The teen shelter has finally been constructed in Holme On Spalding Moor (HOSM) after 3 years of consultation and planning with changes along the way to accommodate all the interested parties, and importantly taking into account the wishes of the young people. The project has been financed by the lottery and co-ordinated by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC), with the HOSM Parish Council, the Village Hall Trustees, and local volunteer group the Parish Plan Action Committee (PPAC) who kicked off the original plan with ERYC ward Councillor Paul Robinson.The need for the shelter was identified following a consultation in 2006 by a volunteer Youth Forum, financed by the Humberside Police, which consulted over 350 children in the local schools, at the play area, and other venues in HOSM, plus some of the HOSM kids visiting the successful Gilberdyke Youth Shelters.
Thanks have to go to all those involved with this project and the ERYC officers who brought together all the interested parties to bring this exciting project to reality.
The teen shelter is located on the playing field behind the Village Hall and is a modern colourful design with integral solar lighting. It is hoped that because the young people have been very much involved in the decision making process from the very beginning, they will feel a sense of ownership towards the shelter and take care of it accordingly.
The shelter would not have become reality unless the Parish Council had agreed to take on future responsibility for the liability and upkeep. The shelter can be very easily removed or relocated if it becomes a problem.
Cllr Paul Robinson said, “Credit must go to all HOSM groups and organisations involved for working together with the ERYC and the Police to provide something positive for young people, and not forgetting the young people themselves who have been part of the process from the very beginning”.
Please see: http://paul-robinson-howdenshire.blogspot.com/search?q=a+case+for+youth+shelters+in+HOSM for the original story from 2006!!!
10 comments:
Should really get your facts right Parish plan group have never been involved in this to our knowledge and you seem to of missed two groups out who without there help this project would never of got of the ground
I think you'll find this was identified in the Parish Plan.
It would have been difficult to mention every group or individual but I thought the following (from the post) would have perhaps covered this....
"Thanks have to go to all those involved with this project and the ERYC officers who brought together all the interested parties to bring this exciting project to reality".
and
“Credit must go to all HOSM groups and organisations involved for working together with the ERYC and the Police to provide something positive for young people, and not forgetting the young people themselves who have been part of the process from the very beginning”.
The message I get repeatedly from HOSM residents is a wish for organisations to work together in the village. It is clear that there was no one person or organisation that brought about the teen shelter - it was a partnership of many, and this is worth recognising.
I was intrigued to read that the new HOSM shelter has lighting. Perhaps the Gilberdyke shelters would benefit from having some better illumination? Not solar but maybe a street light with a directional "throw" or beam of light to cover the shelter area and perhaps discourage some of the more problematic activities
Well done, Paul your review is both accurate and positive. I don't know who your first correspondent is - obviously someone rather ignorant
The Youth Consultation group (as they called themsleves) was set up
following the Parish Plan in Sept 06 with the support of the Parish Plan Advisory Committee. The Parish Council were asked to participate but declined. In Oct/Nov 06 the YC group consulted approx 370 local children by going
into Holme Primary School and Market Weighton School. The children elected representatives in each year, and voted for the top 3 items they wanted -
which included a teen shelter.
On 01 Feb 07 some of the representatives visited Gilberdyke and tried out both the teen shelters and play area there. They liked the teen shelters and amusingly made a beeline for the most "dangerous" of the toys in the play area!
In Mar 07 there were consultations with the police (Sgt John White) and the ER Safer Communities / Safer by Design group and a site was chosen. On 15 Mar 07 the Youth Consultation wrote to the Parish Council asking for their support.
One of the problems is that Holme, like most villages, has grown over the centuries in a fairly uncontrolled manner so that now there is no optimum place to have say a duck pond or teen shelters. The original suggested site
received objections from nearby residents.
The topic was passed to the NAT group who persuaded Holme PC to be involved. Other sites were reviewed. All were compromises as is the final chosen site. None of them meet all the recommendations in the where-to-place-a-teen-shelter leaflet originally used.
The ERYC people involved did not cover themselves in glory by waffling and repeating work already done. Holme PC nearly messed it up by not sorting out a contract in a timely manner and we nearly lost the funding to another
village. It was left to the Village Hall solicitor to prepare a contract which was signed off at the last minute and finally the shelter is here!
