Bidding goodbye to community development worker Lesley Wright are these children on a Braithwaite playscheme. She is leaving after more than two years running the estate's Whinfield Community Centre.

Lesley, who lives in Spring Bank, Keighley, will become a full-time worker at a Children's Society refuge in Leeds. She worked part-time at the Safe House before joining Whinfield and has continued doing sessional work during the intervening years.

Lesley says she is looking forward to the challenge of becoming a senior project worker managing a team of highly-qualified professionals. She says: "I'll be working with runaways and young people thrown out of their home. It's quite high-profile work. A lot of it's around child protection."

Lesley says the challenge will be totally different to Whinfield, where she admits she has had a 'tough' time. The past two years have seen highly-publicised efforts to tackle teenage rowdyism, and fall-outs between community groups on the estate.

Lesley has overseen the transformation of the centre's management committee into Braithwaite and Guard House Community Association, and the launch of many new activities. She says: "An awful lot has gone on but it's given me a vast experience. When you've run a centre like this you can work anywhere. There have been ups and downs but I've met a lot of good people and a lot of good things have happened.

"I'll be sad to leave Braithwaite in some ways because there's a lot of potential here."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.