Chief executive of The Brogdale CIC Group, Rebecca O’Neill, says council cuts to youth centres will only escalate costs of other services.
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00:00 So we do loads and loads and loads of work
00:02 across the whole of the district of Swale.
00:05 And we've been doing this
00:06 and we've built those wonderful relationships.
00:08 There's wonderful relationships with young people,
00:10 with their families, and we're trusted.
00:12 Take away those youth workers who go in,
00:16 who do that day-to-day work in the youth clubs
00:18 and the detached work that we do,
00:21 are out on the street, chatting to young people,
00:23 looking at how we can support them.
00:26 What's gonna happen is they're gonna have nowhere to go
00:28 that's a focused place for them to go,
00:30 that's a safe space for them to chat and to talk and to be.
00:33 They've got nowhere to hang out with their mates.
00:35 And I would imagine they're gonna look
00:37 for other places to hang out.
00:39 And I would imagine that's gonna cause
00:40 other people concerns and worries.
00:42 Parents are saying, "Oh, but we used to go
00:45 to that youth club when we were children.
00:48 How can they take that away?"
00:49 The value we got from that.
00:51 And we feel safe letting our young persons go to here
00:54 when we're concerned about them being out and about
00:56 on the street and who they might meet and what might happen.
00:58 We feel safe with them going to that space,
01:00 to take that space away.
01:02 Where are they gonna go?
01:03 What are they gonna do?
01:04 What's gonna happen to them?
01:05 And the fact that it's affordable
01:07 and some of the families that we've spoken to,
01:10 it's this place where they can go
01:11 and their young person can come in
01:12 and they can have their tea time meal with us.
01:15 They can have a bit of food with us
01:17 and they can hang out and play games.
01:18 But it's also somewhere in a cost of living crisis
01:21 where they can come and they can get their needs met
01:23 in other areas too, because perhaps the family
01:26 finding it difficult to provide some of those services.