AS LOCAL-AUTHORITY finances reach breaking point in many areas and school exclusions rise sharply, redundant public properties should be repurposed as “villages” hosting charities that can intervene, the founder of the charity Oasis, the Revd Steve Chalke, has suggested.
Launching the second Oasis Village at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on Monday, Mr Chalke suggested that the model could be rolled out across the country.
“The voice of the greatest social asset: local people — mums, dads, families, other community members and groups — is too often ignored,” he said. “The very people the ‘systems’ are set up to help end up unheard and alienated from them. An Oasis Village is all about working with local people and empowering them to get the job done. Nothing else will work, however many noughts there are at the end of the budget.”
Oasis Village Wirral is to open next April on the site of the Solar Campus, a council-owned set of buildings in Wallasey. Wirral council approached Oasis after learning about Oasis St Martin’s Village in Tulse Hill, south London. Launched last year, it offers mentoring and therapeutic care to young people struggling with or absent from mainstream education and their families (Features, 27 September 2024). The building was previously home to the St Martin-in-the-Fields High School for Girls, established in 1699, but now closed owing to low pupil numbers.
A partnership between the St Martin-in-the-Fields Foundation, the local authority, and Oasis, the Village now hosted 15 local charities working “in an integrated way”, Mr Chalke said. “We have been able to keep it up and running for a whole year and go into a new academic year with real confidence.”
In Wallasey, there are plans for the council’s youth-justice team to be based on the Village site to work alongside the various local charities that will participate. “For little, local charities, one minute it’s feast and one minute famine,” Mr Chalke said. “The average grant lasts eight months.” As a larger, sustainable charity — with an income of £335 million last year — Oasis provided “space” and “support” for such charities. “They know the community and the kids and the issues. . . But we are working behind them to empower them.”
Oasis hopes to have five Villages by the end of this Parliament, to complement the 50 “Young Futures Hubs” the Government has pledged to roll out to “bring together vital community-focused services under one roof to help teenagers who face being dragged into violence and at risk of mental health challenges”. Eight of these hubs are due to open this year in areas with high levels of knife crime and anti-social behaviour, with a £2-million investment.
Recent years have brought a significant rise in the number of school suspensions and exclusions in England, the highest level since 2006. Last year, there were 954,952 suspensions and 10,885 exclusions. Numbers are highest among vulnerable children and those from deprived backgrounds.
In June, a new report from the Public Accounts Committee warned that hundreds of councils were in a “financially precarious position”. Councils are spending more on late intervention in children’s social-care services (£12.1 billion last year), while the amount invested in early support (£2.8 billion) has gone down at the same time as there are more children entering the care system. In January, Wirral Council requested a £40-million bailout loan from the Government to avoid bankruptcy.
On Monday, Mr Chalke said that funding would be transferred to the Wirral Village by schools that referred pupils to it. Schools would thus be able to demonstrate that they were “doing everything they can to ensure that child’s potential develops”. The council was putting in some “seed capital”.
It made sense to lease redundant council properties to Villages rather than sell them, he said. “Once an asset is gone, it is gone.” The lease model meant, “you still have the asset, it’s not deteriorating and you are getting service out of it at same time.”
Oasis is currently developing a manual to guide other local authorities through the Village process.