When the Trustees decided to adopt a new grant-giving policy in July 2003 to “support charities addressing community deprivation in Cumbria and North Lancashire” various sources of information and local knowledge were pooled to draw up a target list of the following areas, which include one or more pockets of significant deprivation.
Examples of recent projects supported in each of these areas follows. Taken in combination, they describe the work of the Trust quite well.
For the past 3 years a small grant has been awarded to this group to enable them to organise a summer day out (e.g. to Southport) for families and children who would not otherwise be able to afford it. Four Groves sits within the Risedale ward of Barrow which is the sixth most deprived ward in the County. The hand-written letters from the children after each trip make it clear that these days out are a special event for all concerned.
The Chair of Trustees has the discretion to award small grants of up to £5,000 in between the main Trustee meetings with a faster decision-making process allowing appeals such as this one to get timely funding support. Trustees always maintain that these smaller projects are as important as the multi-year revenue funded projects that the Trust supports.
A further project that was the brainchild of the Chairwoman of this organisation was the Four Groves Youth project which is managed by Young Cumbria on behalf of the Association. A 3-year revenue grant was awarded to this project to underpin the salary and running costs of the local youth club. 2 youthworkers based on the estate work with teenagers who are disengaged from the formal educational process as well as coordinating activities open to all young people in the evenings and weekends. The local police have commented on the dramatic decrease in anti-social and criminal behaviour that has occurred since this project was established.
It took a strong-willed and hard working local committee over 2 years to raise the funds required to modernise and develop their local community centre. To the south of Whitehaven, Mirehouse is the most deprived ward in Cumbria and there were many nearby residents who felt this refurbishment project would never happen. We were approached towards the end of their fundraising campaign to help them get to the finishing line and the Trustees responded with a significant one-off capital grant to enable building work to start.
The building work has recently been completed and the centre is now home to several new community groups and initiatives as well as providing better facilities for existing groups. As importantly, the modernised centre stands as a testament to the fact that “things do happen”.
The wards to the south of Workington (Salterbeck, Westfield & Moorclose) include several deprived communities who missed out on Sure Start funding back in 2001. Out of this set-back was born a determination by a number of local workers to create a family support centre. FCSCT Trustees had the vision back in 2002 to fund a feasibility study/steering group which eventually led to the establishment of a family centre which was backed by NCH. In 2005, Trustees awarded a further 3 year grant to underpin the costs of the family counsellor, child care and family learning courses.
The Workington Children's Centre (which is one of the first officially designated Children's Centres in the country) is certainly “a happening place” with all manner of courses and programmes taking place including: fun days for parents with their children, parenting courses (COPE), workshops (cooking, personal confidence, first aid, arts/crafts, etc), counselling support, self-esteem programmes for 7-8 year old children (the Stardom Programme), home visits, and so on. It is one of four NCH projects that the Trust is currently supporting.
The FCSCT was instrumental in the establishment of this family support centre in the middle of the Ewanrigg estate – one of the top 5 most deprived wards in Cumbria. Between 1994–2005, this Trust provided over £650k in core funding to ensure that this project succeeded in establishing services for children and families in the Maryport area. This stream of core funding is coming to an end, but the Trustees have recently provided additional support to a targeted project looking to meet the need of pre-teens who seem to fall in a gap between those services aimed at children and traditional youthwork.
The FCSCT Trustees are particularly keen to fund projects that support children during the critical transition from primary to secondary schools and have offered 3 years of funding to this project, matched by contributions from the Children's Fund and Barnardo's themselves.
Signposts are based in the west end of Morecambe and provide information, resources, activities and support groups for the marginalised and underrepresented in their local community. FCSCT has awarded 19 separate grants totalling just over £100k since 1995 for initiatives as diverse as Parenting Teens, Women and Families, staff training, a DIY shop and the cornerstone Information and Advice service.
More recently, Signposts identified a gap in provision in Carnforth and so are endeavouring to establish similar operations there. The Chair of FCSCT Trustees was able to offer a timely grant in December 2004 to enable Signposts to move quickly to secure appropriate premises for their Carnforth base and the Trustees have since backed that up with a larger 3 year grant to fund the Development Worker post for Carnforth. Early reports are encouraging with a youth group and various family support groups up and running.
For many years Carlisle has been poorly served by the voluntary/community sector in relation to family support services and youthwork, particularly in areas such as the city centre and the Raffles and Petteril Bank estates. Working from their base on the Raffles estate to the west of Carlisle, the Living Well Trust (LWT) is turning that history on its head with an expanding range of services targeting the most deprived communities in Carlisle.
