BY JOHN JACKLIN
THIS year is on course to be a year of change for a charity in Henley that can lay claim to being the town’s original well-being group after 170 years of championing the welfare of young people.
Following a change of leadership last year Henley YMCA is joining forces with other members of the association in neighbouring counties under the banner One YMCA to help it take a more expansive role in the community.
The site, in Lawson Road on the west side of town and called by one member of staff a hidden gem, has plans afoot to update its pavilion, build a new residents’ lounge and to create a well-being woodland walk, community vegetable patch and areas of seating in its green spaces.
Louise Colam, the Community Engagement co-ordinator at the Henley YMCA says: “It is one of the oldest and largest charities in the world, the YMCA, so it’s a huge concern both worldwide and in Henley. It was established in the town in 1857 and is the only one in Oxfordshire.”
George Williams, who had left Somerset for London to learn drapery, founded the YMCA in 1844. Williams held prayer meetings and Bible studies in his lodgings with other young drapery assistants who shared a Christian faith. The group grew to help all young men, regardless of faith, who were alone and lonely in the City of London. “With this in mind they decided that the organisation should take the inclusive name of the Young Men’s Christian Association and not the more restrictive Young Christian Men’s Association. This principle of inclusion remains central to the philosophy of the YMCA’s work,” the group says.
‘It is one of the oldest and largest charities in the world, established in the town in 1857 and is the only one in Oxfordshire’
Some of the 31 self contained flats at Henley YMCA in Lawsons Road.
Louise, who lives with husband Stuart and their three children in Paradise Road, Henley, says: “It was essentially a Bible study group when teenagers were working in factories, with possibly no hope and no prospects and so that’s where it was birthed from. It was set up in Henley only 13 years later and it became more than just a Bible study group. They started to aim to develop every young person in mind, body and spirit.
“So, it was a kind of the earliest, if you like, well-being hub. You know, what we would call a well-being hub was the YMCA then — and now. It’s kind of the original thing. It grew from that to being a place where people, particularly the homeless, could find a safe place to stay. We have 31 self-contained affordable and supported flats here in Henley where young people between the ages of 18 and 30 can come. And it’s not just young men, it’s young women too. In fact it is everybody and anybody and I think that’s the positive way that the YMCA has grown. It’s so inclusive but there is still a Christian ethos that runs through its core.
She adds: “There is support to help people if they don’t have work and they don’t have the funding to move into their own property, we help them make sure that they can apply for the right benefits and then we help them on a journey to things like work, independent housing and including their well-being and their spiritual growth as well as those practical things.
“We do a gardening club, we’ve got a really great relationship with Christians Against Poverty. They do a lot of debt coaching but they also run courses. So, they run a life skills course and they run a job club where lots of our residents will access those courses which are free. They are free for the whole community, too, but because of our relationship with Cap we do get some of our residents on that. We also have a football field maintained by Henley United and a five-a-side pitch used by the only disability football group in Henley.”
‘They run a life skills course and a job club where lots of our residents will access those courses which are free’
By October last year the YMCA, which hosts classes such as yoga, pilates, seated exercise, veterans table tennis, dance classes and a community larder for the Henley community, had “helped ten young people into independent accommodation and nine into work”. “The three things we try to do is opportunity to belong, contribute and thrive.”
In December the YMCA helped a teenager who had moved from the Midlands. “They were sharing a room with somebody who had significant mental health problems. They’d moved from Birmingham and just needed a safe place of their own. So we were able to offer a room, a safe space here. We take
care leavers, so 18-year-olds who have been in care and at 18 they no longer have that space. We sometimes hear from the local authority about people who are looking for a safe place.”
Although Henley is viewed as an affluent town, it’s wrong to think that people don’t need services that the YMCA offers, Louise says. “There are people in every location where actually home doesn’t feel a very safe place and over the last couple of years here in Henley, I’ve spoken to young people who are living in fear at home.
“One young lady I spoke to was living in her car because she didn’t want to live at home and in those situations you go ‘actually there is a YMCA here in Henley’. The more people that know we are here, then the more people locally we can help get back on their feet.
“We have some very generous contributors locally who help us to run certain projects but the larger things like the housing costs and the maintenance, we rely on rental, you know, the people pay rent to live here but … we are quite cheap in comparison to others.”
Part of the YMCA’s remit is akin to after care. “We do have targets in terms of helping people into independent accommodation. We obviously don’t want to release anybody into homelessness. We want people to go into independent living from here.
Five-a-side football pitch and full-size grass pitch also used for
other community events.
“So, we keep tabs on their progress, my colleague is just collating an operations report all about how many people we have helped through courses. So, we try to measure our impact by keeping track of what support we’ve offered. We can keep tabs on how many of our tenants have engaged with local support, how many of them get jobs and then how many move on to independent housing.”
‘There’s an understanding that actually the YMCA is here
for everybody, men and women’… ‘Our heart is to serve
our local community’
Louise adds: “We’ve had quite a lot of standout success stories. So I was working as a social prescriber before working here full-time and at the time I knew there were places at the YMCA and I’d had a conversation with this one young man. He is autistic, in his twenties, and had to leave his home because of an abusive relationship with his father, so he fled that home and ended up moving in with his sister and then ended up moving in here at the YMCA.
“He joined the gardening group and he then also went on a life skills course through Christians Against Poverty and the Job Club and then he got a job at the town council parks and he now holds that job and he’s just really, really loved working here and he is always happy to contribute. He will often mow our lawns for us or help out in other ways. So, that’s a really great success.
“There was a young guy that moved in here after leaving the care system and really struggled with his mental health for a long time but through support here, counselling and Charlotte, our housing manager, who supported him with form filling in and help with different things that he needed to do, his mental health improved.
“He got a job, did very well there and he has moved out with a girlfriend to Swindon. So, he’s living independently. There are lots of stories like that and I think people just aren’t aware that the need is there like it is.”
Louise does not envisage a name change for the YMCA to something along the lines of Young Persons Christian Association. “I see what you mean, but because YMCA is such a well-established charity, a well-established name, a well-established brand, there’s an understanding that actually the YMCA is here for everybody, men and women. Here at Henley we’ve got half and half, half guys and half girls living. And that’s a good thing.”
She adds: “Our heart is to serve our local community.”
www.henleyymca.org.uk