On Tuesday 30th January, I (Beth) had the privilege of speaking at the Northstowe Town Council meeting, alongside Amanda Silvester (Community Co-ordinator – Youth, South Cambs Team; Communities Service – Strategy and Partnerships; Cambridgeshire County Council), and Emma Whitbread (Youth Development Worker, Romsey Mill).
Together, we wanted to spread the good news that there is much to celebrate about both the strategic planning and delivery of youthwork at this early stage in the life of Northstowe. This is already having a measurable impact. But, in order to sustain current provision, and to grow with the town, further investment and deepening partnerships are needed. So our presentation aimed to demonstrate the importance of needs-led; asset-based; partnership working; give shared language to talk about youthwork, and encourage early planning for future investment.
Youth Work in Northstowe:
needs-led; asset-based; working in partnership
Amanda opened the session, highlighting the importance of Asset Based Community Development and partnership models for youthwork. This is especially relevant in the current paradigm where County Councils are no longer the primary funding source. Instead, most community-level youthwork comes about when individuals, local charities, and town councils work together, with support from County level.
The Northstowe Youth Hive is a good example of just such asset based community development.
In 2021, some of Northstowe’s young people wrote to Beth and Amanda highlighting the needs of young people and asking for help developing facilities and activities. Beth and Amanda helped a 17 year old lead a youth survey, gathering over 100 responses as Northstowe’s teenagers expressed their needs for facilities and youth provision, and their desire to get involved in shaping their new town.
This provided evidence that two things were needed
- a locally-rooted charity to advocate for the young people, and work in partnership with key stakeholders and providers to find the right funds and expertise to ensure that both open access and behind-the-scenes youthwork happened.
- immediate meeting places for young people – the first request was for a youth drop in at a café.
Therefore the Northstowe Youth Hive was born as an umbrella organization, with trustees drawn from the local community and community groups, like Pathfinder Church Northstowe. It is on behalf of the church that I (Beth) sit as Chair.
The Northstowe Youth Hive is a grassroots organisation, currently in the process of registering as an Association Model CIO. This will allow both young people and more community groups to become members, ensuring that good partnership working continues across Northstowe.
The Youth Hive is not about running “a youth club”, but
“bringing together Northstowe’s young people from different cultures, faiths, sexualities, genders and backgrounds to have fun, develop, and make a difference”
the Northstowe Youth Hive
What has the Youth Hive done so far?
In 2022, requests for a space to meet with friends led to the Northstowe Youth Hive partnering with what was then Friends of the Wing to provide the first open access youth club alongside affordable café space in Pioneer Café. In addition, concerns about period poverty helped bring Blue Bags into Northstowe. After the young people encouraged us to sign the Plastic Free Pledge, we worked with Pioneer Cafe to ensure that milkshakes are now served in washable re-usable cups, rather than the original plastic cups.
Local residents were recruited as volunteers, and underwent L1 and L2 youthwork training. For one volunteer, these opportunities have helped them return to the workplace, even as they encouraged others to volunteer and train. But volunteer hours after school are not enough, and professional expertise is needed to come alongside some of the most vulnerable and needy young people.
The Northstowe Youth Hive have worked with other stakeholders in the Northstowe Support Partnership to find and fund professional expertise to take on and expand the delivery following the pilot. This has is now happening. First through the Connections Bus Project while there were no indoor community spaces (grant funding secured by the Hive and member organizations such as Pathfinder Church – from the NSP, bpha, and Church Schools of Cambridge. Now we are working closely with Romsey Mill (with CCC funding for 2 years), who continue to use volunteers alongside paid professionals.
What’s next for the Northstowe Youth Hive?
With professional youthwork in place, the Youth Hive are now focusing on helping recruit volunteers and setting up partnership working in response to needs identified by listening to the youth voice. For example, the Hive is helping arrange DBS checking for joint Youth Hive – Northstowe Hub café volunteers for the Café sessions during the Youth Drop In, and supported a Hub grant applications to help young people develop the Cabin gardens.
The Youth Hive recognise that ABCD works well once you have a gathering point of young people. But it is very hard to “listen” to those you are not in contact with. This is a major challenge in the early days of a new town, especially reaching out to the older teenagers who don’t go to school in Northstowe!
What is working well is multiple contact points starting in the primary school, community centre, and secondary school, with volunteers and youthworkers building meaningful connections.
Partnering with Romsey Mill
At the Town Council Meeting, Emma spoke about the impact that her work through Romsey Mill was having. In the past year she has engaged with 249 young people in Northstowe. She spoke about the developing new activities for young people which have been well attended – such as the open access Youth clubs on Monday and Wednesday evenings, detached work through the summer, One to One mentoring and secondary school support, school wellbeing clubs, and primary support (including Year 6 transitions work in partnership with Pathfinder Church). She also shared her excitement for creating new projects in the upcoming months. But recognised that “Developing work in a new community is not without its challenges, not least the lack of physical space in which to meet. “
A key foundation of her work has been the partnerships she has developed, most notably with Northstowe Secondary College, The Pathfinder CofE Primary School, the Northstowe Youth Hive and Pathfinder Church Northstowe, South Cambridgeshire District Council and continued support from Cambridgeshire County Council, Town Council and other stakeholders in the Northstowe Support Partnership.
