Conservative Party Conference: On the Fringe with Kids Count

At Kids Count we have spent nearly two years working on the police and crime commissioners (PCCs) and what role can communities and young people play to help reduce crime.

So we the youth decided to continue this theme. We focus our work on peer-identified solutions and have almost a decade of knowledge in this area.

At our fringe meeting our key speakers, other than Dan and I of course, were James Brokenshire MP, Mike Penning MP, Dr Lee Rotherham and David Lloyd, the PCC of Hertfordshire. We were immensely impressed by the level of concern towards reforming crime policy, and how the young community could contribute to that factor. David Lloyd touched on how the youth could be involved and therefore help decrease crime.

We had the opportunity to express our views on how the PCCs can act in order to ensure that their plans materialise. Safak spoke of the importance to reach out to schools and communities in order to fix the tension between the police and the youth.

Dan spoke a lot about different projects and strategies Kids Count have identified to help reduce crime through our youth-led international research. One program he spoke about in detail are the Peer Courts, there are many different models used in America. Kids Count has been following and visiting these courts for almost 10 years. Seventy-two young advisers from the charity have visited these and have settled a model that they think will work best here. We have been promoting these ideas for soooo long and finally people are starting to listen.  We are hoping to implement pilots in the UK. Watch this space.

At the moment it is too early to tell what focus the individual commissioners will have; it has only been implemented for a year, but it has certainly been growing in impact. Communities have started to become more vocal. Although at the elections in November last year the level of commitment from the community was not shown by the shockingly low votes (15 per cent to be precise). I learned that in order to raise the votes for the next elections, the media must stress the importance of these elections, and also the PCCs themselves should be active in their communities to build the trust.

Kids Count will be monitoring the progress made by the commissioners and will report back soon. Watch this space.

If you would like more information on what we are doing or you would like to get involved in our policy reviews. Please contact angela@kidscount.org.uk

And finally it was nerve racking speaking to an audience, which included politicians and experts but we are grateful of the chance that we'd gotten to speak about our concerns.

Safak and Naz are blogging on behalf of Kids Count, a think-tank focused on the practical rather than the theoretical. Find out more at www.kidscount.org.uk