Annual Reports 2004 25plus Worship Choir Housebound Coordination & Planning Deanery Synod Fabric Faith Development

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Youth and Children Task Team Annual Report

The task team set out with two main aims for the year. The first was to asses the needs for youth provision within our church and respond. The second was to ensure that all events and meetings conform to the latest child protection policy and best practice.

Child Protection

New child protection checks had been introduced and the parish needed to fall into line with this. To that end we undertook to renew the previous police checks for people already working with young people using the Criminal Records Bureau Disclosure Service. In addition we invited the whole congregation to apply for clearance to give us a large pool of workers. The response has been positive but the process is a little slow. Along with this we began to follow a risk assessment process for all events and meetings with young people present. We will be rolling this out further in the coming months.

Provision for Young People

Over the summer months we prepared and launched a survey of all church members and their contacts to establish the need for youth person’s provision. We had fifty one returned in total which was a good number. The majority where supportive of the ides suggested in the survey as well as raising some other good points. As a follow up, a meeting was arranged for all under 25s to discuss further their thoughts and ideas. The outcome was to establish a regular "house group" for the middle age ranges and to improve the promotion of the existing events for young people. The aim will be to ensure that all the age ranges are, over time, given additional opportunities to meet together for fun, discussion and worship. It is our church's hope to equip our young people to be "lights for Christ" in the world. Details of these ideas were presented at a meeting for adults in January. It will be the responsibility of the task team to provide an umbrella for all these events in addition to its existing over sight. We look forward to your continuing help and support during the coming year.