An Aycliffe teacher is speaking out about Durham County Council’s proposed Youth Service changes.
The Council is proposing to withdraw funding from Newton Aycliffe’s Youth and Community Centre, and from the twice-weekly Youth Club held there, in order to focus services upon vulnerable and needy youngsters.
Local schoolteacher Peter Davies fears that this may damage many young people. He says: “I appreciate that the Council must make savings, but the Youth Centre is going to be even more important in the coming years as government cuts damage society, and the Youth Club is an essential part of the service offered to the needy youngsters of the town. It serves as a safe place for those needing somewhere to go, a drop-in for those in need of advice or wishing to disclose, and a safety net for those in danger of going off the rails”.
“Closing the Youth Club would simply be to neglect addressable issues which will become insoluble problems later on,” says Mr Davies. “I am hoping we can persuade the Council to continue to finance a Youth Worker presence at the Youth Club as part of their service to vulnerable youngsters.”
Vince Crosby, Chairman of the Youth and Community Centre, welcomed Mr Davies’s intervention. “This is exactly what the Board of Trustees wants too,” he said. “We will take over the running of the Centre under the Durham ASK, and we expect to be able to provide a venue for the Youth Club. But we need Youth Workers to provide a specialised service for the young people who go there – who are, some of them, very needy indeed.”
Mr Davies explained: “The Youth Club needs our active support for the sake of our young people. When I stood recently for election to the Town Council, I told the voters that I would make youth the focus of my work. In the event, I was not elected, but that does not affect my determination to fight for the town’s young people, of whom I was one once, and whom I now serve as their teacher.”
