Tag Archives: youth services

• Cole-Hamilton: Youth work is key to tackling youth violence
• Cole-Hamilton to Swinney: Do the right thing and give Fornethy survivors access to Redress
• Wishart comments on energy report calling for delay to RTS switch off
• Cole-Hamilton calls for investment in concrete youth work after summit

Cole-Hamilton: Youth work is key to tackling youth violence

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and former youth worker Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today called for greater investment in youth work ahead of a summit on youth violence.

Later today, Alex will attend a cross-party summit hosted by the First Minister on tackling youth violence and knife crime.

It follows a recent spate of violent incidents involving young people across the country, including the murder of 16 year-old Kayden Moy on Irvine Beach.

Before entering politics, Alex was a youth worker. During that time, he worked with a range of vulnerable young people, including those who had grown up in the care system and children who had been trafficked to Scotland.

Commenting ahead of the summit, Mr Cole-Hamilton said:

For the best part of twenty years, I was a youth worker, helping some of the most disengaged young people get their lives back on track.

That experience taught me that no child is inherently bad. Most of the time, they are just in need of some direction, a need that has only been fuelled by the isolating impact of lockdown.

That’s where youth work comes in: it provides young people with the direction they need and gives them a positive adult role model who is neither a teacher nor a parent.

It teaches teenagers to come out of their comfort zone, helps them rebuild their sense of self-worth and fosters a whole host of key life skills.

Since the pandemic, however, the SNP have presided over the quiet death of youth work. Budgets have been squeezed, services have struggled to survive, just when we need them the most.

While acts of violence require a strong response, punishing predominantly law-abiding young people cannot be our broader solution. We need youth work to pre-empt and prevent those acts of violence, to properly engage young people in society and lay the foundations for them to succeed in life.

Cole-Hamilton to Swinney: Do the right thing and give Fornethy survivors access to Redress

Ahead of a members’ business debate in the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has urged John Swinney to do the right thing and grant the Fornethy House survivors access to the Redress compensation scheme.

The Scottish Government’s Redress Scheme pays out up to £100,000 and offers support to those abused in residential care.

More than 200 women have now come forward alleging that they were sexually, physically and mentally abused in the 1960s and 70s at Fornethy House- an all-girls residential school in Angus.