Chapeltown Young Peoples Club

After-School Club

A very significant development during this period has been the establishment of an after-school club, which operates 5.30pm – 8pm, staffed by a combination of a tutor (funded by the National Youth Agency), qualified Youth Workers / Outreach Workers, working in a voluntary capacity and young people volunteering through the SRB-funded Volunteering Project. Young people 13 – 16 can bring their homework and have support with application of number, communication and IT. In addition, a range of speakers / activities are arranged, eg talks on health and safety, drugs awareness (Base 10 Project), The Prince’s Trust, etc, as well as input from the 2 Outreach Workers about what life is like at College and what courses are available. On Mondays and Thursdays the session is open to young people from any school; on Tuesdays it is specifically for students from Allerton High School, through a partnership forged through a collaborative Enterprise Bid, and Wednesdays has recently been dedicated to Primrose High School, as part of the transitional support project with TDC. 8 – 10 young people attend each night on average.

The idea for the after-school club originated from the YES-Cyber manager who, living and working in the local community, was aware that many young people from BME communities may not have access to IT at home, nor perhaps have access to a quiet room in which to do homework.

It was, in effect, a forerunner of the study support strand of Transforming Youth Work, which seeks to develop support for young people to study outside of school in libraries, youth clubs and centres and other access points. Equally, this strategy fits in with the Connexions Access Points strand and the Leeds City Council’s Connexions pilot funding, eg for transition work, in TDC’ s case, with Primrose Hill and with Government strategy for children and young people, as outlined in its recent green paper Every child matters and the Children Bill of March 2004, as well as the overall 14 –19 agenda.

It was on the basis of the existing work with young people through the After-school club at YES-Cyber that the Youth Service was able to put in a collaborative bid to develop 3 new Connexions Access Points (CAPs) in the area, as well as further develop YES-Cyber. The bid was successful and 3 new CAPs have been developed at the Palace Youth Project, the Prince Philip Centre and the Mandela Centre. A total of £12,000 was secured from Connexions, with additional funding contributions from Leeds City Council via the Community Involvement Team and Transforming Youth Work and the Chapeltown Young People’s 10 – 2 Club, via the National Youth Agency Neighbourhood Support Fund (NYA-NSF) totalling over £18,500, to re-furbish and equip these centres. All centres have been awarded Connexions Access Point status and branding. [see Appendix 2 for more information].

Further, YES-Cyber currently opens Saturday mornings for IT taster classes and general public access and it is planned, using some NYA-NSF funding, to open on Sunday afternoons, particularly targeting Thomas Danby students who live in the area and who may not have suitable study facilities, including access to information technology at home and when TDC’s facilities are closed.

Issue: Staffing for the After School Club and weekend opening is currently on a voluntary basis, in some cases with out-of-pocket expenses having being paid from NYA or SRB funds; indeed it was this situation that gave rise to the one of the key principles behind the SRB bid: that volunteers need to be recognised and rewarded by out-of-pocket expenses and training. This important development, then, is almost wholly dependent on the goodwill of individuals and, as such, is vulnerable. As the SRB-funded volunteering Project finished March 2004, young people who have been receiving expenses through that project may become de-motivated and less committed. The YES-Cyber Management Group needs to seek ways of securing paid staffing for this work.