Sunday, November 13, 2005
Looking Forward - Youth Facilities
At a recent meeting of Cedar Tenants Association it was decided that we would like to see a meeting for the whole North Woodside area where many people from the wider community came along and had their say, and which gave us, as a community, a chance to think and plan about youth facilities in the area.
The Association has learned that the community council in our area (woodside community council) has been trying to tackle some of the anti-social behaviour that goes on in the area, where missiles have been chucked dangerously from heights and where youths have been causing trouble on the wider st George's estate by playing loud music. We think this is a major issue for issue for people living in the area, but we're also pretty clear that a lot of what goes on could be avoided if there were decent facilities for local kids and youths to play and be rowdy in.
Considering that many of the trouble makers are as young as twelve we think that this position is all the more justified. Yes we need to be tough on crime but we feel some of it is simply kids with nothing to do making a nuisance of themselves, and certainly in Cedar there is little for them to be getting on with and the play facilities that exist are not good enough, or not fit for the purpose, or in the case of the climbing frames in front of the concierge station they are badly maintained and actually unsafe.
We feel that there is a space now for people across woodside to get together to talk about these issues and we would really like to see a wider number of groups get involved in organizing an event that would bring together people from across the wider community and we will over the course of the next few weeks being making contact with other groups and agencies to see if we can make this come together.
The Association has learned that the community council in our area (woodside community council) has been trying to tackle some of the anti-social behaviour that goes on in the area, where missiles have been chucked dangerously from heights and where youths have been causing trouble on the wider st George's estate by playing loud music. We think this is a major issue for issue for people living in the area, but we're also pretty clear that a lot of what goes on could be avoided if there were decent facilities for local kids and youths to play and be rowdy in.
Considering that many of the trouble makers are as young as twelve we think that this position is all the more justified. Yes we need to be tough on crime but we feel some of it is simply kids with nothing to do making a nuisance of themselves, and certainly in Cedar there is little for them to be getting on with and the play facilities that exist are not good enough, or not fit for the purpose, or in the case of the climbing frames in front of the concierge station they are badly maintained and actually unsafe.
We feel that there is a space now for people across woodside to get together to talk about these issues and we would really like to see a wider number of groups get involved in organizing an event that would bring together people from across the wider community and we will over the course of the next few weeks being making contact with other groups and agencies to see if we can make this come together.
