£220,000 grant application gets green light

It has been announced today Tuesday 18 December that Carlisle City Council has been successful in securing a £220,000 grant application from the Big Lottery Fund, to provide additional activities and facilities for local children and young people aged between 5 and 19.

The Big Lottery Fund has approved the funding application for the Play for Today, Play for Tomorrow projects. The two projects are set to start in 2008 they are:

• Carlisle City Play Trail - which will involve creating a series of objects including sculptures, interactive structures and activity areas beginning at the skatepark working its way towards the City Centre which, once established, it is anticipated will be expanded into surrounding communities. The idea emerged from the findings of a series of consultations with children and young people, which highlighted they felt the City Centre lacked vitality and interest for them.
• face2face Outreach Service – this project is set to develop and expand an existing scheme which uses the ‘face2face’ mobile unit to deliver services and activities to young people in both urban and rural areas in the District, especially where there is currently limited access to facilities. The overall aim of the project is to help develop local Play Partnerships, where intertested groups and individuals can come together in their locality to help organise and develop sustainable long term activity and facilities.

Cllr Ray Knapton, Portfolio Holder for Community Engagement and Children's Champion for Carlisle City Council said:

This is great news. The Big Lottery grant will give added impetus to our plans to develop new and innovative activities which will involve, challenge and excite the children and young people of our City.

In addition to the lottery success, the City Council was recently assessed for the quality of its youth work practice, by the Youth Work in Cumbria Partnership (who monitor the youth work quality standard throughout the County).

The YWiCP standards are based on the National Youth Agency Standards, require projects to be assessed against a range of criteria including:

• Do young people gain confidence, self-esteem and self-awareness?
• Do young people actively participate in decision making within the project and in the wider community?
• Do workers understand the informal educational nature of their work and use this understanding in their work?

There are four levels of achievement ranging from level 1- an emerging service, to level 4-an advanced service. The City Council's was assessed as operating at level 3, with aspirations to operate at level 4.