Youth clubs are a great way to engage and support young people while providing them with a safe and warm place. Other benefits include: personal development, socialising, mentoring and community involvement.
The aim of our youth club is not to provide a baby-sitting service or provide activities that young people do at home. Our youth sessions are built for the young people that attend, to learn some aspect of a life skill that will aid them as they grow into adults.
Our aim is to make every effort to reach the young people who require further support in the community, who need a sense of belonging; somewhere that reinforces positive behaviours and can work with young people to help them realise their own aspirations.
As we work with young people, we are aware that we might be faced with challenging behaviours, our solution to this is NOT to ban young people from our space, but to work and educate them to see why their behaviour is challenging.
We do not ban young people because we realise that this will do more damage to the young person; feelings around rejection, harvesting negative emotion towards other young people and the building.
Instead, we have created a new reflective and restorative practice to enable young people to understand why their behaviour is un acceptable, by way of a behaviour board. The behaviour board is made up of a young person, a youth worker and a professional. The young person must submit a letter or video, stating the reasons why they should be allowed to continue to the youth club. The behaviour board name is subject to change, pending young people’s involvement around the name they would like to choose.
The board will then decide on what action to take, this may include a temporary suspension, cleaning and tidying up sessions or completing hours of volunteering in their community. Parent will be included in this whole process.
We offer arts and crafts, board games, multi sports, games console, drinks and snacks.
Currently we have three clubs:
Foxhill: Thursdays at 5pm – 7pm @ Foxhill Forum
High Green: Fridays 5:30 – 7:00pm @ HGDT, The campus (ages 9-13)
High Green: Fridays 7:15 – 8:45pm @ HGDT, The campus (ages 14-18)
Foxhill
High Green
