Loughton Youth Project opens The Space (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

Great news as long as it doesn’t turn in to a no go zone. I can see things like the local youth harassing and intimidating library users.

Hope I'm worng with my prediction, but doubt it!

Katie Rolt wrote:
Great news as long as it doesn’t turn in to a no go zone. I can see things like the local youth harassing and intimidating library users.

Hope I'm worng with my prediction, but doubt it!

Don't be silly. I participate in lots of sport groups locally with many young people and I've never had a problem with them. In fact, we're lucky that 99% of Loughton youth are decent people. The problems of violence and intimidation are likely to come from people in their 20s and 30s after drinking too much in the local pubs and clubs. It does the town no service to make sweeping generalisations about young people attending youth centres. It's good to see a well-appointed facility in the town where young people can get together and do something more constructive and sociable in a safe environment than sitting around at home texting and using social networking websites or hanging around bored in the park.

The problem is that a lot of people feel intimidated by a group of young people standing on a street corner, even when all they are doing is having a chat. Good luck to this project, our local kids need somewhere to go since Essex County Council abandoned this area and its youth when they closed down the youth clubs and then conned us by telling us that Murray Hall would be a youth club to replace Theydon Bois.

"The Space was made possible through grants from Essex County Council, Epping Forest District Council, Loughton Town Council and the Charles S French Charitable Trust"

Does this mean the County Council recognises that the closure of youth services across the county was a bad idea? It seems Lord Hanningfield has a lot of apologies to make nowadays, perhaps he can also apologise to young people for running down youth services.

Katie Rolt wrote:
Great news as long as it doesn’t turn in to a no go zone. I can see things like the local youth harassing and intimidating library users. Hope I'm worng with my prediction, but doubt it!

What a miserable old b****. Try being happy about something - it could be a new experience for you.

We, (Loughton Youth Project), certainly do not want to see library users feeling intimidated by our visitors, and we will work with our very supportive partners in the adjacent library and connexions building to ensure this does not happen.

We operate outreach, street-based youth work to build relationships with young members of the local community and make them aware of how others may perceive their actions.

The local partnership funding and support for the youth project from every tier of local authority, and Essex Police, has been hugely encouraging and we look forward to now being able to really work together towards shared targets - whilst remaining voluntary sector managed and youth-led.

If in due course anyone has a genuine concern about youth behaviour outside the library building I would be interested to hear from them and would hope it to have been already identified and dealt with.

Nick Robinson
Loughton Youth Project Manager
0208 532 1911

Nick: Could you explain a couple of things for me. As it is in the voluntary sector, does it have any supporting charitable or non-charitable organisations, if so who are they and what is their involvement? Also, how is the project youth-led? What input to young people have in the management and direction of the project? What troubles me, as a former youth worker, is that Essex County Council ran down and then closed down a lot of youth centres in the past few years citing cost-savings (while leaving management untouched). Then it decided to form partnerships with the voluntary sector, which is a euphemism for religious organisations. Some of these, in my opinion, did not (and perhaps do not) have the same training and assessment as local authority youth workers. In some cases, child protection and CRB checks were overlooked, although I don't have any reason to suspect that any children have been harmed. What worries me is that the Conservative controlled Essex County Council has eliminated the youth service as an asset stripping exercise to raise money, made many youth workers who were trained with public money redundant and then effectively privatised/franchise
d/tendered its responsibilities to the charity sector while insisting on joint funding with other authorities. Of course, outcomes rather than managerial structures are important, but I wonder whether young people will have the quality of service they have a right to expect and whether the council is reneging on its responsibilities. I'm not suggesting LYP is in anyway inferior or bad (I don't know much about it), I'm just posing some general questions about the way in which local authorities have handled youth services. Anyway, I admire the effort you have put into this project and look forward to seeing it grow and succeed.

I would like to just say I am a local youth - Not a 'yob' as you seem to be suggesting and I am not terrorizing the local community! You are stereotyping our age group and saying we are basically all criminals! You arent looking at all the good points of the space such as us 'yobs' are making radio podcasts and I have even been given the chance to gain a qualification in radio presenting - Furthermore it gets teenagers off the streets, is that not want you people want? You cant have it both ways! The space is a safe haven for the local youth community and it gives us great opportunities - we are not going to terrorize the librarians or other staff as we are too busy putting our time into making a better image for our age group. Additionally I would like for those saying it is going to be a problem to the library to supply an example of what exactly we have done wrong to provoke this bad image, as we have been very considerate! I would invite you to witness what we are actually doing before judging!

barnzey901 wrote:
I would like to just say I am a local youth - Not a 'yob' as you seem to be suggesting and I am not terrorizing the local community! You are stereotyping our age group and saying we are basically all criminals! You arent looking at all the good points of the space such as us 'yobs' are making radio podcasts and I have even been given the chance to gain a qualification in radio presenting - Furthermore it gets teenagers off the streets, is that not want you people want? You cant have it both ways! The space is a safe haven for the local youth community and it gives us great opportunities - we are not going to terrorize the librarians or other staff as we are too busy putting our time into making a better image for our age group. Additionally I would like for those saying it is going to be a problem to the library to supply an example of what exactly we have done wrong to provoke this bad image, as we have been very considerate! I would invite you to witness what we are actually doing before judging!

Young man, don't be put off by the old b**** from Theydon Bois. Some of us "older people" are delighted to know that something positive is being done for young people. Enjoy it.

Morris Hickey wrote:

barnzey901 wrote:
I would like to just say I am a local youth - Not a 'yob' as you seem to be suggesting and I am not terrorizing the local community! You are stereotyping our age group and saying we are basically all criminals! You arent looking at all the good points of the space such as us 'yobs' are making radio podcasts and I have even been given the chance to gain a qualification in radio presenting - Furthermore it gets teenagers off the streets, is that not want you people want? You cant have it both ways! The space is a safe haven for the local youth community and it gives us great opportunities - we are not going to terrorize the librarians or other staff as we are too busy putting our time into making a better image for our age group. Additionally I would like for those saying it is going to be a problem to the library to supply an example of what exactly we have done wrong to provoke this bad image, as we have been very considerate! I would invite you to witness what we are actually doing before judging!

Young man, don't be put off by the old b**** from Theydon Bois. Some of us "older people" are delighted to know that something positive is being done for young people. Enjoy it.

Thankyou - nice to see someone positive :):)

i go to the space on a regular basis, and i am happy that there is now something for young people to do in the Loughton and Debden area. i am not impressed however with some of the public's response to this, some people need to get off their high horse and except that alot of people who live in debden are aged 12-19 and need something to do! the space allows us to do this in a secure enviroment.
hope this has put it in perspective for all you "no youth belivers".
long live rock!
char :D

Worth clarifying that the comment about the library was from a member of the public rather than library staff. I am sure the library staff would be encouraging of young people making use of the service.

Public libraries have loads to offer people of all ages.

It looks like the Space will have similar opening hours to the library - hopefully people will take full advantage of both.

By the looks of the above comments most seem to have no problem with the opening of the space, it seems to be the negativity of the arrangant members of the community that havnt even seen the positive effects!! Im glad that many people are supportive :)

Maybe people who think it is negative shouldn't be too quick to judge i.e. Katie Rolt!