Community Service Volunteers, Streetgames UK and Muscular Dystrophy Campaign are shortlisted in the Children and Youth category for the Charity Awards 2010.

Community Service Volunteers – Volunteers in
Child Protection project

Matching volunteers to families with children at risk of harm

Volunteers in Child Protection, a project run in partnership with Children’s Social Services, matches volunteers to families with children that are suffering from neglect and are at risk of serious harm. The volunteers support the families to address their problems, turning chaotic, dysfunctional homes into stable and safe environments.

After Victoria Climbie’s death and the subsequent public inquiry, Lord Laming’s report concluded that early intervention helps families deal with potential crises and can avert more serious interventions later, and that the community has a role to play in safeguarding children.

Soon afterward, CSV executive director Dame Elisabeth Hoodless heard about a scheme in California that matched families in crisis with volunteers – a pioneering concept never before tried in the UK.

While many challenged whether volunteers could or should
be involved with families in such complex circumstances, and doubted the viability of the scheme, Hoodless was determined to give it a go, and personally led its initial phase. She convinced a major trust to fund a three-pilot in two local authorities and this was a “resounding success”. An independent evaluation showed that children were coming off and staying off the child protection register, improving families’ lives and saving local authorities money.

ViCP projects are now run in five local authority areas, with 136 volunteers supporting 130 families and 400 kids. To date there has been a 100 per cent success rate – all the children that have had volunteer support have come off the child protection register and not returned. The scheme is
inundated with volunteers and CSV has just secured a new three-year grant to enable its rollout in ten more local authority areas.

Muscular Dystrophy Campaign

Trailblazers – campaigning for equal rights for disabled people

Research has shown that young adults with neuromuscular conditions have fewer opportunities in society. Education, employment, transport, tourism and leisure providers continue to discriminate against disabled people, and young adults with muscular dystrophy often have little access to
engaging and fulfilling activities when they leave school and enter adult life.

So in 2008 the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign set up Trailblazers, the first national grassroots network of young disabled people who identify and campaign on relevant issues.

It secured a £250,000 three-year grant from v and devised a UK-wide strategy and framework. After 18 months, more than 200 young people with muscle disease are actively participating in the project, already exceeding the target of 100 by the end of year three.

To date, Trailblazers campaigners have carried out three national and sometimes undercover investigations into the state of services for young disabled people on public transport, higher education and leisure facilities.

The reports from all three have been very well received, and as a result of one the Department of Transport has launched a consultation on fining transport providers who fail to ensure wheelchair-users can access the designated space on a vehicle.

As well as getting their issues heard, Trailblazers has also enabled the bringing together of over 200 young people to create a community, removing much of the isolation felt
by disabled youngsters.

Streetgames UK

Engaging young people in sport to change lives and communities

After a DCMS survey revealed the unhappy figure that just 25 per cent of 16 to 19-year-olds in poverty are coached in a sporting activity, compared with half of all youngsters in
prosperity, a small group of committed professionals left public sector jobs to set up the Streetgames charity.

Streetgames works with young people in disadvantaged
neighbourhoods to change lives and communities through sport. It is about “taking sport to people, not making
people come to sport”. Activities are tailored to local facilities and young people’s desires – athletics or five-aside
football on a housing estate park, or Streetcheer, a new discipline of cheerleading that has been developed with the UK Cheerleading Association, in a community hall.

Since its launch three years ago with a National Lottery grant of £1.05m, Streetgames has “taken sport to the doorstep” of 110 disadvantaged communities, generating a million attendances at 23,000 sessions for 97,000 youngsters. It has also recruited 3,000 volunteers who develop leadership skills by delivering sport to other young people.

The charity says it provides participants with social and health benefits, creates a sense of belonging and pride in their communities, and teaches leadership skills to those that go on to become volunteers.

Since the initial Lottery grant the charity has attracted funding from the Co-operative Group, v, the Football
Premier League and even community development and worklessness groups, who don’t usually fund
sporting activities.