Should youth clubs (with a youth work ethic) charge young people for entry?

We charge young people 50p for coming to the youth club, if we didnt then we probably wouldnt be able to continue. I recieve no funding from the LA.

Whether or not we should charge is another matter!

You could say that young people might value more highly activities (or whatever)  they have to pay for than activities they get for free? I don't know if that is the case in practice or not.

I don't think there should be charges for young people just accessing a run of the mill youth centre, but I do think its reasonable to charge for specific activities and dedicated youth club nights such as 'the youth club' at a local community centre on a Friday night. Obviously it has to be at a cost appropriate for young people to afford and there needs to be flexibility for those that genuinely can't afford it.

I remember a girl coming along to a youth club and showing me her 'membership card' - I was a bit confused as we didn't issue membership cards. She'd actually made herself and her brother cards from cereal packets, complete with ID and photo. All very cute, except the reason she'd made them was because they had no money - her mum took literally every spare penny to the pub, so she hoped her cards would allow her and her brother to get in without paying - and they did!

I used to try and keep it discrete as to which young people got in without paying to lessen any stigma. I also used to quietly give some young people their money back when it turned out they'd paid to get in but couldn't afford to buy anything from the tuck shop. The money always ended up back in the tuck shop anyway!

 

We charge 50p per week to, or £5 per term.

As for whether we should? I don't think that can be dictated - but it is a great question.

We are not here to offer young people some kind of distorted view of reality. What other services are offered for free that are worth having? I can't really think of any except for school, and how cloesly do we want to be associated with that?

I am in a fortunate position where the money raised by our subs do not have to go towards paying staff or building costs, so the young people can tell us how they would like to spend it when we discuss the terms programme.

Peter Hart:

What other services are offered for free that are worth having? I can't really think of any except for school, and how cloesly do we want to be associated with that?

 

Museums, parks, buses (for some), swimming (for some)

I agree with your point though. I also think to some extent Charlotte's point is correct too that even though it's a dumb mentality people do generally attribute more value to things they pay for (I base that on the difference in attitudes between youth groups we used to offer free training to against when we charged them to attend). Where it has a positive effect on mentality is that sometimes if you do charge for activities staff maybe feel more conscious of needing to provide a good service to keep 'customers' happy. Not in line with how some like to think, but like it or not a fact of how society is.

Charlottes point is also backed up by my experience too! And not just with young people.

 You're right, there are other free things - Museums in particular - that are comparable. But again, I wonder to what extent young people value the free museums in there area? I wouldn't know, we don't have any here! The Baltic in GAteshead is probably our closest, and that's a fair trek away. 

That's part of Newcastle isnt it? ;-)

Some museums are brilliant now, lots are still very dull, but it's a good thing that most are now free. I doubt many are that widely used by young people though, usually more of a one off visit type thing isn't it.

A youth club is (or should be) a vehicle for delivering informal social education.    I think as long as we see the youth club merely as a place where young people pay to be entertained then we lose sight of our true aims and objectives.  The entry fee totally frustrates the whole process of youth engagement and can act as a barrier to youth inclusion and any barrier to youth inclusion should (if practicably possible) be removed.   

 

 

 From a practical perspective though I can see that if you use a building then there's a possibility that you will be charged rent.  There's not much you can do about that other than apply for funding or maybe make the owner of the building feel totally ashamed that they're charging you.

 

To some of the young people we target, £1 is the balance between having their cigs and cider or not having it.  And some of the young people placed in the choice dilemma of “fags or youthy” will invariably choose the fags.  Then they stand at the door of the youth club with empty pockets and I’m expected to wag my finger at their questionable decision-making skills and turn them away.  Who wins in this situation?  The kid at least gets his fags and booze but the reason for my funding is walking away.

Yeah the Baltic is in Newcastle, well gateshead if we're being absolutly correct :-) From previous experience and the areas that alot of us work in, deprived area's where young people and parents don't have the money to pay for these activities, 50p might not sound like alot but to a family who rely on state benifits it is. I agree with both ways if you chage money for an activity there may be a little more respect from young people, personally a project i used to work on combined 'fun activities' with project work. So 3 months work on graffittii project would be followed by a trip to the bowling alley (if that's fun).

Hi All,

 

We have been chewing this one over for a bit. We have a club that has traditionally charged 30p entry per night.

However, getting the money from the YP was always caused porblems between staff trying to get the money,

some YP paying, and some YP refusing to pay. We recently ran a trial of not charging and the atmosphere

at the start of the night has improved as we aren't pestering the YP as they come into the club.

 Also, the YP didnt directly see what they were getting for the money, we changed this around and used the money to

buy bread and things for making toast, and brew kit. This went down quite well with the YP, but we still struggled to get enough money to pay for the items. Another aspect of this is that the club is in a poor area and some YP just dont have the money.  It seems harsh to put them in a position where they may feel embaressed about not having the money.

 Thanks,

Iain

I am going to beg to differ with all the above three posts I think.

50p isn't a lot of money. It's not even the cost of a marsbar anymore. It wouldn't pay a concession fare into town. It might buy a packet of crisps. I understand that some young people will want to spend it on something else and setting priorities is part of becoming an adult. If some young people choose not to spend the evening as part of the club because of a small charge, how much did they want to be there to start off with? We are not about coercing people through the doors!

 I think there is a cost with providing a youth club. I think it is reasonable to ask the young people who benefit from the club to contribute. If they choose not to, they are prioritising something above the club and that is there perogative.

If finance really is such an issue could they contribute in some other way? Could they clean the rooms so the owners of the building wouldn't have to pay for it? 20 young people with a few brushes wouldn't take long at the end of an evening.

Sometimes I get concerned we are so focussed on words like 'barriers' and 'inclusion' we forget what we are ultimately aiming for - young people ready to be full, active, positive members of society. Charging on the door is not necessarialy a barrier to social education, it is part of it.

I see your point, i'm i'm not saying that we should't charge young people,

but as i said above to a family who have more than one child who are on benifits which 50p is alot,

maybe to them it's either put that 50p towards the childs evening at the youth club, or live without

electricity. It might sound a bit farfetched to me and you but (i'm suming) we're in well paid jobs and not

in their shoes. I would never expect young people who come along to tidy up at the end unless the young

people are directly in volved in the club, i.e a volunteer, kind of defeats the object of coming along and having fun to me.

 

It's a really interesting discussion and one that has been brought up at the youth club I volunteer in. In the end we have decided not to charge the young people for the services offered but instead provide a tuck shop and have got them involved in fundraising for the project. We had three different groups last year, each with a target of £250 (though we rounded this up to £300 so each term they had to aim to raise £100). By the summer all the groups had achieved their target and a couple exceeded it. The amount of money they exceeded it by was then left to each individual group to then decide how and what to spend it on. It worked really well though motivating the younger groups was a bit more difficult. We encouraged them to come up with ideas on how to raise the money and then supported them as they planned for the particular fundraising events. What has been fantastic is that the local parish council's contribution to the youth project is now smaller than the young peoples! It also means that the young people are taking ownership of their club and finding ways of investing in the work.

Peter Hart:

You're right, there are other free things - Museums in particular - that are comparable. But again, I wonder to what extent young people value the free museums in there area?

 

Bit off topic, but the Museum of Childhood is a fantastic resource for children (probably not young people) in Bethnal Green, I know many kids who go week after week - including my own. On the subject actually, children's centres in Hackney/ Tower Hamlets  are generally free although some make a small charge for the fruit/ snacks provided. Are children's centres and youth centres comparable? Both are trying to get people through the doors.