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Charity to open safe house for at-risk children
Paul Whitehouse A NEW "safe house" for under-16s is to be opened in South Yorkshire and will be the only English refuge of its type outside London.
The property, at an undisclosed location, has been acquired by the SAFE@Last charity, which provides shelter for children who have run away from home or have been forced to leave and are deemed as being at risk.
It will be used primarily to assist children in the region and a Rotherham property firm has stepped in to help with an extensive refurbishment.
The refuge will provide supervised accommodation for children who have been referred there by police, social services and schools.
"The safety that we will be able to offer to vulnerable children through the South Yorkshire safe house is highly specialist and we will be establishing only the second safe house of its kind in the whole of England. The other safe house is in London, and only one other UK refuge exists, in Scotland," said the charity's founder trustee, Hilary Massarella.
"We are all too aware that children and young people, some younger than 11-years-old are in danger, without money, food, or a warm and safe place to shelter."
Property services firm the Horbury Group, based in Moorgate Crofts, supplied a project manager, plasterers and joiners to help improve the building, without the charity having to invest more of its funds.
"What the Horbury Group has done to help the charity is absolutely fantastic. It has project managed the entire refurbishment of the property, re-plastered all of the walls, fitted new flooring and joists and essentially turned a shell into a secure, comfortable refuge," she said.
"The help from the Horbury Group means that we can use the charity's funds to help the children, rather than tying it up in property repairs."
Trevor Wragg, managing director of the Horbury Group, said: "We wanted to provide as much help as possible to SAFE@Last, so we did whatever structural work we could, but we also oversaw any other contract work to help things run smoothly and complete the project, so the charity can get on with their important work.
"There is no doubt in my mind that this is a fundamentally important project for the region's most vulnerable youngsters," he said.
Funding for the project has come from the Railway Children charity, which helps children who have run away or been abandoned, and funding is already in place to pay for the management of the centre over the next three years.
paul.whitehouse@ypn.co.uk
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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