The Blandford Youth and Community Centre is a Charity run organisation, run and supported by a great board of Trustees.

We are currently running 4 evenings a week as well as doing outreach within the Blandford area.

We strive to be a one stop shop of advice information, resources and support for young people and the wider community. We strive to provide a safe place for young people to socialise with their friends, use our facilities and take part in arts, crafts, sports, gaming, activities, and open discussions in worldwide issues and age-related issues whilst providing support in relationships, education, families, mental health, bereavement, addiction, bullying, sexual health, puberty and exam pressures to help support them to make informed decisions.
We do this with the help and support of qualified paid workers, volunteer staff and young volunteers to a ratio of 1-20.

Our staff consists of paid staff and volunteer staff to a ratio of 1-20. We run every session with at least one Level 3 youth worker, at least 2 level 2 assistants and a team of our young volunteers.
All our adult staff are trained in different areas such as, bereavement, autism, drugs and alcohol, mental health, benefits advising and safeguarding as well as being DBS cleared. We have staff who are registered with the NHS through c card training and sexual health training to advise young people on sexual health and if they are ready for a consensual respectful relationship, they can provide an assessment for free condoms and provide pregnancy tests and advice.    
   
We could not provide what we do without the help and support of our young volunteers they take part in the young volunteer programme that we run. This is where we take year 10 students through an interview and training process so they can help us run our sessions. Our Young volunteers are trained in safeguarding, participation and health and safety. This provides them work with transferrable skills such as stock rotation, till skills, conflict resolution, organisation skills and being part of a team. They all achieve a Dorset award, (this year Matt Prosser from Dorset council came and handed out the certificates) and the opportunity to take part in additional training and awards. This is great for their CVs and college applications They greatly support out younger people, they help mentor them, they run great activities outdoors and in as well as run activities for open discussions, related to topical events, age-appropriate issues, world issues and discuss events currently happening in the news. The younger people can really relate to them, and the young volunteers really support them in building their confidence and discussing those harder to talk about issues. We took some of our Young Volunteers to Carey Camp in the summer as a thank you for their hard work. We went indoor pot holing’ fire making, participated in team games and canoeing.

To be able to provide the help and support that we do it is also very important to us that we work as part of a team. Some of the people we are very lucky to currently be working in partnership with are The Blandford School, other local schools in the area, Families, Police, North Dorset Locality and the NHS this allows us to fully support Families and share information when needed.

We are also very lucky to work in partnership with the Williams Williams charity  which allows us to run our community wardrobe project they support us by donating vouchers for clothing and school uniform, which recently helped a young person return to school who was not attending due to them not having a uniform.
We also provide food parcels provided by the food bank, as unlike them and the children’s centre we are open in the evenings, which gives those families who work during the day but need this support, the opportunity to use it.
We have also recently joined up with the Community Fridge, who have a fridge at the Blandford youth and community centre filled with unwanted food donated by Tesco allowing anyone to come and receive free extra food to whilst helping fight the waste of food.

We want to thank our Chair Julie Newall and our Trustee Board all those we partnership with and everyone that donates their time and money to us.
We really cannot do this without you.

We are always looking to build our support team and build relationships so please get in contact if you feel we could be working with you.