Wiltshire Council helping youngsters with rural isolation
Community First are working with Wiltshire Council to support young people in those areas
Last updated 8th Aug 2021
Wiltshire Council and a local charity are uniting to engage with young people who are feeling isolated.
Five of Wiltshire Council’s area boards are working with Community First to support young people who might feel isolated.
They plan to improve engagement with youngsters, particularly those living in a rural area.
Councillors, Community Engagement Managers and young residents identified a need for more activities for young people.
Access to activities such as regular clubs or one-off-events can be more difficult for young people in rural areas.
Those involved in the project will be researching to identify the best solutions for young people, and will then set up projects with help of community groups and partners.
The area boards of Amesbury, Pewsey, Tidworth, Southern Wiltshire, and Warminster have each contributed £5,000 to the programme.
The programme will see Community First and the area boards engaging and working with young people.
The Area Boards have worked closely with colleagues at Wiltshire Council including Children in Care, Child and Youth Voice and the Employment and Skills team.
Community First is an award winning charity that has supported people and places across Wiltshire and Swindon for more than 50 years.
The programme is set to get underway this August and is initially for one year, but if successful, it is hoped it can continue beyond that.
If they were to continue beyond the year period, it would require further funding.
Cllr Simon Jacobs, Wiltshire Council Cabinet Member for Area Boards said: “We’ve all experienced tough times over the last 16 months or so, but the pandemic has had a particular impact on young people, and those who were maybe feeling isolated even before it struck will likely have only seen that negative situation worsen.
“Therefore, it’s the perfect time for a programme like this to get underway to help provide opportunities to bring young people together with shared experiences that we hope can provide the foundation for more positive experiences and improved wellbeing for them.
“I think it is a case of identifying where their real interests are, putting them with likeminded young people and getting them working together, developing their skills – and that is what we are planning to do.”
“It is really a question of working with all sorts of clubs and organisations from the scouts and riding clubs. An awful lot of young people just simply don’t know what’s out there. So this project is really going to be able to put people with people. We first of all need to find out what the real problems are, and know what these young people want to do – and how we can engage better.
“Community First are going to send out, with youth workers, to actually go out and talk to young people out in the villages and rural areas. We will then put together the various projects. It’s all about community – this is what community is all about, and we have got to get out there and find out how we can help.
“We all understand why young people in rural areas would feel, and do feel, isolated. But you are literally only a click away from help, support and for putting people in touch with people.
“One of the problems is that if they don’t know what is out there, and they are not being put in touch with interests, then they end up doing what some teenagers do quite well – which is lurking. And when they lurk, their imaginations get the better of them and that is when you start to have antisocial behaviour."
Lynn Gibson, Chief Executive of Community First said: “We are really pleased to be working with the Council on this project which brings together our own Community Development and Youth Action Wiltshire teams alongside other partners to develop positive opportunities for young people at a very local level.”