A project which gives help and advice to homeless youths is celebrating today after scooping more than £250,000 of lottery cash.

Bradford City Centre Project has been given £264,000 to develop a range of activities for a new service called the Reconnect Project over the next three years.

The sum from the National Lottery Charities Board will be used to:

l Find temporary housing for users and offer them one to one support.

l Help youths develop new skills and give them access to education

l Provide a self-help group, so users can help others in similar situations

Director Michael White said he was delighted with the cash and said the service was much needed.

"We have been wanting to provide this project for many years so that we can offer something genuinely useful to any homeless young person who approaches us for help," he said.

Mr White said there was an increase in youths who are locked into a downward spiral of homelessness and other problems. He said: "We help them to find housing and offer them whatever support we can with our existing resources, but find they often cannot cope because they are struggling with too many problems at once.

"They are not only homeless but, they may have mental needs, be mixed up in criminal activity and so on. They lose their confidence and can see no way out of the spiral. The project will allow us to offer them help to find a way out," he said.

The project will employ four staff and a team of volunteers when new premises for the venture is found. It is expected to open in September.

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