Somewhere safe: how a modest cash boost could have a big impact on youth services in Kingswood
A ‘youth bus’ offering a mobile space for youth work sessions is one service coming to Kingswood (credit: South Glos council)
“I don’t feel like there’s many,” 16-year-old Ben says bluntly, asked about how he feels about places for young people his age to go in Kingswood. “It’s a shithole.”
We’re chatting at Costa in Kings Chase shopping centre – coincidentally, an area of Kingswood where police and youth workers have made regular patrols, responding to complaints of anti-social behaviour by teenagers.
“I don’t get out with friends that much,” admits Ben, who plays rugby locally, but otherwise is more likely to spend time at home, interacting online, than hanging about here.
“As a parent, I’d prefer you to be away from screens a little bit, and out socialising more,” his mum Lorraine cuts in. “My daughter, who’s 14, she’ll hang out in the park, but I’m like, what will you do when it gets dark early? I’d prefer her to be somewhere safe, that I know there’s a bit of supervision.”
Kingswood, a town of 40,000, merges seamlessly into Bristol’s eastern edges, and at first glance has decent amenities – a high street, where King’s Chase sits, other neighbourhood shops, green spaces and pubs. But as Ben points out, options are limited when you’re too old for the playground but too young to get served.
Across the UK, youth services have been cut by 77% since the onset of austerity in 2012, a stat that’s all the more devastating given the national knife crime epidemic. While South Gloucestershire has kept some youth services provision across the district, in Kingswood there are currently just a couple of open-access youth club evenings a week, right at one end of town at the Made Forever centre by Siston Common.
That could be changing though, thanks to an injection of cash from an unlikely source – the town council. This bottom tier of local government, run mostly by volunteers, is easily stereotyped as a bunch of retirees sitting around sipping tea and discussing the minutiae of flowerbeds and bus shelters.
But in Kingswood, the council, only established in 2023, has set aside almost half of its £825,000 2024-5 budget on services for young people. That will be enough, it’s hoped, to make a difference by funding a new space for them, along with specialist workers.
Hyperlocal democracy
The creation of Kingswood’s council was pushed through, despite an underwhelming response from residents to a consultation, by South Gloucestershire’s Conservative councillors, not long before they lost power to Labour at the 2023 local elections. It is now the largest lower-tier council within South Gloucestershire, with its budget paid for by a levy that increases locals’ council tax by £8 a month.
When we spoke to young people, parents, the feedback was, there’s nothing to do here
Sean Rhodes, who represents the town council’s Kings Chase South ward, as well as being a Labour member for Kingswood on South Gloucestershire Council, admits to having had reservations about what the new authority could achieve.
But he says he now believes it has an opportunity to do something “progressive and helpful” in the town. Conversations with residents made it clear what its priorities should be, he adds.
“Perhaps the most frequent comment was, people not feeling they can use the high street at night because there are too many young people hanging round,” he says. “The flipside to that was, when we spoke to young people, parents, the feedback was, there’s nothing to do here,” he continues – meaning they hang about anywhere they feel safe.
Fears and frustrations have been amplified by tragic incidents like the fatal June 2023 stabbing, in Bath, of 16-year-old Kingswood boy Mikey Roynon. Concerns over young people carrying weapons have led to CCTV being installed at Southey Park, a popular gathering spot for teens, including Mikey, where one of the skate ramps carries a tribute to him. Forty-seven knives were retrieved from a local amnesty bin earlier this year.
Things can feel “nerve-wracking”, says local resident, Alex Phillips, who’s dad to a teenager. “With my son, I find it hard – the parks where they want to meet, I’m very aware have certain things going on,” he says. “He tends to hang around with two friends – it makes me fearful that big groups are going to prey on him.”
Alex says he previously got into an altercation with youths who appeared to be carrying weapons and tried to steal his scooter outside a pub just over the border into Bristol. But his job as a support worker gives him insight into the pressures young people face, including around mental health and substance use issues.
“Young adults I’ve got coming through, they’ve dealt with a lot – it’s so much work to help them to cope, and to go into the future without their fears and anxieties and whatever comes with that,” he says.
Rhodes says feedback from residents got the town councillors “as a group, thinking”. “There’s no dedicated youth centre in Kingswood anymore, it’s an obvious gap that’s creating tension – what can we do to remedy that?”
The council’s first budget, setting aside £360,000 to “provide groundbreaking and exciting opportunities for young people”, was passed in January. But what will that money buy?
One-to-one support
The answer might sound modest. In the immediate term, the town council cash will add to the capacity of Creative Youth Network (CYN), which is already commissioned to deliver youth services – catering for 11 to 19-year-olds – across this part of South Gloucestershire.
The organisation will be able to recruit two staff, focused solely on Kingswood – a lead youth worker, and a youth wellbeing practitioner, specialising in mental health support. It will also gain one night a week’s access to a district-wide ‘youth bus’.
This is basically a big van, kitted out with an awning, music equipment, TV, Wi-Fi and hot water, giving youth workers a mobile space from which to hold ‘detached’ sessions at locations where young people congregate.
Jack Fitzsimmons, the youth services manager in charge of CYN’s Kingswood operations, says these small steps can have a “massive” impact – and could potentially double local engagement. The bi-weekly drop-ins at Made Forever can only accommodate 30 young people a night, reaching 118 individuals during 2023. The last census says about 3,000 people aged between 10 and 19 lived in the area covered by Kingswood’s town council in 2021.
The new workers, Fitzsimmons says, will not only staff the extra detached session, but allow for more outreach – for example, to young people who have been excluded from drop-ins because of their behaviour.
“You’ve got to think about the whole group – it’s got to be safe,” he says. “But a young person who’s not able to come into the session might really need support, so having someone who can pick them up on a one-to-one basis will be valuable.”
Fitzsimmons’ colleague, creative youth worker Kathleen Fitzpatrick-Milton, says access to “trusted adults” who young people can reach out to voluntarily, is crucial. “They might seem standoffish, but once you break the initial barrier, so many things come flooding out,” she says.
“Young people often have a lot of struggles and issues going on at home,” adds Fitzpatrick-Milton. “When everything is getting funding cuts – including schools – where can they go, not only to hang out with friends and have a good time, but also get some guidance, or just talk about how things are?”
While neither the town council or CYN will share details, an announcement is expected on the acquisition of a building within Kingswood that will enable such a space to take shape. The ambition is for a new dedicated youth centre, with input from local young people.
Much more investment in these vital youth services is needed, argues Fitzsimmons.
“Exploitation, anti-social behaviour, even just retreating into yourself, never leaving the house and only being online – all that stuff is because people don’t have places they can go, be themselves, explore their identity,” he says. “For us, being able to double that, plus adding one-to-one support, is going to be monumental.”
*All young people’s names have been changed
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