'Sleepless nights' and worry for Mansfield youth organisation as demand soars
The founders of a Mansfield youth organisation says he is having sleepless nights and worrying they cannot meet the needs of hundreds of young people in need of support.
Marcellus Baz BEM, the founder of Switch Up and the Nottingham & Mansfield Schools of Boxing says he’s had 75 referrals in Mansfield alone, on top of a further 61 in Nottingham.
Referrals have been coming in from council social care services, the county’s violence reduction unit, and schools amid significant cuts to public services.
Baz said: “We’ve always been getting referrals.
“But we are really concerned at the minute because the referral numbers have really shot up since the council cuts.
“I’m having sleepless nights, I’m having trouble with trying to find support for people who really, really need it.”
Labour-run Nottingham City Council recently slashed Baz’s area-based grant funding by £30,000, as part of its latest round of budget cuts approved in March.
Back in March, the authority said: “The council’s financial reserves have been impacted by decisions it has made in the past and this has affected our financial resilience,
“However, since 2013-14, the council’s revenue support grant (RSG) from Government has reduced by nearly £100m every year.”
Baz says years of cuts to youth services and other public services have left him with more referrals than he’s had since founding Switch Up 11 years ago.
He continued: “We always knew we were going to get impacted by the council cuts, with front line services being cut, community centres and youth services being cut.
“My ultimate concern is there are going to be young people, their families, that are not being supported and not getting the help they need.
"There are going to be consequences.”
Baz went on to explain he does not think his current Nottingham base in Woodborough Road, St Ann’s, will survive another winter due to its ‘uninhabitable’ condition.
The organisation is now seeking another home on land owned by the city council in St Ann’s.
Proposals for the new facility are expected to cost around £4m.
However Baz’s head coach, Barney Hussain, says they are hundreds of thousands of pounds off its target to raise £500,000.
In its manifesto, Labour pledged to boost youth services and mental health support.
Responding to a spate of bankruptcies in local councils, Jim McMahon MP (Lab), Levelling Up, Housing and Communities minister, said: “Yes, we do need to address it.
“We’re committed to ensuring that councils have the resources they need to provide decent public services to their communities.
“Our councils do a wonderful job but they’ve had to deal with very significant budget pressures, and that’s adult social care demand, it’s children’s services and of course, it’s temporary accommodation.
“We need to get ahead of what’s actually causing that demands.
"Fixing the wider system is really important, because in the end, a lot of pressure that brought to councils is because they’re the last line of defence.
"But it’s a whole system that needs to be repaired.”
In a message to the new Labour Government, Baz added: “Please provide resources and funding to front line services, replenish public services and help us to be able to have environments, buildings, youth services, youth hubs, community centres, because we need them.”