The house of hope

THERE are people who worry and complain about problems where they live. And there are people who do something about it. Veronica Birchall and her neighbours are definitely part of the second lot.

Over the last ten years, they have transformed the estate where they live and, they hope, changed the lives of the children there. It hasn't been easy.

When Veronica and husband John arrived on the Lakes estate in Ferryhill ten years ago, it was after a lifetime running pubs until ill health persuaded them to retire. If they thought they were in for a quiet life, they were disappointed.

"The estate looked like a war zone," says Veronica. "There were about 20 houses boarded up. Kids were running wild, drinking, doing drugs and lots of horrible things going on in the streets. Neighbours had stopped talking to each other because they didn't know who to trust. Say something to the wrong person and you'd get a brick through the window.

"We knew something had to be done, but we didn't know how, or who to talk to. If we called the police, the kids had scanners and listened in to the messages. They were gone before the police got there. The police thought I was making it all up."

Eventually, ten neighbours got together and called a meeting. Eighty five people turned up and they formed a residents' association. It was the start of the turn-around. "We knew that most of the people living here wanted what we wanted."

They borrowed a video camera and recorded what the youngsters were getting up to and showed it to the police. "From then on, once they decided I wasn't a mad old woman making it up, the police have been very supportive. And the council."

It was a little thing that made one of the big differences. "They took all the boards down from the empty houses and put curtains up instead. It immediately changed the look of the place. Silly really, but important."

The new residents' association started raising funds, organising activities, above all, working together. It became the Ladder Project - Lakes And District Education Resource Centre. A few years ago the council gave them two council houses at a peppercorn rent to turn into a community centre. "It had to be houses. People here wouldn't come into an office, but a house would be just like popping round to a neighbour's."

The houses were knocked into one, offices, space, a big conservatory and a playground at the back.

On any day it buzzes with activity. There's a café, computers, a kitchen for cookery lessons. Streams of people were coming to do a card-making class in the conservatory, the North East Council for Addiction sees people there, referred by their GPs, the house is a base for a Credit Union, youth groups, kids groups, toddler group, rave music. Anything, it seems and everything that can make a difference.

"The first people to use the building really were the youngsters," says Veronica. "At first there would be 15 or 20 of them. Now we get 50. They treated the place with respect, realised it was theirs. They have their music, their decks. They run under 18s rave nights.

"What you have to realise is that some of these kids come from families where there are three generations of unemployed. Parents and grandparents have long given up hope and children can't see the point of anything. Many of them don't do well in school and by the time they realise that school is their best chance, they've thrown it away."

From their earliest days - car boot sales, £100 from the Salvation Army - the group now has grants from the Tudor Trust, the Lottery, Sure Start, the council, Lloyds TSB. But are desperate for core funding.

"So much of our energy and effort goes into fundraising. It's a constant battle, when we could be spending the time and effort on something better," says volunteer Vincent Robinson.

As well as a team of volunteers, the staff includes a number of employees - development workers, youth workers, like Kelly Holmes. "It's often the simplest things," says Kelly. "We took a group of children down to Hardwick Park for a picnic and they thought it was great. Some of those kids had never been out of Ferryhill, never been on a picnic. It's not much, is it? But for them it was."

Other outings have been further afield - to Newcastle, or canoeing, riding, or to a theme park. Or taking them to a restaurant.

"Many kids here have never been in one, have no idea how to order food. The sort of things that most people are lucky enough to be able to take for granted," says Kelly.

The kitchen is big enough for cookery lessons, teaching children that there's better ways of feeding yourself for a fiver than spending it on pizza.

They are particularly concerned about the 16 to 18-year-olds, fallen through the gap between school and training. They encourage them as much as possible, help them on job hunts and qualifications, encourage, listen, advise. They have had some cheering small successes with youngsters that society would have written off.

"But it all takes time and patience," says Veronica. "We've had some very sad cases, young people here who've gone through terrible experiences. It takes months to get them to trust us, just to talk to us. That's a big breakthrough - but it's not the sort of thing that you can put on a funding application."

For Veronica Birchall the poverty on the estate was the key to the problem. "It wasn't so much a lack of money but a spiritual poverty. The children here had no hope, no idea of other possibilities."

In ten years since that first residents' meeting the estate has changed dramatically. It looks cared for.

Crime is down, nuisance is down, neighbours are speaking to each other again.

"It's a nice place to live," says Veronica. "You can walk around and feel safe. And there's a waiting list of people wanting to move here."

After heart attack last year, Veronica resigned from running the group. The others even wrote her a card and bought her a leaving present.

But within a few months she was back again when they realised they couldn't do without her and she was fretting knowing there was so much to be done.

"If I'd know what I was letting myself in for, I would never have started, but once you've started, you can't give up, although I try not to do so much now," she says. But it still seems to involve huge amounts of time and effort and a lot of support and driving from husband John.

Veronica is sustained by her family - John, daughter Kathleen, who's also a LADDER volunteer, three grandchildren - and a faith so rock solid that it permeates everything she does and must in part be the key to how she is able to do so much. For the last 25 years she has taken busloads of pilgrims to Walsingham each summer and soon will be planning next year's trip.

"I couldn't sit back when there's still so much to do," she says, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, even when you're 59 and not in the best of health. "There's always money to find. Already we've outgrown this building. It's a squash getting everyone in and we'd like to extend it to have more room.

"We have lots of plans. We're hoping to do a 1940s family thing - growing vegetables, cooking meals and eating them together as people used to do. Many children here have never done that.

"What we want to do is show them that there's a different way of living. That there are chances and opportunities for them out there if they can make that first step.

"The only way is up. What we want to give to them, above all, is hope."