Melksham youth charity expands and rebrands

Despite the challenges of Covid-19, Melksham-based youth charity, Young Melksham, has seen a year of growth and has rebranded itself for 2021.

The lockdown imposed in March 2020 resulted in the charity having to close the doors of the Canberra Centre from which the charity delivered four popular youth clubs and its oversubscribed TeenTalk counselling service.

Responding to the new challenges of the lockdown, the charity promptly launched a new telephone support line for young people and set up teams of youth workers who patrolled the community, encouraging any young people who were out and about to stay home and follow the guidelines.

Chair of the trustees, Jon Hubbard, told Melksham News, “We actually found very few young people who were breaking lockdown rules. Those few who our teams found would have a conversation with those young people, to educate and inform them on the risks they were taking, not just to themselves but also to their families.”

As lockdown was eased and some outdoor activities could take place, new outdoor mobile youth clubs were launched in Bowerhill and at King George V Playing Fields, offering safe, socially distanced activities for young people to take part in. The charity also ran activities from the Canberra Centre during the summer holidays.

From May, the town also saw detached youth workers out most weekday evenings working with young people, providing positive activities and encouraging them to better understand and follow the ever-changing guidance from central government.

The charity also saw considerable pressure on its early help and counselling service, TeenTalk, with the waiting list expanding every week.

In October, a new satellite service for TeenTalk was opened by the charity in Chippenham, relieving some of the pressure on the Melksham-based service. Almost doubling the capacity of the service, this helped cut waiting times to use the service.

November saw discussions taking place with stakeholders in Westbury and an agreement and funding was obtained that saw the charity launch a new detached youth work service in Westbury, with a TeenTalk counselling service to follow in the new year. The latest lockdown has delayed the opening of the Westbury TeenTalk service, but it will be up and running once lockdown regulations allow.

Discussions had also been taking place about the charity also delivering services from the youth centre in Atworth and November also saw an agreement reached for that to commence in the new year, with the trustees from the existing Atworth Youth Club joining the Young Melksham board of trustees.

At this point, recognising that they were now working with and for young people across a much wider area than just Melksham, the charity decided that a rebrand would be appropriate and decided to rename itself to 4Youth (South West).

“For our young people here in Melksham, and the various stakeholders and funders that we work with in our community, nothing will change,” explained chair of trustees Jon Hubbard. “But for new partners and stakeholders in other communities it made much more sense to change the legal name of the charity to better reflect the scope of the organisation. 

“Young Melksham will still be here in the town and will continue to serve our communities as before.

“We will continue to ringfence grant funding to be spent within the communities it is intended for, but we will be able to deliver an enhanced service, with better shared resources and staff.

“As a result of the changes, and to facilitate our continued growth and improvements in our service offer we are appointing new staff, including a youth work development manager, and are looking to further expand our service for young people.

“In Melksham, we will see the introduction of our new mentoring scheme, our detached youthwork will continue and we are planning to reopen the Canberra Centre as soon as lockdown rules allow us. In the meantime, we will be launching a new online youth offer which we hope will help young people deal with some of the ongoing challenges of dealing with lockdown.”