It was a sad day for the current and previous staff, members and residents as they said goodbye to the Castlemilk Community Forum.
At a farewell party organised by Marion Osborne the previous manager of the Forum, 20 people attended to pay their respects and bid adieu to the staff.

Despite five years of ground breaking work done by the Forum, the funding has been stopped by Glasgow Community Planning Ltd.
This was confirmed by the Chairperson Emilie Devlin, in a letter issued to the 276 Forum members.

Three staff have been made redundant, Richard Sullivan, Manager, Donna Connor, Active Citizenship Officer and Kate Willis, Administrator.

Donna does capacity building with people aged from 5 to 99 years, in the community. She also works in schools in the area. This has now been dropped.

She said, ‘I am shocked that this work will now not be available to the local people of Castlemilk and this will be a great loss.’

Kate said, ‘I have enjoyed working with the local community and will certainly miss meeting and helping them.’

The Forum was set up in August 2001, by John Simpson, who was the Chairperson until 2005, when he resigned due to ill health; Pat Bonnar, who died a year after the forum was set up and Mary Miller and Marion Osborne, who was the manager until 2005.
Marion said, ‘It’s going to be a real loss but the most worrying thing about the new structure is the loss of independence for the community groups.’

John Simpson, who is now treasurer at the Sports Forum, will take over the musical festival and the Forum’s newsletter with the help of Kate. He said, ‘I am devastated by what has happened. However I’m very worried about the new structures that are in place which appear to be less inclusive of the local community.’

As well as running and organising community groups and events. The forum was an information hub and was the first place to know when anything was planned for the area. Staff dealt with any complaints from locals from transport to housing. They also organised public meetings to resolve the issues.

Four projects have been reconstituted – the Castlemilk Family Day and Castlemilk Community Achievement Awards will be managed by a steering group set up by Cassiltoun Housing Association and chaired by Fiona McGovern.

John Simpson will run the Music Festival and with the help of Kate, will print the final Forum newsletter.