Posted Saturday 12 April 2008
Possilpark’s St Matthew’s Centre has a struggle for survival on its hands. Rev David Wostenholm explains why.
For well over 20 years, St Matthew’s Possilpark has pioneered engagement with its local community with a particular focus on those attempting recovery from addiction and on those caught in the severe deprivation of the area.
We have responded to need in various ways, involving many people - paid and voluntary - and have had substantial grant funding for the projects we have initiated and encouraged through the years.
However, since Addaction Scotland and the Scottish Churches Community Trust moved to new premises, the regeneration funding on which our hosting of these groups depended, was withdrawn on 31 March.
What remains? And will these bones live?
Long-established AA groups still meet each weekday evening and a new group has opened on Thursday afternoons. St Vincent de Paul Society still provides over 50 hot meals every Sunday for those in greatest need in our area. We host other activity groups through the week.
Unfortunately, this support does not meet the criteria that can attract funding apportioned by Glasgow City Council through its Community Planning Partnerships. Had it not been for a six-month cash lifeline from our diocese, our present work would have had to close at the end of March.
Although a council priority is supposed to be ‘employability’, we have had to make our two caretakers redundant (in common with many other city-wide projects that have fallen foul of a 20% cut).
With the Voluntary Sector Network for North Glasgow, we feel that the consultation process over priorities has been less than helpful or transparent. We feel firmly placed at the bottom of the pile.
As the future appears so bleak and fragmented for many youngsters, so unsafe for older people and so pressured for those in work, one might have thought that those in control of the purse strings would have been able to take a long view on established centres that contribute to community cohesion.
Our experience is bitterly the opposite.
Where we have knowledge and experience of the family, gang, sectarian and drug -fuelled enmities that militate daily against any form of healthy living or progress, in an area shamed by some of the worst indices of morbidity in Europe, we are constantly distracted by having to respond to the latest – albeit mostly well-intentioned – bureaucracy to theme and programme our funding.
In this confusion many good projects go to the wall, but here at St Matthew’s you can be sure that we are pursuing all opportunities to continue our work.
It is a privilege to offer the Eucharist here – it certainly brings together the Great Three Days we have just celebrated with real meaning! If you know of any groups who would like to use our excellent premises, please let us know!
Category: Church in Society Action Network
