Couldnt see another thread for this and didnt know where else to put it. This deserves all the recognition
www.thetimes.co.uk
The exhausted man who walked in off Spellow Lane, 100 yards from Goodison Park, and into the warmth of the Everton In The Community Hub felt forsaken by society, by the services, by the state. The man was not from Merseyside but he had heard of Everton In The Community and knew they helped the needy, the bereft. “I didn’t know where else to go,” he said to staff.
Everton are known as the people’s club for a reason, for their compassion, their sense of community, and not simply locally. Everton In The Community (EITC) is a huge enterprise, employing 125 full-time staff, 70 casual staff and more than 145 volunteers, working on more than 40 projects in more than 300 locations, tackling knife and gun crime, homelessness, failing schools, mental-health issues and dementia, among other vital initiatives.
No matter where the team sit in the table, Everton lead the way in changing, even saving, lives. “Pitch performance fluctuates and we know form is temporary but community need is constant,” Everton’s chief executive, Denise Barrett-Baxendale, says calmly. “We’re in Liverpool 4, one of the most socially deprived areas of the country.
“It’s something I’ve instilled in the staff — to be brave and go out and tackle the social issues that people never want to tackle, and help some of the most hard-to-reach and hard-to-help members of society.
“Demand has never been greater. It worries me. People will look at the government withdrawal of certain funds for social care, disability funding, dementia funding etc, and that is why football clubs have to stand up. We are very privileged in terms of the revenue we receive in football. Football has a duty to reach out and help those who require support.
"It is not about saying whose responsibility it is [state or club]. If we can help, we should, whether it is knife crime or working with the homeless, Alzheimer’s, memory loss or [caring for] former players.
“We know we can tackle social issues that other organisations cannot always. It’s the power of the crest.” Barrett-Baxendale proved so adept at running Everton In The Community that the board asked her to run the club.
Her successor as chief executive of EITC, Richard Kenyon, is waiting by the Dixie Dean statue to show me their expanding community facilities. Kenyon gets straight to the point, putting on-field rivalries aside and beginning by praising yesterday’s opponents’ involvement in vital initiatives. “If Everton and Liverpool weren’t doing this in the city, an area most hit by austerity, who would?” Kenyon says. “We’re committed to the community. We’re in this together.”
All clubs do significant work in the community, the likes of Arsenal and Huddersfield Town earning regular praise, but it is the sheer scale and impact of EITC’s work in its fourth decade that is remarkable. It is the individual stories: a teenager, Christine Rowe, helped to rebuild her life after two suicide attempts; an army veteran, John Brady, saying that “if it wasn’t for Everton, I’m not sure I’d be here now” after struggling with mental-health problems following his medical discharge; and a Liverpool fan, Derek Goodwin, helped by EITC’s “Imagine Your Goals” mental-health programme, who says, “I have a Liverpool tattoo but Everton saved my life”.
The Home Office has just awarded EITC £500,000 to tackle gun and knife crime. Many urban areas across the country are afflicted in an era when eight and nine-year-olds are being used to move guns for gangs. Everton’s ground-breaking scheme is being watched closely.
Kenyon leads me down Spellow Lane, laughing as we see a black cat running back towards Goodison. Apparently, there are many feral cats around, drawn to the stadium lights, trying to get in. One famously succeeded and held up the game with Wolves on February 2. We stop outside the Everton Free School, a safety net for those asked to leave mainstream schools for reasons of truancy or confrontations with teachers. “We fill a social gap,” Kenyon explains. “We take kids that schools won’t take. We talk about coming to Everton, not coming to school. It’s the power of the badge. Immediately kids are feeling they are involved with something different, something more attractive.” Kenyon understandably voices pride as he mentions, “53 of 55 went on to apprenticeships”.
I follow Kenyon round the corner, on to Walton Road, past nail parlours and fast-food establishments, before cutting up Salop Street. Dominating the horizon, Goodison Park towers over some workshops. In the foreground is the Blue Base, an Everton community centre built out of a disused social club, where some people were sleeping rough in the grounds. It is alive with activities now.
