Petition details
SAVE ST. ANDREW'S WHARF YOUTH CLUB
James Thomas, the Corporate Director for Children's Services at Tower Hamlets Council, is currently going forward with plans to outsource Tower Hamlets' youth clubs to 8 different providers. St. Andrew’s Wharf Youth Club will, hence, be outsourced to Sporting Foundation and become a football club.
As a result, there are 53 staff members across Tower Hamlets who will be jobless, as full-time youth workers will be replaced with voluntary part-time youth workers that will provide 10-12 hours of youth service per week - as opposed to the 35 hours per week that are currently provided.
As well as this, Mr. Thomas claims to have surveyed over 800 young people around Tower Hamlets regarding the youth services that the borough provides. However, of the 82 members of St. Andrew’s Wharf Youth Club, none were asked to take part in this survey. Instead, the Interim Head of Youth Service made phone calls to only a few members' parents - not the members themselves.
Strong relationships, bonds, networks, and partnerships with the local community have been created consequent to the arrival of the current and diverse staff of St. Andrew's Wharf Youth Club - including Errol, Dave, and Odudu. They have also put in place a Youth Forum consisting of Errol, Dave, Odudu and six club members to support young people around the island. Since, they have initiated the Island Unity Festival, participated in knife crime awareness videos, and collaborated with each other in the club's music studio, inter alia.
The providers to which the club's youth services will be outsourced to will not have spent years building their relationship and trust with the youth of Tower Hamlets. On top of this, they will offer less than half of the time that St. Andrew's Wharf workers do. With such little time available, how are they supposed to form lasting relationships and provide adequate support considering all of the issues and challenges that young people are currently facing? The borough with the 4th largest population of young people in the United Kingdom cannot provide such little youth service.
On April 29th 2021, a 13-year-old child was stabbed multiple times by a 15-year-old child on his way to George Green's School (a secondary school in Tower Hamlets that has a direct partnership with St. Andrew’s Wharf Youth Club). Many of the young people who frequently attend St. Andrew’s Wharf Youth Club go to this very school.
According to The Guardian, youth violence across the UK is rapidly increasing and set to "erupt" over this summer as a result of COVID lockdowns, unaddressed mental health issues, months out of education, as well as overstretched youth services and a lack of funding of these resources. Per the Eastlondonlines, Tower Hamlets has the highest ratio of knife crimes to population among ELL (East London Line) boroughs. Youth clubs are put in place so that young people can have a place to retreat to, find trust in, relax outside of home and school, find shelter and food, learn skills in and form special bonds at. Without these clubs in place at the constant disposal of young people, it is inevitable that an increasing amount of young people will be susceptible to gang affiliation, grooming, among many other regressive scenarios.
Please stop the closure of St. Andrew’s Wharf Youth Club and its outsourcing; properly fund it instead.
This Petition ran from 24/07/2021 to 24/09/2021 and has now finished.
114 people signed this Petition.
Council response
Petition St Andrew’s Wharf Youth Club
Thank you for your petition with regard to St Andrew’s Wharf Youth Club and I will address the points you have raised below.
A report on proposed changes to the Youth Service delivery model was presented at Cabinet in February 2020. This proposed the following:
• To tender for a 3-year (+1+1) youth activity
contract
• To restructure the Youth Service to achieve MTFS - This
included outlining a wider approach in supporting children and
families and the creation a birth-19 service.
• For a 4-month extension to the existing 12-month youth
activity providers contract in order to pre-empt any delays in the
award of the 2021 – 2024 contracts arising from the Covid 19
pandemic.
The above proposal was approved by Cabinet in
June/July2020.
In July 2021 the Local Authority received emails from residents
expressing their concerns of this change. Initial emails indicated
concerns around St Andrew’s Wharf youth club closing, and
that no consultation had been made with young people/ residents.
The concern was that
the youth club is being replaced by a football club.
The council responded to these concerns and confirmed/ clarified that St Andrew’s wharf youth club was not closing, but will be kept open, albeit with a new model of delivery. The Local Authority undertook a youth survey with over 800 young people participating through questionnaires and face to face meetings in 2019 to inform the proposal sent to Cabinet.
In addition to this, various stakeholders, Voluntary Community groups and residents were also consulted. The new model is delivering a broad youth offer provided through partnership working with the Community & Voluntary Sector, schools, faith and community organisations.
To respond further to specific points raised in your petition:
1. The council has no intention to change a youth club into a
football club.
The successful provider had gone through a rigorous process to win
the contract of delivering Universal centre-based youth activities
from the South East quadrant which includes St Andrew’s
Wharf.
The contract requirements are quite clear to provide young people with access to free, accessible, high quality and well publicised positive activities that support young people to gain confidence and skills, enjoy a safe space to be with friends and get involved in planning their own programme of activities.
2. I can confirm the SLA stipulates that the sessions being run
will be done with qualified paid employees. The council had
previously provided 25 hours of centre-based delivery and not 35
hours per week. Universal centre-based provision will be offering
up to 12 hours of activities per week. This will be complemented
with up to 12 hours of Detached
(streetwork) provision. Total universal centre-based and detached
delivery will account for up to 24 hours of provision being offered
per week.
Following feedback from the youth survey, it was noted that a new model of delivery would better meet the needs of young people. This led to a recognition that there needed to be some reduction in centre-based delivery hours, and for this to be complemented with detached model of working.
Once the full commissioning (universal, specialist and detached) process is complete we anticipate circa 50 members of staff to service the wider spectrum of commissioned services.
3. Our understanding is that Sporting Foundation has 25
years’ experience of working with young people in Tower
Hamlets. Its work covers sports, volunteering programme, mentoring,
employment and training support, accredited and non-accredited
courses, personal development, gang and knife crime project and
women and girls exercise
projects.
Most recent delivery by Sporting Foundation was the Holiday Hunger programme during the summer of 2021 from St Andrew’s Wharf which involved outreach and detached work. http://sportingfoundation.com/news/
Yours sincerely
James Thomas
Corporate Director, Children and Culture