By Gabrielle Cox of the Hideaway Youth Project

I last wrote about the Hideaway for Union Chapel newsletter in 2005, when we were celebrating our 40th birthday. We had just received a grant from the Lottery for work with young women, particularly taking into account issues of sexual violence, and we were waiting to hear from the Football Foundation about an application for funding to work with young men on community cohesion and gun/gang issues. After forty years as a trust under the auspices of the Baptist Church, we had become a company limited by guarantee and a charity in our own right.

Since then the Hideaway has been very busy. We had three years of Lottery funding which enabled us to establish significant work with young women (whose needs can sometimes get overlooked in youth work because young men “take over”). In addition to employing a qualified youth worker and a trainee to do this work, we were able to persuade the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to fund a Somali woman trainee to encourage Somali young women to use the project. This has been very successful and we have managed to gain the trust of Somali parents to the extent that they have even allowed us twice to take their daughters away on residentials. Whilst originally we set up sessions only for Somali young women, they are now fully integrated with our wider girls’ work, and it is good to see the relationships which have developed and the increasing confidence of our young women.

The Football Foundation agreed to part-fund our young men’s project, and this funded a qualified youth worker and a trainee. We appointed an African-Caribbean young man as a trainee under this funding and then, in faith, also appointed a Somali young man as another trainee although we had no clear funding for this. Fortunately the Church Urban Fund has been giving us a small grant each year to support his employment, and Faiths in Action will put in some money next year.

One of our continuing issues is around gang influence and violence between gangs, including violence between African-Caribbean and Somali young men. Our two young male trainees, Melvyn and Osman, are a tremendous asset in working with young men, as they both have “street cred” in their respective communities and know what is going on around the streets. The situation is very volatile, with allegiances changing. Although at one time the major gang issues were between the Gooch and Doddington gangs (and we had issues at the Hideaway because we were located in Doddington territory), the police action against the Gooch gang appears to have reduced this tension. Instead there are other gangs, such as those in Fallowfield and Old Trafford, who form a variety of alliances with Moss Side gangs. Our workers spend quite a bit of time trying to engage these young men and divert them from gang activity.

We are about to take on two more Somali young men as trainees, through some two-year funding under the Preventing Violent Extremism programme, which will enable us to extend our work to Somali young men aged 19-25. We have had a very good response to our recruitment process and will be appointing during late October.     We are very clear that this is in order to give us resources to provide opportunities for young Somali men, who suffer from high unemployment, and give them a sense of belonging and worth in our community.

Life at the Hideaway is very challenging at the moment. With the ending of our Lottery grant in March 2009 our income has fallen significantly. We have been unable to fill two vacancies – one for a Project Leader and one for a male qualified youth worker – and our one qualified youth worker is having also to act up as Project Leader and supervise four trainees. Two further trainees will add to the pressure, and we are looking to get some extra management support to help keep the projects on track, make the best use of our current staff resources, and help us plan for the future, particularly as the grant from the Football Foundation ends in March 2010.

We are immensely grateful to Union Chapel for the generous donation of £5000 towards our work. This will help us with a number of financial pressures, including giving us a bit of confidence in bringing in some more management time. It is also a source of great encouragement that other people feel our work with vulnerable young people is of worth.

Gabrielle Cox  (Hideaway Youth Project)