Henry Mooney, the community engagement officer, happens to be strolling into the Blue Base. He speaks of those at risk of social isolation, and how Everton help them. “We give them a call, and for some of them it is the only phone-call they might have in the week,” Mooney says. He sends a minibus around to pick them up, ferrying them to the Blue Base. “For some of them, it is the only time they might get out in the week.”
Everton put on events, laying out memorabilia, showing old videos. Fans and former players such as Jimmy Harris, 85, Derek Temple, 80, and Alec Farrell, 83, come in to reminisce. Pat van den Hauwe, 58, the former Wales defender who helped Everton to a league title in 1987, works with people with Alzheimer’s and often comes in to the Blue Base. Derek Mountfield, 56, another Eighties star, also drops by to lend support. The Everton family, of all generations, is strong.
Some Everton supporters struggle with the noise of match-day and suffer agoraphobia but love the team so much that they want to be close, so they gather at the Blue Base on match-day. “We can have up to 150 in here, including carers,” Mooney says. “Some of them thought their days of going to games were over.”
As we talk on a recent match-day, it is shortly before 5pm, and the first fans are arriving. One man in a wheelchair steers himself skilfully through the tables to get prime position for one of the screens. Another hurries to get his favourite table. Mooney, recognised as an unsung hero at the North West Football Awards last year, provides a typically cheery welcome.
“My staff are amazing,” Barrett-Baxendale reflects later. “They are really experienced people who understand the community and understand Everton’s ethos and values.” I ask her to name the values that she thinks of with Everton, and she doesn’t pause. “I think of our authenticity. That’s something I’m really proud of. I think family. If you look at our ticket pricing, look at our accessible stadium, our campaigns, our community work, our academy, it is all about family and that’s the most important to me. I think teamwork, work ethic. We are a very hard-working football club.”
Everton’s work never stops. Kenyon points to a strip of land off Spellow Lane where a new mental-health centre, the People’s Place, is to be built. A £1 million fund-raising initiative is up and running. Everton’s goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford, turned DJ for a money-spinning event, getting the rave on at a “Ravin’ Fit” session at Everton Free School in November.
Next door is the People’s Hub. What was here before, I ask? “Syringes,” Kenyon replies. It was wasteland, occasionally frequented by drug-users, but now it is a sanctuary. “Some quite vulnerable people turn up to the Hub,” Kenyon says. Some come in for a hot drink, others for medical and psychological help, others simply wanting somebody to talk to, and to play sport on Cruyff Court out the back. Some at risk just seek a safe place. “Some come in and it’s a crisis point, so we take them to A&E or simply make them welcome, give them a cup of tea, and listen to them,” Sue Gregory, EITC’S director of youth engagement and employability, says.
A few yards from where Gregory is talking, inside the hub is a pledge inscribed on the wall from the manager Marco Silva, the director of football Marcel Brands and all the first-team squad. André Gomes, the midfielder, came in to do a hug-athon and 200 fans turned up. He was attentive to all, and club staff realised that it was going to take ages. “No rush,” said Gomes.
Homegrown players like Tom Davies and Jonjoe Kenny are frequently involved. “Our players are magnificent,” Barrett-Baxendale says. “Community work is in our DNA. It’s part of being an Evertonian. We have some terrific players, Séamus Coleman, Leighton Baines, “Jags” [Phil Jagielka], the guys are prepared to come and do anything we ask them.”
They regularly travel across Merseyside, attending events, helping out. Gregory shows a map of 303 local places, including schools, prisons, libraries, parks, community centres, where EITC is at work. She talks of some of the schemes, like helping to transform one failing school, Knowsley Lane Primary, through breakfast clubs and embedding a charismatic EITC coach, Paddy Byrne, to inspire the pupils four times a week, all day.
“We can go into schools because the kids trust us,” Gregory says. “Football is a religion here. We can do numeracy and literacy, build a relationship.” Pupils respond and behave. “Kids know our standards,” Gregory adds. After Ofsted’s most recent inspection on January 19, Knowsley Lane was declared “outstanding”.
