TV star Denise Welch plays part for charity

Dec 6 2009 by Alastair Gilmour, Sunday Sun

DENISE Welch is playing with a yo-yo as she studies a project set up by Children North East, the 118-year-old charity of which she and husband Tim Healy are patrons.

The star of Waterloo Road and Loose Women is highly impressed by the charity’s work in the region, particularly the West End Youth Enquiry Service (WEYES) in Newcastle where young people can call in for advice on education, accommodation and training as well as support in relationships, bullying, contraception, sexual and mental health and substance misuse.

“I’ve got a great interest in young people,” she says. “I love working with them. But the media needs to flag up the good things about them instead of concentrating on the negatives.

“A lot of them just need confidence and to develop friendships. When I did Playing The Part (the BBC documentary where she went back to teach in her old secondary school in Consett), the ones they thought I’d have trouble with ended up adoring it.

“They’re not going to go to university, so why don’t they encourage them to get an apprenticeship? There’s too much pressure on them. University isn’t the be-all and end-all.”

At the Newcastle Temporary Accommodation Unit, the charity runs an out-of-school club and a crèche which has been awarded an outstanding Ofsted report, a standard that only 4% in the country achieves.

Children North East staff look after youngsters to enable their homeless parents - often struggling to cope with violence, rent arrears, mental health disorders and drug and alcohol abuse - to have time to deal with appointments, interviews, medical visits and so on.

At the unit in the shadow of St James’ Park, it’s not lost on Denise that families live there in cramped flats while newspaper reports reveal that former Newcastle United star Obafemi Martins was allegedly unable to make £45,000 last the weekend.

Despite the Government’s pledge to halve childhood poverty by 2010 - and eliminate it by 2020 - one in three children in the North East lives in poverty (defined roughly as two parents and two children living off £16,000 a year or less). Poverty takes many forms, however.

“It’s all wrong what footballers earn,” says Denise. “Soldiers get nothing by comparison.

“I think it’s important for local charities to have local patrons. Tim was born in Colston Street just off Westgate Road, near where the WEYES project is based.

He and I were persuaded to do Mr And Mrs which will be televised after Christmas. They asked for a beneficiary so we chose Children North East. The charity gets some money just for us being on the show, but if we win it’s considerably more.