The Family Advice Centre evolved out of an earlier project, sponsored by the Youth Development Trust, in Moss Side. This project, which began in 1968, was called the Hilton Project and operated at three levels :

a)an Adventure Playground;

b) a Social Education Programme;

c) a Counselling service. In fact the counselling service is the direct predecessor of the FAC.

The aim of the Hilton Project (B. Anderson, G. John, C. Milton, T. Pritchard (1973), The Hilton Project, YDT)

was to "assist integration of young immigrants in Manchester, and develop new methods which may help with similar

problems elsewhere", an objective that the project team changed considerably over its five-year programme.

The project was, in every respect, experimental, and a great emphasis was placed on "action research". Basically the idea is to apply research to a project so that the results can then be fed directly back to the workers, who can then act according1y. This results in the close association of fie1d-work, administration and research which traditionally tend to go their own separate ways; in the action research model the one serves the other and the actions and reactions of the one are guided/modified by feedback from the other. In the Hilton Project this was, hopefully, to occur at the three different levels described above, so as to study different aspects of the lives of young people from varying viewpoints.

The development of the Adventure Playground, in the words of the Hilton Report, "occupies a peculiar place within the project. It was the first programme to be started, and lasted longer than either of the other programmes...".

The playground itself was planned to operate at two levels,

firstly, the work with the children, and

secondly, the development of a management committee of local parents who would run the playground.

In many respects this latter aspect turned out to be extremely important since the establishment of administrative control by local parents became the basis of the adventure playground movement in Manchester, and one that helped to establish -the credibility of the YDT as an organisation dedicated to the concept of local people running their own affairs. The big crunch came over the right to hire and fire workers. The management committee claimed that if they were to have any meaning at all then that should be their right, while the YDT, as the funding body, disagreed.

Eventually the YDT backed down and the principle of the project management committee, which has independent control of its project, was established. From this the play-ground movement in Manchester went from one playground with an annual budget of somewhat more than £1,000 to a group of eight independent playgrounds, funded by Recreational Services to the tune of some £90,000 per year, which federated to become the Manchester Adventure Playground Association (MAPA).

This was the second level of the Hilton Project and was designed to work with children in the school setting. From the beginning it was fraught with administrative difficulties, and took two years to establish; even then it never really got off the ground. The process was not helped by the attitude of the headmaster to an outside body having control of a separate programme in his school. His attitude was, to say the least, one of suspicion, especially since the programme included aspects concerning race. At first a pilot project was agreed which involved YDT workers working with school staff on a project called "Design for living", which had already been initiated in the school.

The scheme was plagued with limitations; direct discussion of sex and race was disallowed, as was the use of tape-recorders and also direct contact with the pupils with-out a member of the school staff present. This latter restriction was meant to apply to contact outside the school as well as in it.

Basically, with such restrictions there was little hope of even the pilot project getting off the ground. This effectively cut across the action research design of the project, since it was impossible to link the counselling project to social education in the school concerned, parent participation being unacceptable to the school. Despite this the YDT decided to offer the school certain resources in the form of a full-time worker and programme expenses. The worker was incorporated into the school’s structure as a member of staff responsible for outdoor pursuits, although no real clarification was given as to his/her responsibilities or function. When the programme eventually started, the only immigrant children offered to the worker were from lower stream and remedial groups, and no access was allowed to a representative cross-section of pupils. Once the programme was started the worker’s aims were :

"...to enable each child to perceive himself as a potential agent of change in his community; to form a realistic assessment of his work potential and to ease the transition from school to work; and to handle inter-personal relationships constructively’. (Hilton Report. p 103)

This involved working on community service projects. such as the Adventure Playground, visiting places of work and talking to workers, and taking part in role-playing exercises, socio-drama and interviewing adult figures. One of the outcomes was ideas for change at the school expressed by the children but which the school could not entertain. At the same time conflict arose over the worker’s methods and relationships with members of staff. Eventually it became clear that one of two courses was open for the programme : one was to accept the position of conflict within the school and carry on accordingly, and the other was to examine more deeply the situation of the pupils themselves. Eventually the latter course was opted for , and with some of the earlier restrictions lifted, almost ideal conditions were provided to examine the perceptions of a restricted group of pupils, despite the fact that the relationship between the school and the programme remained tense.

The full design of the programme and the results are described elsewhere (Hilton Report, Chapters 8-10) but briefly the aim was to examine the "self-esteem" of small groups of children (mostly immigrant). Three groups were studied: Asian, West Indian and English, all of them drawn from remedial or near remedial classes. The findings showed that the English group had the lowest levels of self-esteem, and although the self-esteem of the Asian and West Indian children was higher, a crisis was developing due to a conflict between the expectations of their parents and the reality of the situation they were living in.