Such is the success of EITC that other clubs have been in contact. “On June 14, we’re having a conference here with other clubs coming, Irish FA, clubs from the Netherlands and Norway, when we’ll show them our projects,” Mike Salla, EITC’s director of health and sport, says, sitting next to Gregory at the hub.
Kenyon leads me from the hub back up to Goodison Park, talking of the plans for the old ground, focusing on affordable housing, medical and educational facilities, an enduring blue heartbeat. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance for regeneration of the area,” he says. Kenyon’s theme is echoed by Barrett-Baxendale. “We have the opportunity for a wonderful flagship stadium on the waterfront and everybody will be working hard for that, but for me the most important thing is to leave in the right way, and to make sure we remain guardians of Goodison Park for many years to come,” she says.
“It is really important we continue to support our spiritual homeland, and we connect it to [the new ground at] Bramley-Moore Dock so we never forget our heritage. I’m working on a “toffee trail” from Goodison to Bramley-Moore Dock which will ensure that sense of connectivity.
“We must never, ever abandon Liverpool 4. We’ve been in the area for 126 years. I got the stadium registered as a community asset, making sure it couldn’t be sold off to a house builder for the highest tariff. Any club who just shuts up shop and goes, and it becomes all apartments — that’s wrong. That’s not right for Everton Football Club.
“All in football should be challenging to do even more. I look around the Premier League table and there are really good people working relentlessly in their community departments to tackle significant issues, whether gun and knife crime, education, health, dementia, homelessness. For me, we still have to do more. We have to target and tackle the deprivation. Look at our city, the demand is increasing and we need to respond to that.”
Everton’s response has been garlanded with 105 awards to date. “It’s not about the awards we win,” Barrett-Baxendale replies firmly, “It’s about being pioneering, being courageous, doing what’s right and proper in the communities for those fans who give great support to us.
“Every penny they earn, they put back through the turnstiles, through merchandise, shirts. They support us and we support them.”
Everton tackling social issues with ‘power of badge’
The exhausted man who walked in off Spellow Lane, 100 yards from Goodison Park, and into the warmth of the Everton In The Community Hub felt forsaken by society, by the services, by the state. The man was not from Merseyside but he had heard of Everton In The Community and knew they helped the needy
www.thetimes.co.uk
The exhausted man who walked in off Spellow Lane, 100 yards from Goodison Park, and into the warmth of the Everton In The Community Hub felt forsaken by society, by the services, by the state. The man was not from Merseyside but he had heard of Everton In The Community and knew they helped the needy, the bereft. “I didn’t know where else to go,” he said to staff.
Everton are known as the people’s club for a reason, for their compassion, their sense of community, and not simply locally. Everton In The Community (EITC) is a huge enterprise, employing 125 full-time staff, 70 casual staff and more than 145 volunteers, working on more than 40 projects in more than 300 locations, tackling knife and gun crime, homelessness, failing schools, mental-health issues and dementia, among other vital initiatives.
No matter where the team sit in the table, Everton lead the way in changing, even saving, lives. “Pitch performance fluctuates and we know form is temporary but community need is constant,” Everton’s chief executive, Denise Barrett-Baxendale, says calmly. “We’re in Liverpool 4, one of the most socially deprived areas of the country.
“It’s something I’ve instilled in the staff — to be brave and go out and tackle the social issues that people never want to tackle, and help some of the most hard-to-reach and hard-to-help members of society.
“Demand has never been greater. It worries me. People will look at the government withdrawal of certain funds for social care, disability funding, dementia funding etc, and that is why football clubs have to stand up. We are very privileged in terms of the revenue we receive in football. Football has a duty to reach out and help those who require support.
"It is not about saying whose responsibility it is [state or club]. If we can help, we should, whether it is knife crime or working with the homeless, Alzheimer’s, memory loss or [caring for] former players.
“We know we can tackle social issues that other organisations cannot always. It’s the power of the crest.” Barrett-Baxendale proved so adept at running Everton In The Community that the board asked her to run the club.
