The work on the estate was started by Ben Holloway, who was the Director of OYW at the time, towards the end of 2005 as he drew together Churches and Christians either linked to or living on the estate to talk and pray together.

Early in 2006, Ian Watkins, who had been working part-time on the youth work went full-time and realised a dream he had to work on the Barton Estate.  Ian had started his youth work with Barton lads over 30 years ago and had continued to work with them during this period.  Ian now found himself working with the children of some of his original young people!!

The initial period went well, Ian felt “carried along” by prayer and things like meeting up with the local MP without any difficulty at all, it “just happened” in the first week.

OYW was well received by everyone at the Neighbourhood Centre and we were soon working closely together with the other professionals on the estate to deliver quality Youth Work.

There was only one other person working with the young people of the estate at the time we started and he was funded by the Youth Offending Team and Ian commenced as a volunteer initially with them as his “way in”.  Before long the YOT was also paying Ian and after a few months OYW went it alone starting to run their own sessions on different evenings with volunteers and CYM students. By the end of 12 months we were running 2 evening sessions after school and Saturday sports with volunteers from 2 local Churches. We were also running holiday clubs, had done day trips and a Christmas party.

Ian continues:

The above paragraph might give the wrong impression, if it looks like the first 12 months was easy it would be a lie, they were very hard.  Barton doesn’t take kindly to strangers and I was a stranger at first.  Barton can be a very suspicious place and my own confidence backfired on me.  I would walk up to gangs on my own and talk to young people, and ask questions.  At the time my hair was very short and I wear a lot of black clothes. Before long there was a rumour that the new guy was a “Fed” or policeman working under cover and as a result some of the older ones got very hostile towards me.  I grew my hair and started to wear trackies instead of my usual clothes, I didn’t behave so confidently as it freaked them out.  Some of the older ones I’d known for time spoke up for me saying I was “safe” but still some treated me with suspicion.

A turning point came when one of the young people died of meningitis and I was asked to speak at her funeral.  When I got up to speak at the funeral half the estate was there. As I spoke somehow I got the balance right about her good and bad points (I was very honest) making everyone including her family laugh at times but it was clear I knew her well and cared about her a lot.  Since that day I have been much more widely known and accepted on the estate with even the hard core older young people opening up to me.

There was another key to positive change and that was our behaviour policy.  We had experimented with a number of different approaches/policies but nothing seemed to work.  It should be noted that at the time it was a bit like the “Wild West” according to the Community Centre Manager. I had put a lot of thought in to different ways of trying to keep sense of order and provide a safe place for the young people and co workers, but nothing seemed to work.

I was very despondent and the young people had made it almost impossible for us for 9 months when I had an idea.  The idea was very simple, one rule, No One Gets Stressed and if anyone does we all leave and the session is over.  We started it straight away and haven’t looked back.  I was amazed, it was 3 weeks before I had to use the second part of the rule and we ended the session and all left.  The young people knew we meant business and group pressure came in to play.  The policy has served us well and we have had a fraction of the problems we once had.  The same Centre Manager that described Barton as the Wild West now says things have settled down and are a lot more orderly, he attributes much of the change to OYW, its commitment to the young people and the quality of our work.  We recently worked together with the Youth Service to provide a holiday drop-in and they adopted the above policy for the duration of the drop-in.

We are currently running 2 drop-in sessions a week after school and we are mentoring a small number of young people as well, some we resource ourselves and some is paid for by the Youth Offending Service.  We also go in to the local school twice a week where we have a very close working relationship with staff. We have run sessions just for girls and also sessions for different age groups.  We have run holiday drop-ins  ourselves and also done them with the Youth Service 

We also run a project on the estate called eXTC or Excluded Time Club. At eXTC we take a small group of young people off the estate for a few hours on a day that they are excluded from school and we do something with them that takes some effort on their part e.g. homework from school. We also do something that is fun e.g. a KFC.  One young person was excluded for over 12 months as he had threatened to stab members of staff and he later handed them a knife. We supported him right through his exclusion and then helped him when he started at a new school going in to lessons with him for the first 6 weeks.

We have partnered with the Youth Service, Youth Offending Service and several local Churches.  We worked very closely with 2 local Churches on a Saturday sports session every week.  And this session has now been taken on by one of the Churches; this is both a positive and a negative. It is a positive because we have provided training and a whole range of support to the church and they now feel confident to carry on the work without OYW. It is also a negative in as much as we would have liked to continue working as partners but as there are only 3 workers, Ian Watkins and two CYM students (Hannah and Christina), plus some volunteers, it just hasn’t been possible to continue doing the Saturdays as well.

The drop-in sessions we run attract up to 20 young people at a time and as there are often only 2 or 3 team members (plus volunteers) that is plenty.  At any given time we are working closely with around 12, there are then about 50 we have a good relationship with but we see less frequently and then a similar number again that we only work with occasionally.

Resourcing Barton has been a big issue; we have done extremely well in our first 3 years with little more than £1,000 per year in the Barton budget to play with.  Salaries for Barton currently come out of general funds; hardly any money has been given specifically for Barton. I only mention this because I am not content with what has been accomplished; we certainly could have done much more with better resourcing.

Key to the work is involvement from local Christians living in and around Barton. There are opportunities to get involved in the work, if this interests you then please email Ian at ianwatkins@oxfordyouthworks.co.uk