Family Afterschool Club (Warm Hub) sessions designed to help families through the cost of living crisis have attracted around 1,000 attendances since relaunching at Moorways Sports Village in October.
Family Afterschool Club is held in the large soft play at the state-of-the-art centre, which is run by Everyone Active in partnership with Derby City Council.
Taking place from 4.30pm-6pm each Wednesday, children have an hour and a half to play and enjoy a free hot meal alongside parents.
In addition, various organisations – including Derby Adult Learning Service – provide advice to parents around training opportunities, locality support and the cost of living crisis.
The sessions, which are set to run until the end of March, were made possible thanks to £5,915 funding from Community Action Derby and the Household Support Fund. Some 50 spaces are available each week and every week has been fully booked.
The funding has also gone towards providing hot meals for 11 to 16 year olds at two weekly youth engagement sessions at Moorways.
Monday boxfit sessions and Friday football sessions are held to provide positive physical activity and divert young people from involvement in anti-social behaviour.
Those activities have been mostly funded by the Police and Crime Commissioner for Derbyshire, Angelique Foster, who provided £5,000 to support the initiative. They began in November and are due to continue for 12 months.
Sinfin and Osmaston’s PCSO team have been supporting the Monday night boxfit sessions.
Simon Morgan, Everyone Active’s contract manager, said:
We aim to help people across the local community to get active and the warm hub and youth engagement sessions have proved a fantastic way to do that.
We are proud to play our part in helping people through the cost of living crisis, as well as giving 11-16 year olds the opportunity to exercise and engage with each other in a positive environment, while staying away from anti-social behaviour.
It is great to see Moorways making a difference to people’s lives and supporting people from all corners of the community.
Councillor Nadine Peatfield, Derby City Council’s Cabinet Member for City Centre, Regeneration, Tourism and Culture, said:
I am absolutely delighted that Everyone Active is putting the community at the heart of Moorways Sports Village. The intention was always to provide state-of-the-art leisure facilities that would be accessible to all.
I’m very familiar with this area of the city and know how much people are being affected by the cost of living crisis, so I’m very grateful for the lifeline that Moorways Sports Village is offering to families through the Afterschool Club. The boxfit and football sessions are vital in engaging young people in positive activities. I can see the impact these initiatives are having, and they are great examples of how we can achieve better outcomes for the city by working with our excellent partners.