Shenley Brook End Parish Council

Youth Club Sessions

All of our sessions have seen fantastic numbers for the start of the year with young people enjoying our youth clubs and football sessions. In previous years this has been a relatively quiet time of year for youth sessions with young people preferring to spend the cold dark nights at home. This year this has not been the case and in fact we have seen some of our highest attendances for our youth clubs during this time.

The Westcroft Youth Clubs are both going very well and we are seeing a number of new members, allowing us to spread our reach that little bit further and continue to meet the needs of a greater percentage of the Parish. With numbers getting larger it does mean that we are not able to offer so much activity that really pushes the group, because the supervision is not possible. This has not reduced the quality of the session and just means that we have to rethink some of our activities so that they fit the number of young people attending our sessions.

I have discussed with Bill Dawson putting a cap on the numbers that can access the Wednesday and Thursday youth clubs to ensure that we are still providing a safe environment for those attending. With youth club sessions often the young people themselves will help to police this number by dropping off attendance if the club is too busy. Also some of the young people will not stay for the full two hours of the sessions so although numbers are high, they may not all be in the building at the same time. Due to the nature of the building if we were to put an upper limit on those attending then we would have to increase the staffing to allow one person to be responsible for controlling this aspect of the evening, counting young people in and out.

Community Engagement

Since the youth club has been running from Furzton Pavilion the area has really seen some positive improvements including a notable reduction in graffiti. One reason for this has been the commitment of the youth club to paint over any incidents of graffiti, the building receives, as soon as they have happened reducing the impact of the damage but also showing that the area is not only in use but being cared for.

We are currently painting over any incidents with paint supplied to us by MKC, while they were managing the centre, but this paint is running out. With Hertsmere Leisure taking over the management for this building it is them that we discussed replacing this paint so we could continue to look after the area. We discussed the problems with colour matching the paints and that using a different shade can have a negative effect as it highlights the incidents of graffiti and the shadow left behind will still project an image that the building is receiving damage. The outcome from this is we have arranged to repaint the whole exterior of the building as part of an extended half term youth club (Tuesday 14^th February) weather permitting.

Staff Development

Karl’s work with the team is going fantastically since he joined us in October and has had an opportunity to work a number of full youth club sessions as cover for holiday. This gives Karl a chance to see how the different sessions work and also expand his understanding of the responsibilities of the Youth Team. The feedback from the young people and the rest of the team has been very positive and Karl has commented that he is really enjoying the role.

As part of updating the risk assessment for our youth clubs we are planning to put in place a fire procedure for each of our sessions to firm up the process in case of an incident. Since increasing the number of sessions we deliver I am not attending every session as Youth Leader so it is important that we ensure that all of our other team members are aware of the procedure to take in case of an emergency and also that they are capable of dealing with it successfully. This will start with in-house training and we will approach the council if we discover any further related training that would benefit the team.