but cannot find it.
All we have got from the council is £12,000 for children who offend or are at risk of offending. Around 40 per cent of Gospel Oak’s population is under 18 and parts of Gospel Oak around Queen’s Crescent are poorer than anywhere else in Camden and some young people cannot afford much that is on offer at leisure centres.
It therefore seems odd that we should be passed over when it comes to youth provision.
The money for youth offenders is welcome, but does that mean there has to be really serious disorder and violence in the ward for the council to decide to invest seriously in youth clubs?
Sally Gimson
Vice-chairwoman
Queen’s Crescent
Community Centre, NW5
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