Agenda item

Shaffrina Barker, Youth and Communtiy Work manager for Surrey Heath, and Nikki Hamilton, Lead Youth Worker and Fundraising Officer, gave a presentation in respect of the work of Eikon.

Eikon provided a range of services around school programmes, employability and work skills, building resilience and mental health wellbeing. Eikon aimed to continue to garner the ethos of its founder, Chris Hickford, who promoted proactive, rather than reactive work, with young people. Following Eikon’s merger with the Windle Valley Youth project, Reflex Woking and the Lifetrain Trust, Eikon has allowed coordinated youth work to take place all across Surrey.

Eikon had successfully delivered the following services via schools to young people throughout Surrey Heath:

• Fostered strong and established relationships and worked in all three Surrey Heath secondary schools.
• Sexual health sessions, short resilience programmes, short courses and led on secondary school assemblies.
• Raised awareness and conducted staff whole school training on LGBT+ issues.
• Work with unaccompanied refugee young people.
• Work CAMHS to reintegrate young people back into school and rebuild mental resilience and provide emotional wellbeing support.

Eikon had facilitated a number of Youth Clubs throughout Surrey Heath:

• The HUB Youth club based in Deepcut aimed to integrate military families with non-military families and worked with the army to support local community events.
• The Friday Night Project, based at the Arena Leisure Centre, aimed to provide a holistic approach to youth work, via a mixture of sport and more traditional youth work activities. The project aimed to gain attendees from hard to reach areas and provided a mini-bus service for young people from the Old Dean.
• Chobham Youth Club which was the only youth club for teenagers in the Chobham area.

Arising from the Members’ comments and questions the following points were noted:

• Eikon volunteers were specifically matched to volunteering assignments to ensure greater and success for the young people and the volunteer. It was common for university students and “young volunteers” to work with youth clubs where they had previously attended or had specific experience.
• Eikon aimed to create themed programmes and act in synergy with Youth Clubs across Surrey. In addition the charity worked collaboratively and with different partnership organisations within the Old Dean.
• Specific Youth workers were trained to provide mental health first aid if needed. Moreover when working within schools youth workers had the ability to feedback to school staff in confidence in regard to pupils’ mental wellbeing.
• Whilst it was likely that Surrey County Council (SCC) facilitated Youth work would experience funding cuts, it was recognised currently SCC only had 7 Youth and Community workers across Surrey. Eikon had the opportunity to extend and consolidate its niche; focussing on the fact that SCC youth work did not have a presence in schools.
• Outside schools, Eikon advertised their Youth Clubs and services via partnership working, such as with Accent and the Citizens Advice Bureau, social media and door to door leafletting.
• Unfortunately, whilst young people from the traveller community had previously attended Chobham Youth Club, it had been difficult to integrate the young people from the traveller and non-traveller communities. Any Eikon-facilitated Youth club aiming to engage the traveller community in the future would be run as a separate project.
• Eikon aimed for an equality of outcome for youth work throughout Surrey Heath and acknowledged specific groups and local communities would require extra resources to achieve this. Furthermore individual projects to engage with different groups of young people in the community lent itself to separate funding bids and allocations.