Business as usual through challenging times...

YMCA Bellshill & Mossend defunding by North Lanarkshire Council CONFIRMED

Despite the outpouring of support from our community and service users, the decision was taken by North Lanarkshire Council today to defund the YMCA Bellshill & Mossend. The Board and Staff Team are devastated at this decision which sees our highly valued youth work service decimated and many young people left without the much needed support.

All councillors were made aware of the public outcry, highlighting our petition with over 1290 signatures and were sent an opposition paper. However, many councillors didn’t listen and voted to take away the funding today - including one of our local councillors, Cllr Campbell.

The YMCA would like to thank those who listened and in particular to Cllr Larson and her colleagues for speaking in our favour, urging the council to reconsider today.

The YMCA are particularly concerned about the comments made in the meeting by the council leader, Cllr Logue and the organisation have written a public letter to Cllr Logue to seek clarity on his comments.

This letter can be viewed here:

Letter to Cllr Logue

.docx

Download DOCX • 55KB

Sadly, without the funding, the future of the YMCA Bellshill and Mossend hangs in the balance. The Board will be meeting next week to discuss next steps and make very tough decisions on the future of the organisation.

Once again we want to thank everyone who has supported us, please continue to champion our cause by sharing on social media and making your thoughts known to your local councillors. We hope that despite this huge setback we can continue to help and support the community in Bellshill and wider North Lanarkshire moving forward.

Bellshill & Mossend YMCA campaign to save their services from defunding from NLC

YMCA Bellshill and Mossend’s Board and Staff have been left in shock by the

recent publication of a proposal by North Lanarkshire Council’s Education, Children and Families Committee to withdraw essential funding for their Early and Effective Intervention youth work program

The funding, which has been in place for over 12 years, has supported hundreds of young people across North Lanarkshire to realise their potential and move towards positive destinations through one to one mentoring with a positive role model The Bellshill and Mossend YMCA is well known and loved locally, not only for our Youth Work service but also our Childcare service, community uniform and food bank and most recently a warm space café to fight the Cost of Living The recommendation to defund the organisation by the Council places the entire future of the organisation in jeopardy with potential closure of the much-used community building, loss of essential services and associated job losses This proposal will be discussed at a meeting of the committee on the 28th February and could mean the funding is withdrawn as soon as the end of April 2023 This will be a devastating loss for an organisation who have been at the heart of the community for over 100 years and the YMCA Bellshill & Mossend Board of Directors have written to all North Lanarkshire Councillors to urge them to not take this decision