Our roving reporter informs us that the Oxfordshire young people are on the streets again.
The partnership with Oxfordshire Save Our Services is proving really positive. They’ve produced thousands of postcards with a joint message from the 2 groups, plus a giant postcard (4ft x 3ft) to deliver to Cameron’s office in person.There are already well over 2k postcards circulating, so Cameron must be deluged with them. We got them onto the Oxfordshire coaches for the March for the Alternative and now we’re circulating them in young people’s centres and projects, at meetings etc.We’ll keep printing more while Oxfordshire County Council are deliberating on the responses to their consultation about the redesign of Children and Young People’s services.
On Thursday last week a group of young people from West Oxfordshire and Banbury youth work projects delivered a giant postcard to David Cameron’s Witney office. The front of the card lists all 36 youth work projects under threat and asks David Cameron to stand up for young people in Oxfordshire. The message on the back of the postcard says:
Oxfordshire County Council plans to stop funding for all of its 36 youth work centres and projects. Thousands of young people use these services and they are hurt and angry about the plans. They say youth work makes them feel trusted and valued, not judged. It enables them to have fun, learn together and to get involved in their communities.
Please talk to Oxfordshire County Council and look at alternative ways of raising the money to keep all the youth centres and projects open. The £4 million it costs to run Oxfordshire’s youth service is less than 0.1% of the £25 billion you could raise by stopping corporate tax avoidance.
On the following Saturday they took their protest to Banbury. Oxford Save Our Services made a video of the young people’s silent protest, “Scene Not Heard” with the young people spelling out STOP THE CUTS with their bodies. The video will be posted on YouTube and Cameron will be sent the link.
Passers by in Banbury were impressed and many joined in by signing postcards to Cameron and asking to hold the placards themselves.
The continued media coverage and the mountain of postcards and other complaints going to the County Council and to Cameron is being felt.
The Oxfordshire plan is to cut all youth work and just have targetted case work with young people deemed to be at risk or in trouble.
“The county will not be providing youth work of the sort that has been provided in the past… The Early Intervention Service is about where young people and their families already have some issues.. The outreach will be one to one …Youth work will not exist as it has in the past” (OCC representative, Ruth Ashwell, Area Service Manager – Youth, 22/03/11)
It’s interesting that the OCC consultation ended on April 4th and the cabinet meet on the 19th, but the Director of CYP&F was on holiday until 11th April according to her email system. We would’ve expected that to be the week that she would need to read and deliberate in order to get a paper ready for cabinet…. A done deal?
Not as far as we are concerned. We won’t go away!!
IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK 