A FALLING out among teenagers has hit attendance at a new youth club but council chiefs still consider the project to be a success.
Torfaen Borough Council agreed a partnership with Pontypool Community Council last year to open two new youth clubs at Talywaun and Griffithstown. The borough council has also set up a youth club at Thornhill in Cwmbran.
David Williams, Torfaen’s youth service manager, updated members of the council’s education scrutiny committee on the service and was asked about attendance at the clubs that opened in December.
Mr Williams said the Talywaun club has an attendance of around 35 and some 15 or 16 attending regularly at Thornhill but at Griffithstown the figure is around 12 or 13.
He said: “It’s dropped recently. It had a good attendance but it’s fluctuated, there’s been something of a falling out among some of the young people who attended.”
He said youth workers will be doing “outreach work” and also said the service is concerned attendance at Griffithstown isn’t as high as anticipated.
“In Griffithstown it’s a little lower than we’d like as there is a high population of young people in Griffithstown and Panteg. We need to understand why the numbers are not creeping up in the way they have in Talywaun and Thornhill.”
The manager said regular attendance of between 15 and 20 in the three or four months since the clubs were opened is considered to be successful.
The service has mapped areas of Torfaen to identify where young people live, issues including deprivation and unemployment and what provision is available.
Since April last year it has worked with 2,560 individual young people, aged 11 to 25, with 79 per cent having reported an improvement in their circumstance because of youth work intervention.
Managers agreed a target for increasing the number of young people it works with should be increased, as it develops its new five year strategy this summer, as the figure hasn’t been reviewed for a number of years.