The West Indian children were already in a crisis situation, while the Asian children were rapidly being drawn into it. The report maintained that the situation, for West Indian children at least, was not helped by the fact that these children were becoming increasingly aware of the basic racist nature of contemporary English society at all levels. This was a reality the school refused to accept.

Despite the drawbacks of the programme, it did question some of the concepts of teaching practice, especially when applied in racially mixed schools. Most teachers ignored the interruptions and diversions of the children themselves, whereas the social education project looked upon them as expressing the children’s priorities and urgencies. The idea of the programme was to create a situation so that a rapport could be established between the teacher and pupils, a situation which does often exist but outside the traditional setting of classroom and syllabus. However, the difficulty is that in order to attain this the teacher must enter into a critical examination not only of his/her own function and expectations but also those of the educational system as a whole.

This was the last of the three programmes to be initiated. It was originally conceived to complement the social education programme, but due to the difficulties encountered in setting up that programme the counselling service was eventually set up as a separate operation. Despite this, however, the basic ideas of the programme remained the same, namely working with black parents within the context of the black community. To this end a black worker. Gus John, was appointed; his experiences are described in the Hilton Report, chapters 11-14. For this project he was based in the local social services area office, and essentially the families he worked with were referred to him by social workers. He acted on two levels: firstly as a consultant to the social workers when reports for various reasons had to be prepared. These reports had to be drawn up by qualified social workers but took into consideration the information obtained by the programme workers. The second level was in his relationship with the families involved. It- was made clear that he was not a social worker but someone who worked in co-operation with them. He also expressed concern for problems related to families’ social and cultural experiences. At the same time he was concerned with promoting networks within the community which would help solve some of the problems.

Apart from working with families, he was also given a community work role which involved working with several existing groups within the black community. Although these groups differed widely in terms of reference and political outlook, he found that they were all predominantly led by middle-aged people who exerted a great deal of control. One thing he found common to all the groups was that when he became associated with them, they each expressed concern over the short-comings of the others, and invariably tried to recruit him into their particular organisation and not bother with the rest. They all appeared to be working in isolation from each other. Eventually he decided to work most closely with youth in either formal clubs or informal local groups. He started this work at a statutory youth club attached to a school and which had just appointed a black professional youth worker, and between them they started up a number of activities. As a result an informal network of black youngsters was built up leading to activities outside the club setting.

From this, discussion started with the youth on their awareness of blackness and their position in British society .

The workers became increasingly aware of the anxieties felt by young people. Areas of concern included the problems encountered by young girls and the increase in numbers of black unmarried mothers; unemployment and job dissatisfaction; educational underachievement; the activities of police and social workers; and also the attraction of young people to cafes and night clubs with attendant sub-cultures usually associated with drugs, prostitution and petty crime (problems which eight or nine years later have worsened). The Report talks of harrassment of black youth by police and of a great deal of time advising and arranging for legal services to defend alleged offences, including loitering, insulting behaviour, obstruction and petty theft. As a result of this the worker became increasingly aware of contradictions within the system which is represented by various agencies such as the police, social services and school, resulting in increased alienation of black youth from that society.

In order to try and overcome some of these problems. the worker looked towards setting up a series of community projects. the first of which was a Black Bookshop and Education Centre. to be run by the local branch of the Caribbean Community Association and the Workers. Educational Association. A group of young men were interested in the project. and had managed to acquire and furnish premises for it. They approached the Caribbean Association for funds and asked to become members. Unfortunately their request was denied and so the book shop never got off the ground.

A more successful venture was the establishment of a short stay hostel for black teenagers. A group of local people, community and social workers. .got together and set up a trust which received a grant and bought a house. This project is still running successfully.

Before the counselling project came to an end proposals were drawn up for a Family Advice Centre. which was geared towards the needs of black people in the area. The aims of the proposed centre were: to detect families at risk ;

• to intervene in family conflict and alleviate conflict between young people and their families;
• to cope with the special problems of young people who are drifters. and are thus involved in or on the periphery of juvenile delinquency;
• to isolate and develop resources in the community itself to respond to the need for short-stay care and after-care accommodation for young people :
• to identify and train a number of "significant" individuals whose expertise could be used voluntarily by the centre to give support to parents. to give advice on child-minding, pre-school education in the home. and related matters
• to run "workshops’. with parents and young people through which issues of generational attitudes and differences of life-styles could be addressed;
• to encourage and co-ordinate voluntary projects. and act as a taking-off point for voluntary activities ( Hilton Report. p207).

The Centre was to be staffed by a social worker, a community worker. a secretary/receptionist. and a research worker. In the summer of 1973 the FAC. started work with funds from the Urban Aid Programme.

Last updated 16/2/99