Council lobbied to invest in worker (From Stroud News and Journal)

Council lobbied to invest in worker

IMPASSIONED lobbying of Gloucestershire County Council is underway as Nailsworth pleads for the money to fund a full-time youth worker.

The town needs another £10,000 to ensure it keeps current trainee youth worker Tracy Young when she qualifies next June or to recruit a full-time qualified replacement.

As youth and civic leaders prepare a twin-pronged lobbying assault on the county council, Steve Robinson, chairman of the youth club management committee, told the SNJ the preference was clearly for Ms Young who will have been three years on the patch by then.

He said: "She has developed a good knowledge of Nailsworth and its young people. We want her to stay on after she qualifies."

And he added that as the council has already spent around £60,000 in the last four years bringing the centre up to scratch this investment made sense.

"They've invested money in the centre," he said. "Now they need to invest it in the worker. "We are asking them for what we feel we deserve and what young people in Nailsworth deserve."

Youngsters are to present a petition calling for extra funding and signed by more than 1,000 people to county councillor Brian Large (Lab, Gloucester), cabinet member for lifelong learning, on Wednesday, October 27.

Mr Robinson and town councillor Norman Kay will then meeting county council leader Cllr Peter Clarke (Lab, Gloucester) on Thursday, November 4.

He is optimistic about the outcome pointing to full-time youth workers in Minchinhampton, Stonehouse and Dursley.

Ms Young has been credited with boosting the club's membership to 180 and widely praised for her work with the community's young, tackling problems of drug abuse, truancy and social exclusion.

Cllr Kay said: "Our town loses out dramatically when it comes to the provision of resources to work with young people. "Our young people deserve and need more support from the county."