Agenda item

The Committee considered the undernoted report:

 

“1.0      Purpose of Report or Summary of Main Issues

 

1.1         The purpose of this report is to update Members on the progress to date at Girdwood Community Hub.  This will include:

 

                                          i.     General outline of the work of the Girdwood Hub Forum and its subsequent working groups.

                                         ii.     Overview of the animation programme, including the community, leisure and education programme, and

                                       iii.     An update on the current position of the proposal to community manage the youth space.

 

2.0       Recommendations

 

2.1       The Committee is asked to:

 

                                          i.     Note the content of the progress report and

                                         ii.     endorse the emerging business case to support the proprietary use of local community organisations to deliver a robust youth engagement and activity programme.

 

3.0       Main Report

 

            Key Issues

 

3.1       Girdwood Community Hub, which combines community facilities, a dedicated Youth Space, leisure facilities and educational outreach and training facilities, was developed with support from a capital grant award from SEUPB to support the Peace III priority of ‘contributing to a shared society by creating public shared space’.  The Council managed the delivery of the hub project and the Department for Communities (DfC) are currently leading on the wider development of the Girdwood Park site.  Girdwood Community Hub has the principles of shared space built into its core and, to enable the facility to benefit inter and intra community relations, the Council set up a dedicated Community Hub Forum whose role is to promote and help manage the hub as a welcoming, open, shared and safe space.  The Girdwood Community Forum is chaired by the Council’s Community Development Manager and has representation from 2 elected Members.

 

3.2       The key objective of the Hub is to be a shared space for all, offering an activity programme to support peace and reconciliation and facilitate sustained dialogue between local communities. The state of the art facility opened its doors to the public in January 2016 and is currently managed by the Council’s leisure operator GLL with support from a Council Girdwood Community Engagement Officer. Current usage figures are:

 

·        Hub Footfall 335,941

·        Gym Visits 47,346

·        Active Gym Members 491

·        Male Users 54.1%

·        Female Users 45.9%

 

3.3       Girdwood plays host to a wide range of events, conferences, performances and concerts and thus far has lived up to the community aspiration that it will become an International Centre for Peace and Reconciliation welcoming visitors from all over the globe. For example, the Hub recently welcomed members of the committee of Regional Development of the European Parliament. A representative group of 8 MEPs visited Northern Ireland on a fact finding mission to obtain information that will influence a report on ‘the impact of cohesion policy in Northern Irelan’. The MEPs met with community reps, delivery partners and Council officers involved in service delivery at Girdwood Community Hub.

 

3.4       Community partners are agreed that Girdwood must impact positively on the lives of the local people by providing opportunities for improved health and wellbeing, higher obtainment in education linked to employability and lifelong learning opportunities for children and young people. Programmes currently running to support this are:

 

·        Pulmonary Rehab

·        Cardiac Rehab

·        Healthwise Programme

·        MacMillian Cancer Rehab

·        Princes Trust NEETS Programme

·        Essential Skills ICT

·        Level 2 – Early Childcare Learning

·        Level 1 – Phonics – assisting parents with reading for their children.

·        Girdwood Youth Forum

·        Afterschools Club

 

3.5       Girdwood has recently been named the disability hub for Belfast and supports the Active Living: No Limits 2021 action plan to improve health and wellbeing of people living with disabilities in Northern Ireland through participation in sport and active recreation.

 

3.6       In November 2017, the Council made its final formal monitoring submission to SEUPB. In the absence of this formal reporting the Council, along with its Hub Forum partners, have been reviewing how we can ensure continued robust reporting linked to our target outcomes. It was agreed that Girdwood Community Hub would adopt the Outcomes Based Accountability model (OBA) and agree 5 key outcomes that will allow us to measure: How much we do, How well we do it, and If anyone is better off? The agreed outcomes also support the work emerging from both the Belfast Agenda and the Programme for Government. The Council is in the process of procuring technical support to draft a performance management framework for Girdwood and to support the collaborative recording, collation and reporting of information in year 1 of the implementation of an outcomes plan.

 

3.7       In order to progress activity in priority areas, the Girdwood Community Forum have established a number of working groups with membership drawn from members and with regular progress reports back to the full Forum. 

 

3.8       Community Services support the Youth Space and Community Management group in the development of an activity programme for children and young people which is primarily housed within the dedicated Youth Space.  The programme offer is diverse and makes use of the different and innovative aspects of the facility. Delivery is collaborative in nature involving local community youth providers, primarily funded by the Council and the Executive Office. The programme is agreed quarterly and includes sessions in arts, IT, sports, personal development and good relations and encourages access to other services within the Hub. The programme also includes outreach and detached work which aims to support local young people at risk, reduce ASB on site and encourage involvement in the Youth Space and Hub. The youth programme has developed and evolved and now offers activities 6 days a week

 

3.9       The Council’s Good Relations Unit supports the work emerging from the Shared Space and Programming group. This group focuses on promoting the Hub as a shared space and centre for peace and reconciliation. The work of this group shapes an annual Shared Space action plan for the Hub and the wider site. The plan includes a series of shared space events, a sustained programme of shared space activities and a training and skills package for local community reps and volunteers to become better equipped to deliver the shared space action plan for Girdwood. The hub recently hosted its 2nd Spring into Girdwood event. Approximately 900 people were in attendance from the neighbouring areas who enjoyed activities such as bouncy castles, go karts, face painting, birds of prey display and much more. Future work will include the development of a Shared Space Charter for the hub and a short video demonstrating the success thus far.