Right now, it is good to be able to hire space in the interim community space – the Cabin. These are the current (Feb 2024) Youth Clubs:
More about Romsey Mill:
Romsey Mill’s vision is for a future where every person is loved, feels invaluable, participates creatively, and belongs. Working to make this vision a reality, their mission is to nurture relationships with young people, families and local communities to overcome challenge, create opportunities, bring change and inspire hope. Romsey Mill puts relationships at the heart of who they are and all that they do. In their commitment to overcoming disadvantage and growing opportunities with young people, children, and families, they collaborate to develop more connected and resilient communities. They engage with participants in varied and flexible ways. For families with young children, including teenage parents, these comprise early years care & education; parenting support at home and in community settings; information advice and guidance on matters including housing and financial support; and adult learning and life skills courses.
Here in Northstowe, the current focus is from Romsey Mill’s Youth Development Team, who also work with disadvantaged, at-risk and vulnerable young people (aged 10 – 21 years) across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. They are passionate about supporting them to overcome challenges, live fulfilling lives and inspire change in the world around them. Across the region, they support over 1,500 young people every year, placing a strong emphasis on nurturing developmental relationships with each young person through shared experiences that the young people enjoy. Youth workers, like Emma, work in specific geographical areas where they become embedded in the local community. They seek to engage young people in multiple settings meaning they often engage with a youth worker more than once a week and may be involved in a wide range of activities during their time with Romsey Mill.
Their work can be broadly split into two categories:
- Community-based, relational youth work including open-access youth groups, creative arts and music studio sessions, sports projects, youth leadership programmes, adventurous activity residentials, and enriching trips.
- Commissioned alternative education and early prevention support including accredited education, personal and social development courses, pastoral and individual care, transition, transfer and primary school group work.
Their Theory of Change can be accessed here.
Growing Provision: Romsey Mill’s Aspire Project
In addition to growing the community based youth work, Romsey Mill have recently won a grant from the Evelyn Trust to extend their Aspire project work supporting young people with Autism into Northstowe’s, and are currently recruiting for a youth development worker. The Aspire project was established in 2005 and since that time has provided specialist support for children and young people from age 9–19 with a diagnosis of autism, who are in mainstream education.
Next Steps – and how to fund them!
One reason for talking more publicly about the successes of the Asset Based Community Development approach to youthwork in Northstowe is to help spread the word so more people and organizations can get involved. There is also the reality that highly skilled professional youth work, and all the behind the scenes support, needs financial investment. And the costs (as well as the impacts!) are only going to increase as Northstowe grows.
What funds are needed:
- Funding is needed for large strategic projects –such as the current Youth Development contract with Romsey Mill
- Needs-based new initiatives might need startup funding, as well as support in policies, insurance, volunteer recruitment, etc.
- Occasional collaborative projects will need funding (recognising that this is on top of what local groups involved in providing youth activities are already doing to raise the funds they need to cover their regular running costs.) E.g. the youth hive and Northstowe hub have secured funds to work on the Cabin garden.
- Physical Youth Buildings/Facilities need to be explored
How should these funds and expertise be pooled?
Each of the organizations involved in Northstowe’s youthwork bring their own expertise, and access to different funding streams. All these funding streams should be utilized – in many of the cases listed, it is most efficient to work in partnership, pooling resources.
Over the next year, Romsey Mill, the Youth Hive, and those involved in the Youth subgroup of the Northstowe Strategic Partnership (including the Town council) will need to work on the details of who should lead on what. It is expected that The Northstowe Youth Hive will be a key part of gathering funding from all the partners as an umbrella organization, and then contract out specific projects. However, some partners might make direct funding agreements, and then set up working agreement to ensure fruitful collaboration.
- The Youth Hive is one strand. As a small local charity (CIO) the Youth Hive will be able to apply for some grants not open to larger charities. The Youth Hive is already starting to act as an umbrella, encouraging other small charities to make contributions to joint projects.
- Long term commitment from significate stakeholders would be invaluable.
- Large grants are likely to be available to Romsey Mill, or other large stakeholders, if they can demonstrate partnership working and/or match funding. The likelihood that Romsey Mill can secure the sort of funding needed for their Youth Development Team’s work and Aspire project work in Northstowe is significantly strengthened if these types of funders can see that local funding and support (e.g. through Town and Parish Council, S106, and other strategic stakeholders) is also being committed to the work.
- Individuals are also likely to want to get involved – whether volunteering time, making a small regular donation to the work, or helping fundraise.
So, what next?
The meeting with the Town Council was both a fantastic demonstration of our commitment to partnership working, and an opportunity to celebration what is already happening. For such a young town, the level of commitment and what has been achieved already is quite inspiring. BUT we know that much more needs to be done. We look forward to building the right partnerships to take this forward.
If you would like to get more involved – whether praying for this great community work among those of all religious and non religious beliefs, volunteering at activities, fundraising, serving as a trustee, or bringing together more existing youth organizations in the Northstowe area – we’d love to hear from you!
Beth's Blog 