Purpose

Stockwell Community Resource Centre was opened in May 2001. It was built by Hyde Southbank Homes, a member of the Hyde Group. Hyde has remained one of SCRC’s main funders ever since.

The centre had, and still has, two overarching purposes:

-    to provide activities and a meeting place for local people, especially around recreation, leisure and healthy living – before the centre was build, there had been little or nothing by way of community facilities;

-    to respond to the fact that Stockwell had, and still has, a large number of residents without a job, qualifications, or the means to communicate effectively in English, and seek to become a provider of training and employment support to local residents unable, or without the confidence, to go larger providers.

When the centre first opened, it was still managed by Hyde. Hyde relied on external organisations to deliver services. The training, or adult learning, and employment support was funded until the programme ended in March 2004 by the government funded Central Stockwell Single Regeneration Budget. Much of the rest of the centre’s  own programme was, and still is, funded by way of organisations hiring it for their own purposes, provided they are in line with the centre’s own.

SCRC became a charity in 2003 and by the end of the SRB had taken over the whole of the centre’s adult learning, training and employment support work. Under the European funded Urban II programme, SCRC tried in 2004/5 to extend the building to meet demand for space and generate additional income. Planning permission was approved but not the funding needed to go ahead. This failure forced SCRC to expand outside the building rather than on site.

Adult Learning and Employment Support

The bedrock of SCRC’s direct delivery soon became its relationship with Lambeth’s Adult Learning Service (LAL). In 2010 SCRC won its third delivery contract with LAL, the first two for 3 years and the third for 4. The number of learners grew each year, a total of……. in the 2009/10 academic year. The curriculum was also being regularly expanded, initially involving basic ESOL (English for Learners of Other Languages) and I.T. By 2009/10 it included accredited ESOL and I.T. courses at several levels, plus literacy, numeracy and introduction to childcare. Equally important, by the academic year 2007/8 all SCRC’s tutors were fully qualified, with the Government’s Adult Learning Inspectorate treating it in par with Lambeth College and such other institutions

Expanding the centre out meant delivering courses at other community locations in Lambeth. By 2009/10 it had delivered at a total of 11 locations, including Lambeth’s showcase Green Man skills zone in Loughborough Junction.

Funding employment support was more complex an for adult learning. LINX was funded through a European Programme, Urban II. It involved a cross-sector partnership with 12 other organisations and delivery at six community locations in the Stockwell and Larkhall wards of Lambeth. It provided 1 to 1 support to job seekers. Between the autumns of 2005 and 2008 it helped 80 local people into work and provided support to another 300.

LINX was followed by GLOBE, largely the same as for LINX but targeting only Hyde residents. It was managed by Hyde Plus, the Hyde Group’s community development arm, and had a partner organisation delivering the same service in Greenwich. For Stockwell’s non-Hyde residents, SCRC brought in Prospects, a nationwide employment support agency, to provide a similar though not intensive service.

By then adult learning and employment support had become SCRC’s main “products”. Supporting them:
-    between the three years (2006/9) of Lambeth’s involvement in Personal Best, a course designed around volunteering and the Olympic Games,  SCRC was the main Lambeth provider;
-    it ran a project in early 2010 which helped 93 local people with motivation and confidence building, which led to 8 people into work;
-    it co-founded the Lambeth Employment and Training Providers’ Network;
-    it was the only voluntary sector partner in the Institute of Public Policy Research’s study of Personal Advisors who help people into employment and training.

Children and Childcare 

The centre was designed to include a purpose build creche. By being located in the middle of the building, it was ideally positioned to serve both SCRC’s training and employment, and recreation and leisure purposes, even though funded at the outset for only the former.

Creches are extremely expensive to run because of the number of childcare workers needed, and for a time under the SRB SCRC’s creche had had to be closed because the funding had come to an end. From 2004 to 2007 the creche was used as Larkhall Sure Start’s “children’s centre”. Sure Start ran the activities which were later switched to primary schools with the transfer of responsibility for the services being provided from health to local authorities.

During the Sure Start days, Sure Start paid for the staff running the creche. This enabled SCRC to provide free childcare to learners attending SCRC’s courses. For two years after the switch to children’s centres, Lambeth Early Years continued, after a struggle, to pay for the creche because of its importance to learners, with nearly 100 learners and their children benefitting each year. In 2009/10, Lambeth refused and thus the creche was very seldom used as such other than for the after school club and holiday play scheme.

Springfield Community Flat (SCF) was the original creche provider until the creche was closed under the SRB. Soon after the centre opened, SCF also started an after school club using the creche which converted in the holidays to a holiday play scheme. In 2010 SCF tested a breakfast club and the re-opening the creche.

Over the yeasr there have been a range of other activities for young people, some lasting for a short time and others for much longer. They have included mask making, block board printing, ceramics, video courses and anti-gun crime initiatives. On going activities have been:
-    a performance club
-    Portuguese classes
-    teak won do and karate (the first young person to enrol for karate when the centre first introduced karate was 6, the youngest age the sport permits. By 11 he was a Black Belt).

Older People

At the outset, the SRB funded Age Concern to run activities at the centre for older people, and based a worker there. The worker was not replaced in 2003 when he left and Age Concern stopped funding any activities by 2006. Hyde and SCRC supported a sequence class and a art class until 2009, when the sequence class disbanded and the art class relocated, by then most of its members now living outside Stockwell. SCRC introduced five years ago an internet for elders course which has continued successfully since then. 

Advice and Support

Once legally established, SCRC started fundraising for a benefits advice project but had to stop when the Stockwell Partnership included an advice post in the Urban II programme. It has always provided a location for Kate Hoey MPs bi-monthly surgeries and for local counsellors.

There have been other forms of advice and support provision of the years, including legal advice, benefits advice for Portuguese, carers group, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Mediation Service, No Smoking advice and family support groups. 

Groups Using SCRC

In the early summer of 2010, 51 groups and organisations were using the centre regularly .