LWT currently provide a diverse range of family support, youthwork and alternative curriculum services for the children, teenagers and families living in the west of Carlisle and the recent opening of a city centre base will expand the number of families and young people who can access their services. In addition to this, a youth-bus is operating across the south and west of Carlisle bringing detached youthwork activities to places where young people congregate.
In June 2004, FCSCT Trustees visited LWT at their Raffles base to view first hand the range of services being provided. A significant three year grant from this Trust is underpinning the salary costs of the Family Support Manager working across the Raffles and city centre sites.
One of the difficulties facing smaller towns and villages throughout Copeland is finding enough willing volunteers to make voluntary youth clubs viable. Recognising this need, Home Housing initiated a project to coordinate a range of activities for the young people of Cleator Moor, Frizington and Arlecdon, using regular youth club nights (based in local village/church halls) as the foundation for a variety of other recreational/educational activities.
In order to continue the work of the ‘Phoenix Project’ the youthworkers involved decided to become a charity in their own right in order to attract both private and statutory funding to develop the youth clubs' activities as well as organising more trips away, educational events, etc. The FCSCT was one of the first Trusts approached and backed this venture with an initial small grant to help with establishment costs followed by a 3 year grant towards the running costs of the whole project. Trustees believe that regular youth club nights are an important means of engaging with young people allowing youthworkers the opportunity to provide education and guidance (e.g. workshops covering substance misuse, sexual health, drug awareness, healthy eating, bullying, etc) alongside fun activities and trips away.
The Marsh estate is tucked away just to the west of Lancaster train station and HM Prison; it does not show up on the deprivation statistics because it is included in the Castle ward which has some wealthy pockets within it. It is nonetheless an obviously poor estate and it is wonderful that several committed residents have had the wherewithal to organise themselves and proceed with the building of a much needed community facility.
The Marsh Community Centre progressed from a campaign group in 1997, through charitable status in 2001, to fundraising in 2002, to building a new Centre in 2003 and finally to opening just before Christmas 2003. By the end of 2004, they had 19 different groups using the Centre and have plans for several more targeted sessions to address the specific needs (based on research) of local women, the elderly, young people, families, fathers and different ethnic groups. FCSCT Trustees backed up a small capital grant towards the end of 2002 with a 3 year grant (beginning April 2004) towards the salary of the Centre Manager, Yakub Patel.
The current Head Teacher arrived at this Primary School at the beginning of 2003 and witnessed a horrible fight in the playground during his first week - a not uncommon event as he came to learn. Combined with other evident problems in the Silloth community (“the forgotten place” as a shop keeper describes it) the Head felt that dealing with the self-esteem of children had to take equal priority with the curriculum. An in-school emotional literacy programme was developed as a result and piloted in 2003/04 with children, parents and teachers to enable them to deal with a variety of problems in a more constructive way.
Since then virtually all 270 children have been involved in one of the workshops, fun days or small group work sessions facilitated by a trained Counsellor in and around the normal school day. The programme involves parents and teachers as well and, given that statutory bodies won't contribute, the only option for continuing the programme lies with private funders. NCH were prepared to include this project as part of their Cumbrian operations after which FCSCT Trustees provided 3 years of core funding for the project to continue.
Tirril is a small village in Eden situated between the northern end of Ullswater and Penrith. Five volunteers (including the local police officer and a husband and wife) give their time and energies to keeping a local youth club going, organising a range of indoor and outdoor activities to interest the 20 or so young people in the village. Local fund-raising events cover most of the costs of weekly activities however occasionally specialist equipment is required for more demanding pursuits such as rock climbing.
Midway through 2004, the FCSCT Chair of Trustees awarded a small grant of £800 to enable one of the volunteers (a former Royal Marine and qualified rock-climbing leader) to purchase the equipment needed to undertake climbing trips safely. Indeed since this grant was made, one of the young people who went climbing with this youth club has been chosen as a member of the British Youth Bouldering Team.
Not all grants are directed to activities in specific locations given that there are several excellent organisations providing services across our beneficial area. One such organisation is CADAS who have recently expanded their operations by merging with FDAC (Furness Drug & Alcohol Concern).
FCSCT have been involved with what is now CADAS (it was originally the Cumbria Council on Alcoholism) since its very inception in 1979, providing an initial £1,000 grant to fund a survey on alcohol abuse in Cumbria. It has evolved phenomenally since that time to the point where CADAS now offer a comprehensive range of drug and alcohol counselling/education services to different populations across Cumbria.
A core component of their service is the use of trained volunteers to deliver their counselling programme. FCSCT are currently supporting this aspect of their work by part-funding the salary of the Counsellor Trainer Manager who coordinates the recruitment, training and deployment of the 70+ volunteers working for CADAS.