Rochdale Connections Trust and Restoring Hope Heywood receive BASA Outstanding Community Partnership Award

Local charities Rochdale Connections Trust and Restoring Hope Heywood have been jointly awarded an accolade for their collaborative work with young people on the Darnhill estate in Heywood.

The charities received the Outstanding Community Partnership Award 2022 from BASA, the Bangladeshi Arts and Sports Association, at an awards ceremony at the Norton Grange Hotel, on Sunday (4 December).

The award was presented by GMP’s Rochdale District Commander, Nicky Porter and the Mayor of Rochdale Ali Ahmed.

Since April, the two organisations have worked together to develop an appropriate response to anti-social behaviour and low-level criminality issues regarding young people in the area.

Jenny Kennedy from Restoring Hope has helped to identify young people who would benefit from supportive interventions and positive free time activities and guided them to the services provided by RCT’s youth workers.

In addition, parents have been provided with additional support to deal with the challenges that they face.

RCT operated a weekly youth group from offices located in the parade of shops in the heart of the estate, led by their youth worker, Jennie Davies.

They have engaged 25 young people who were previously causing problems or were just hanging about and provide an array of different activities for them to get involved with.

This has included regular boxing and training sessions, regulating emotions, creative therapeutic art sessions, sampling golf, community focused activities that have included gardening, helping to renovate and paint planters etc in readiness for the Heywood in Bloom judging day, a graffiti project on the shutters of the #Thrive building and fundraising at community events.

Other services such as Early Break have been brought in to educate around the use of drugs, alcohol and substances. There was also a performance of Crossing the Lines that the young people and their parents/carers attended, which is concerned with educating young people about county lines and tactics that are used to recruit young people. This took place at the library in early November with over 60 attendees.

Bev Place, deputy CEO at RCT, said: “We knew that this intervention was desperately needed.

“Young people on the estate had no aspirations and could only foresee a future where criminality would play a role in their lives. By bringing together key figures in the community including Jenny Kennedy from Restoring Hope and Councillor Angela Brown we were able to harness the shared passion for better for these young people and work together to make this happen.

“Receiving the BASA Outstanding Community Partnership Award has assured us that our efforts are being recognised and that we can realise change by operating as a collective.

“We would like to say a huge thank you to BASA for the wonderful awards event that they hosted this year at The Norton Grange Hotel.”

Jenny Kennedy, of Restoring Hope, added: “I see how much our youth on Darnhill need and RCT offers services that can meet some very sensitive needs. Having experienced their services over many years, I often meet with them to discuss issues on Darnhill; I am never disappointed.

“RCT has offered a wide range of opportunities and I am pleased they are open enough to talk and look how they can support Darnhill. I have seen so much change in young people who have engaged with RCT. Also parents and adults on Darnhill are engaging in various sessions run by RCT.

“I am very impressed with their work and the impact it has had on our community. We are working hard to see a community that has felt abandoned in the past now growing in strength and having a strong voice to be a community with pride and ambitions.”