A community partnership in Tameside held a series of events across the summer holidays, which were attended by more than 200 young people and led to feelings of safety.

The Ashton and St Peter’s Youth Alliance (ASPYA) held two community fun days funded by Greater Manchester’s Violence Reduction Unit, which included music creation, creating and recording podcasts, art and crafts sessions, soft archery, bike riding, football and more.

Mark Williams, a community worker from ASPYA, explained that, “Historically the people that live in Holy Trinity would not feel comfortable going across to Oxford Park, as they faced racist behaviour.  Twenty years on, this single event appears to have helped to remove this barrier”.

The fun days were advertised widely by ASPYA and partners, with those living in temporary housing, and those at risk of being affected by serious violence prioritised so they could find out more about the vital support offered by the alliance.

Local schools, libraries, family hubs, the Ukrainian Centre, Growing Tameside, Youth Justice and local nurseries also supported the events by sharing information with their parents and service users.

The Ashton St Peter’s Youth Alliance (ASPYA) is made up of four organisations: Lindley Educational Trust, LEAP, Active Tameside and Prime Active Communities (PAC).

The alliance aims to collaborate with local children and young people aged between 5 and 25 years old to close the gaps in the existing support for children at risk of violence or displaying challenging behaviours.

Each of the partner organisations also offers a specific element of expanded support, which can be tailored to ensure flexibility within the support alliance and to establish a more ‘joined-up’ approach to community work.

ASPYA was awarded £100,000 in funding in February 2024 as part of the VRU’s community-led approach to tackling violence in the city-region.

To date, the VRU has invested around £3.4m into community alliances since the first one was established in 2020. Now, all ten local authority areas in the city-region have an alliance in place, meaning that more people can benefit from grassroots, bespoke support.

For more information about Active Tameside contact Dan at Dan.higgins@activetameside.com

For more information about LEAP contact Jo Parry-Gee at leap@leapcfc.org

For more information about Lindley Educational Trust contact Mark at Mark.williams@lindley.org

For more information about PAC contact Mark at Mark@pac-cic.co.uk

Article posted on: 29/08/2024 02:08pm