Her successor as chief executive of EITC, Richard Kenyon, is waiting by the Dixie Dean statue to show me their expanding community facilities. Kenyon gets straight to the point, putting on-field rivalries aside and beginning by praising yesterday’s opponents’ involvement in vital initiatives. “If Everton and Liverpool weren’t doing this in the city, an area most hit by austerity, who would?” Kenyon says. “We’re committed to the community. We’re in this together.”
All clubs do significant work in the community, the likes of Arsenal and Huddersfield Town earning regular praise, but it is the sheer scale and impact of EITC’s work in its fourth decade that is remarkable. It is the individual stories: a teenager, Christine Rowe, helped to rebuild her life after two suicide attempts; an army veteran, John Brady, saying that “if it wasn’t for Everton, I’m not sure I’d be here now” after struggling with mental-health problems following his medical discharge; and a Liverpool fan, Derek Goodwin, helped by EITC’s “Imagine Your Goals” mental-health programme, who says, “I have a Liverpool tattoo but Everton saved my life”.
The Home Office has just awarded EITC £500,000 to tackle gun and knife crime. Many urban areas across the country are afflicted in an era when eight and nine-year-olds are being used to move guns for gangs. Everton’s ground-breaking scheme is being watched closely.
Kenyon leads me down Spellow Lane, laughing as we see a black cat running back towards Goodison. Apparently, there are many feral cats around, drawn to the stadium lights, trying to get in. One famously succeeded and held up the game with Wolves on February 2. We stop outside the Everton Free School, a safety net for those asked to leave mainstream schools for reasons of truancy or confrontations with teachers. “We fill a social gap,” Kenyon explains. “We take kids that schools won’t take. We talk about coming to Everton, not coming to school. It’s the power of the badge. Immediately kids are feeling they are involved with something different, something more attractive.” Kenyon understandably voices pride as he mentions, “53 of 55 went on to apprenticeships”.
I follow Kenyon round the corner, on to Walton Road, past nail parlours and fast-food establishments, before cutting up Salop Street. Dominating the horizon, Goodison Park towers over some workshops. In the foreground is the Blue Base, an Everton community centre built out of a disused social club, where some people were sleeping rough in the grounds. It is alive with activities now.
Henry Mooney, the community engagement officer, happens to be strolling into the Blue Base. He speaks of those at risk of social isolation, and how Everton help them. “We give them a call, and for some of them it is the only phone-call they might have in the week,” Mooney says. He sends a minibus around to pick them up, ferrying them to the Blue Base. “For some of them, it is the only time they might get out in the week.”
Everton put on events, laying out memorabilia, showing old videos. Fans and former players such as Jimmy Harris, 85, Derek Temple, 80, and Alec Farrell, 83, come in to reminisce. Pat van den Hauwe, 58, the former Wales defender who helped Everton to a league title in 1987, works with people with Alzheimer’s and often comes in to the Blue Base. Derek Mountfield, 56, another Eighties star, also drops by to lend support. The Everton family, of all generations, is strong.
Some Everton supporters struggle with the noise of match-day and suffer agoraphobia but love the team so much that they want to be close, so they gather at the Blue Base on match-day. “We can have up to 150 in here, including carers,” Mooney says. “Some of them thought their days of going to games were over.”
As we talk on a recent match-day, it is shortly before 5pm, and the first fans are arriving. One man in a wheelchair steers himself skilfully through the tables to get prime position for one of the screens. Another hurries to get his favourite table. Mooney, recognised as an unsung hero at the North West Football Awards last year, provides a typically cheery welcome.
“My staff are amazing,” Barrett-Baxendale reflects later. “They are really experienced people who understand the community and understand Everton’s ethos and values.” I ask her to name the values that she thinks of with Everton, and she doesn’t pause. “I think of our authenticity. That’s something I’m really proud of. I think family. If you look at our ticket pricing, look at our accessible stadium, our campaigns, our community work, our academy, it is all about family and that’s the most important to me. I think teamwork, work ethic. We are a very hard-working football club.”