 

3.10      Council’s Community Safety section supports the work of the Site Management group. This group focuses on community safety and site management issues particularly linked to the sensitive nature of the site. It is at this forum where the issue of anti-social behaviour and associated vandalism is addressed and plans are developed to design and implement effective interventions and programming to engage those who are harder to reach. Innovative programme design has contributed to a steady increase in participation and a positive decline in nuisance and antisocial behaviour since the hub first opened its doors. If we compare statistics from March 2017 with March 2018, the number of recorded incidents has reduced from 18 incidents to 2. A review of the current position including process, programming and interventions is currently underway and will inform the work of this group moving into the 2018/2019 season.

 

3.11      There is a stated ambition for the local community to develop their capability to support community management of the Hub in the future.  In previous reports, Council agreed that a useful first step to grow confidence by all parties would be to develop and consider a Service Level Agreement for community management of the dedicated Youth Space.  The Community Hub Forum sought expressions of interest from within their community membership and endorsed the outline proposal tabled by local community network North Talks Too (NTT).  The Council provided external technical assistance to NTT to support the development of a detailed business case for future formal consideration by the Girdwood Community Forum.  The proposal is still under consideration by community stakeholders pending resubmission to the Forum.

 

3.12      In the course of the process, two issues presented with regards to the Youth Space.

 

                                          i.     Opening hours

Due to the location of the Hub and the recognised challenges in relationships between neighbouring communities, it is particularly important that the youth programme on offer is accessible when local tensions occur.  This need is more likely to arise late evening and weekends, however, the opening hours of the facility in line with all GLL managed dry centres are 9am-9pm week days and 10am–4pm weekends.  Current programme extends beyond these hours and requires the youth space to be accessible when the remainder of the building is closed.

 

                                           ii.   Health & Safety & Safeguarding

In addition community partners delivering the programme have raised concerns about toilet facilities being shared between Youth Space and main Hub building. This is specifically in terms of Health & Safety and Safeguarding requirements. Groups have, via their risk assessment process, concluded that CYP using the Youth Space must be escorted to the toilets and this is adding considerably to the supervisory resources that groups must provide. It was determined the risk would be fully mitigated by provision of separate toilets within the Youth Space.

 

3.13      As a result, the Council undertook through their capital investment programme to make the necessary changes to the dedicated youth space to allow it to operate as a stand-alone facility and therefore ready for any potential community management agreement.

 

3.14      Since the renovations have been completed, a draft community management proposal has been presented to the Girdwood Community Forum for consideration and endorsement. At a special meeting in February, it was noted that Forum members are broadly supportive of the proposal and recognised the efforts and time invested by NTT in developing the proposal thus far. However the proposal was not endorsed and currently there are some community challenges in relation to the proposed governance of the emerging Girdwood Community Trust, who is the project sponsor.  The North Area Working Group have received update reports and Council officers are continuing to support all parties involved to reach a resolution and move forward with a Forum endorsed submission to Council for formal assessment.

 

3.15      In the absence of a community management agreement for the youth space, Community Services will continue to support the youth programme as per the existing interim arrangements set out above. Given the extended time-frame, the procurement of services is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain on a quarterly basis. Given the importance of subsidiarity in the delivery of youth services at Girdwood, Council have supported a collaborative activity programme which is designed and delivered in partnership with local youth providers.  Pending any award of an SLA for Youth Space management, and in line with Council procedure, officers are developing a business case to the Director of City and Neighbourhood Services for approval under the scheme of delegation to procure services from the four neighbouring community/youth organisations - Lower Shankill, Lower Oldpark, Cliftonville Community Regeneration Forum and New Lodge. The Girdwood Hub Forum agree that the four neighbouring organisations are best placed to deliver a youth based engagement and activity programme in Girdwood Hub that will positively impact on the current aims and objectives around good relations, shared space and interventions.  Critically, these locally based youth organisations have the capacity and grassroots relationships to expedite a rapid response to youths causing annoyance and trends of heightened ASB in parallel to the delivery of an activity based programme that seeks to change the attitudes of the young people using the Hub. 

 

            Financial & Resource Implications

 

3.16      Programme resources are within service revenue estimates. 

 

            Equality or Good Relations Implications

 

3.17      None.”

 

            The Committee endorsed the emerging business case to support the proprietary use of local community organisations to deliver a robust youth engagement and activity programme.