NEARLY one million pounds of funding has been dished out to groups which help young people in Oxfordshire, but there are fears for some who have lost out.

A £999,800 pot of money will be divided among 24 charities which work with children and teenagers across the county over the next two years.

A total of 95 organisations applied for the Youth Opportunity Fund launched by Oxfordshire County Council last year.

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A panel of cross-party councillors was set up to choose the best applications, with members ‘spending their Christmas’ making decisions according to cabinet member Liam Walker.

The 24 organisations receiving money include Rose Hill Junior Youth Club, Yellow Submarine, and Blackbird Leys Adventure Playground.

But Rita Atkinson, a trustee of the charity the Abingdon DAMASCUS youth project made an impassioned speech to the cabinet asking them to reconsider their choices.

Ms Atkinson said: “The decision has sounded the death knell of this charity.”

She explained her charity worked with young people who have problems at home in the Abingdon area, including parents who abuse them, or have problems with drugs.

She added: “Please have a rethink of how the money has been allocated. The county council cannot support everybody - it shouldn’t - but it should be providing enough support so these organisations can go elsewhere for support.”

Ms Atkinson said financial support from councils often led to other kinds of funding becoming available.

Richard Webber, Lib Dem councillor for Sutton Courtenay and Marcham, asked if the council could give some sort of feedback about why 71 groups had failed to meet funding criteria.

Mr Webber said: “As has been intimated, all of these are doing absolutely wonderful work. They have fallen short in some way of the criteria and no-one understands why.”

Cabinet member Mark Gray said the panel had a difficult time in choosing which groups to fund as youth groups were the only place many children had a positive experience of adults.

He added: “The reason we decided not to split the money between all 95 groups was it was felt we... would make them untenable: they wouldn’t work.”

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Labour councillor Liz Brighouse said: “The volume of applications shows just how much we do need to recognise that youth work in Oxfordshire needs to be funded.

“I welcome that people across the county are doing their best with very limited resources. Whilst this will funding will fund some organisations – but a very limited number of them – it will make a different in these communities.”

Ms Brighouse said she hoped a £200,000 pot of money set aside in OCC’s new budget to find ways to revive the council’s youth support services would be well spent.

The youth opportunity fund was closed after the cabinet approved giving away all the money.