Wansbeck - Ashington Joint Welfare Scheme
Project: Ashington Joint Welfare Scheme
Date: January 2009 to January 2012
Amount awarded: £148,803
About
The activity programme is progressing well and the project is delivering a varied programme of activities for children and young people 7 days per week. The project has improved its monitoring systems to capture outputs and outcomes better and is in the process of having a database built to record all of this information. It will make it easier to pull out specific elements of information and make reporting more detailed.
Outreach work has been one of the most difficult areas to achieve because of staff time, in-sufficient links with the former East Ashington Development Worker and lack of promotion to other organisations. The group tried to re-establish dialogue and set up a referral link before the end of the capacity building project but that failed. It has used the outreach budget to support the establishment of a Tot Shots session at North Seaton Community Centre for a 6 week period. The centre has since secured further funding through Ashington Town Council to continue this weekly session for 3-5 year olds.
The project is also in discussions with Northumberland Youth Service to use this funding to support room hire costs of re-establishing their Friday night session at North Seaton Community Centre for 13-19 year olds. The Mother & Toddler Group has now wound up due to a lack of volunteers. The group had struggled since the death of the group leader in 2009 and dwindling numbers meant it was no longer viable to operate. Concerns were expressed regarding volunteer training and Safeguarding procedures. The activity programme is progressing well but it needs to look at sustainability and funding beyond December 2011. As it is located in the most deprived community of Northumberland, it cannot charge the full cost of delivering these services. It is forced to operate a subsidized pricing policy to ensure the services are accessible. However, to achieve this it relies on external grant support. The current economic climate and pressure on grant funders is making this a lot more difficult than in past and therefore, it may risk loosing some services unless it can secure grant support to sustain them in the long term.
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