Everton’s work never stops. Kenyon points to a strip of land off Spellow Lane where a new mental-health centre, the People’s Place, is to be built. A £1 million fund-raising initiative is up and running. Everton’s goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford, turned DJ for a money-spinning event, getting the rave on at a “Ravin’ Fit” session at Everton Free School in November.
Next door is the People’s Hub. What was here before, I ask? “Syringes,” Kenyon replies. It was wasteland, occasionally frequented by drug-users, but now it is a sanctuary. “Some quite vulnerable people turn up to the Hub,” Kenyon says. Some come in for a hot drink, others for medical and psychological help, others simply wanting somebody to talk to, and to play sport on Cruyff Court out the back. Some at risk just seek a safe place. “Some come in and it’s a crisis point, so we take them to A&E or simply make them welcome, give them a cup of tea, and listen to them,” Sue Gregory, EITC’S director of youth engagement and employability, says.
A few yards from where Gregory is talking, inside the hub is a pledge inscribed on the wall from the manager Marco Silva, the director of football Marcel Brands and all the first-team squad. André Gomes, the midfielder, came in to do a hug-athon and 200 fans turned up. He was attentive to all, and club staff realised that it was going to take ages. “No rush,” said Gomes.
Homegrown players like Tom Davies and Jonjoe Kenny are frequently involved. “Our players are magnificent,” Barrett-Baxendale says. “Community work is in our DNA. It’s part of being an Evertonian. We have some terrific players, Séamus Coleman, Leighton Baines, “Jags” [Phil Jagielka], the guys are prepared to come and do anything we ask them.”
They regularly travel across Merseyside, attending events, helping out. Gregory shows a map of 303 local places, including schools, prisons, libraries, parks, community centres, where EITC is at work. She talks of some of the schemes, like helping to transform one failing school, Knowsley Lane Primary, through breakfast clubs and embedding a charismatic EITC coach, Paddy Byrne, to inspire the pupils four times a week, all day.
“We can go into schools because the kids trust us,” Gregory says. “Football is a religion here. We can do numeracy and literacy, build a relationship.” Pupils respond and behave. “Kids know our standards,” Gregory adds. After Ofsted’s most recent inspection on January 19, Knowsley Lane was declared “outstanding”.
Such is the success of EITC that other clubs have been in contact. “On June 14, we’re having a conference here with other clubs coming, Irish FA, clubs from the Netherlands and Norway, when we’ll show them our projects,” Mike Salla, EITC’s director of health and sport, says, sitting next to Gregory at the hub.
Kenyon leads me from the hub back up to Goodison Park, talking of the plans for the old ground, focusing on affordable housing, medical and educational facilities, an enduring blue heartbeat. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance for regeneration of the area,” he says. Kenyon’s theme is echoed by Barrett-Baxendale. “We have the opportunity for a wonderful flagship stadium on the waterfront and everybody will be working hard for that, but for me the most important thing is to leave in the right way, and to make sure we remain guardians of Goodison Park for many years to come,” she says.
“It is really important we continue to support our spiritual homeland, and we connect it to [the new ground at] Bramley-Moore Dock so we never forget our heritage. I’m working on a “toffee trail” from Goodison to Bramley-Moore Dock which will ensure that sense of connectivity.
“We must never, ever abandon Liverpool 4. We’ve been in the area for 126 years. I got the stadium registered as a community asset, making sure it couldn’t be sold off to a house builder for the highest tariff. Any club who just shuts up shop and goes, and it becomes all apartments — that’s wrong. That’s not right for Everton Football Club.
“All in football should be challenging to do even more. I look around the Premier League table and there are really good people working relentlessly in their community departments to tackle significant issues, whether gun and knife crime, education, health, dementia, homelessness. For me, we still have to do more. We have to target and tackle the deprivation. Look at our city, the demand is increasing and we need to respond to that.”
Everton’s response has been garlanded with 105 awards to date. “It’s not about the awards we win,” Barrett-Baxendale replies firmly, “It’s about being pioneering, being courageous, doing what’s right and proper in the communities for those fans who give great support to us.
“Every penny they earn, they put back through the turnstiles, through merchandise, shirts. They support us and we support them.”
