Former Hope Place manager and Danish military policeman Tommy Skou has taken over as supervisor of the Eurobodalla Youth Café at Batemans Bay.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
He takes over from interim manager Steven Smith, who filled the void after Josh Waterson ended his eight year term last year.
“It was time to move on and I parted with Hope Place on good terms,” Mr Skou said.
The Eurobodalla Shire Council’s Eurobodalla Youth Café is open every Friday between 3.30pm and 9pm at the Batemans Bay Community centres and high school age youth drop in free of charge, and stay for dinner if they like.
“They can play pool, listen to loud music, use the Playstation and Wii, watch TV or whatever they want,” he said.
“If they want, they can have dinner here free of charge and then, for $2 get a taxi voucher to get home.”
The taxi vouchers cover an area bordered by Maloneys Beach, Nelligen and Malua Bay.
“This (the Youth Café) is a fantastic service from council for the town, and everyone ought to appreciate it is here,” he said.
Supervision is something that comes easier to Mr Skou than most. He was a military policeman in Copenhagen in his native Denmark before coming to Australia in 1981.
He worked as a policeman Toowoomba in Queensland for 19 years.
He also managed a hotel in Seven Hills in Sydney’s west for two years.
While serving in Toowoomba as a community beat police officer, Mr Skou gained valuable experience dealing with youth.
”We would hold Blue Light discos (he ran 72 of them), and I liaised a lot with youth, the local community and got local businesses to make donations to local volunteer services like this,” he said.
“We had five schools in the area that I was an adopt-a-cop for and I would go the schools and talk to the kids. I knew lots of the kids and would sit down and talk with them. I also had to deal with a lot of domestic violence as a first-response officer.”
He believes that the youth of Batemans Bay deserve more credit than they get.
“It is so easy to get bad publicity, but the kids here are lovely, and I have seen lives turned around,” he said.
“Everyone knows the rules and we rarely have problems.”
Mr Skou, who works with two volunteers at the café, (they are on lookout for more) said that they are there to supervise, not crowd the youths.
“It’s not like school; we don’t say ‘do this, do that’,” he said.
“They can come and go as they please. It’s really, really good to have the kids here, because if they weren’t here they would be down in the town. It is in everyone’s best interests that they are here.”