Renovations are now complete for a Young Peoples Youth Hub at Wensley Fold Children’s Centre.
A Youth Investment Fund (YIF) refurbishment grant of £142 thousand was awarded to Blackburn with Darwen Council’s Young Peoples Services to renovate the building and enhance the local youth service offer.
Since then the Council’s Growth Team and Young Peoples Services (YPS) have been working tirelessly to make sure the renovation is done on time and have managed to transform the centre in time for the summer holidays.
This means that the project can now support up to 250 attendances per week and that young people across Wensley Fold and neighbouring wards have access to new youth spaces on the ground and first floors of the centre.
The centre now has open access youth rooms, a games cave, music studios and outside areas to learn bushcraft type skills.
Councillor Julie Gunn, Deputy Leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council and Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education, said:
"I’m so proud of the team and how hard they’ve worked to provide our young people with the creative services that they need and deserve. Wensley Fold Children’s Centre looks absolutely amazing, the rooms have been designed with the young people in mind and with their input. The wellbeing space, games room and music studios are all so impressive and I’m delighted to see this available in the borough for our young people. As well as the centre also supporting the Councils Start for Life offer – bringing services for families together in one neighbourhood and building."
Wensley Fold Children’s Centre also offers clubs and more targeted services that help support the most vulnerable young people. Targeted Youth Support is delivered across seven days each week which significantly increases existing provision. All spaces are used for 1:1 and group work sessions.
Young people work through an informal education ‘toolkit’ offering advice and guidance in areas such as emotional health and wellbeing, identity and belonging, healthy relationships, and future planning along with receiving support with pertinent issues.
YPS are currently working on the open access provision at the centre, this will include access to ‘We Are Noise’, which will offer young people creative arts, music production and podcasting to young people aged 8 to 19 (up to 25 SEND).
At the moment Youth Action deliver a junior youth club session (Tuesday 3:30pm to 5:30pm) and a senior youth club (Tuesday 6pm to 8pm), for more information please contact samina.saddique@youthaction.org.uk
The Duke of Edinburgh award is also open access but arrangements need to be made prior to attendance. Young people aged 14+ can contact matt.johnston@blackburn.gov.uk for more information on how to get involved.
The Council’s Young Peoples Services Team is one of 140 youth projects in England to benefit from a Youth Investment Fund grant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The grants aims to build, renovate, or extend youth services in the parts of the country where new spaces and new opportunities are most needed.
As well as Wensley Fold, facilities for young people across Blackburn with Darwen are currently being transformed with a further £8m of YIF funding.
The money will pave the way for four major projects across the borough, including:
- Darwen Youth Centre (£3.3m)
- Blackburn Youth Zone (£2.9m)
- Audley and Queen’s Park Children’s Centre (£1m)
- Shadsworth Hub (£800,000)