Cathays

Cardiff Council are making big cuts to their budgets. This includes the youth service which funds four three-hour sessions per week at Cathays Community Centre.

The proposal for Cathays is for it to lose three of these sessions, but we are in a period of consultation which will finish on 13th February so it’s not too late to help us save our crucial service for the young people who gain so much benefit for themselves and their community from the work carried out at youth clubs.

This is how you can help:

• SIGN THE PETITION
• Follow the Save Our Youth Provision Twitter account
• Like our Save Our Youth Provision Facebook page
• Contact your local councillors by phone (see www.cardiff.gov.uk) and make your feelings known. 
• The proposal is that three out of the four youth club sessions will be closed. These will be the Monday, Thursday and Sunday youth clubs. These are the points that need to be made to councillors and officers of the Council:
  • In Cathays the council pays the staffing costs only while Cathays Community Centre, as a charitable organisation, gives its building, equipment and offices for free to all the youth clubs
  • Therefore shutting our youth clubs will save very little money in the long term (the cost of the cut is equivalent to one full time post but would result in at least five part time posts going), and initially there would be no saving at all as the staff would have to be re-deployed elsewhere in the city
  • Youth centres based in other areas of Cardiff with high levels of socioeconomic need have been saved from closure but Cathays youth clubs draw much of their membership from such areas, being centrally based and easily accessible. Also the main feed school for the youth club is Cathays High which in turn draws a high proportion of its pupils from deprived areas across the city
  • Cathays Friday Inclusive Youth Project provision is being maintained as it caters for vulnerable and disabled young people. However, it includes youth members from Mondays, Thursdays, and Sundays attending and supporting their peers as youth member volunteers. Youth members also volunteer throughout the community centre and so cutting their social base will have a devastating affect on them and on the community centre’s provision as a whole
  • The success that Cathays Community Centre has with securing funding as a charity is in many ways dependent on the organisation being seen as a partner to Cardiff County Council as enshrined in the Charity’s Constitution and as evidenced by a long history of successful collaboration