And very good it is too. Now John would like to see the Gilberdyke shelters upgraded. Unfortinately mate - I think you'll find that is not possible.
All events described above logged and photographs available.
It seems to me that whoever was responsible for providing the village with this youth shelter has done a stirling job.
Has anyone ever thought that maybe we suffer from youths being anti social because some of the adults in this village are! Youths need positive role models and not to be surrounded by anti social and difficult people.
Maybe a project is needed in this village to sort the adults behaviour out, not the young people.
I could not agree more..... Perhaps we need to see less trying to score points from each other and more working together for the village, people to stop attempting to take the credit, but instead giving the credit to others for a job well done, and certainly less sniping from afar and more dialogue and tolerance.
The good news it's a very, very small number of people involved and everyone I listen to know who they are.
I came across this article whilst trying to find another article on the youth shelter that was installed in our village during the summer.
Ours was also funded through the Big Lottery so I believe we come under the same project. Ours has been working really well.
After reading some of these comments it concerns me that the so called 'Youth Consultation' group carried out their consultations in a primary school. I appreciate the primary school children will eventually be the youth of your village, however was work actually carried out with the teenagers that hang around on a night time?? As that is what I was led to believe was one of the main aims of the project, engaging with 'todays' teenagers and listening to their views.
I worked on a number of occasions in our village with the ERYC officer from safer communities who leads on the project and she carried out extensive consultation and engagement work with the teenagers who were hanging around on an evening and causing anti social behaviour (which can be very challenging). Plus local residents and businesses. On occasions we were out till gone 11pm in the winter months to target the right teenagers.
I am sure the same work has been carried out in your area to make sure the project works and anti social behaviour is reduced. Maybe this is what you call 'ERYC repeating work already done', which looks to me like that was not the case.
What a shame there is negativity against ERYC. At the end of the day it was them who selected your village for some of the funding, like they did ours and carried out all the behind the scenes work. I imagine it has not been an easy project and we thank them greatly as we would not have been able to achieve it without them. Perhaps your just not fully aware of the hard work put in to it to make it work and achieve the desired outcomes.
On a positive note I hope it works as well as ours has been. I know the teenagers are really enjoying having somewhere of their own that they were involved in getting.
Good luck! - From a concerned Youth Worker/Parish Councillor
The ERYC play officer did a fantastic job under very, very difficult circumstances…If I recall correctly both primary school and secondary school kids have been consulted right from the start in HOSM.
The Gilberdyke youth shelters are almost 10 years old now – I remember when we first started talking about the concept to young people, spending some cold nights talking to them in places that we as adults didn’t really want them to congregate, giving them options and choices BUT making sure they were always part of the decision making process. Needless to say the shelters were installed and have been a fantastic success – the community has had to demonstrate a degree of tolerance over the years, accepting that there will be an amount of underage drinking and rowdiness, but better it to take place in an area were it can be somewhat controlled than in an area away from view, or that would cause greater problems for residents.
The important lesson was to bring the young people on board as part of the decision making process – this created a sense of ownership once the shelters were installed, even now if you ask the kids about ownership they will tell you the shelters are theirs.
We’ve found that once the ownership is established the kids more readily look after and take care of any facility.
Best of luck with your plans for a shelter in your village and if you feel I can help in anyway please don’t hesitate to contact me…
To put the last persons comments to rest the shelter was chosen by the teenagers who use the very popular youth bus, the survey was undertaken by Heather Bennet of the ERYC on a number of occassions, and they also picked the location of the shelter at no time was the youth consultation group involved in either of these decisions.
I feel it must also be pointed out, that at a recent meeting of the Parish Council which i attended, the contract was delayed because the village hall chairman when told there had to be a lease between the village hall and the council, told the clerk to the council, the chairman and Heather Bennett that he didn't want any further expense involving solicitors, but then to everyones surprise involved one.
So while i agree we must congratulate everyone involved and be proud of the shelter, i really do feel the facts must be reported fairly. I also believe that those involved are now featured in ERYC pamphlets describing youth shelters
I'm Sorry but you are simply not correct. The consultation with young people was much wider than just with those who use the youth bus.. (a project that I fully support as a fantastic concept)-
But part of what you say is correct, and here you contradict yourself when you say the consultation was carried out on 'a number of occasions'
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