Mission: To raise awareness of the risk of gang involvement
Funding: About 100,000 from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and Southwark Youth Offending Team
Gangs may have been in the headlines recently, but in Southwark specific work on the problem has been taking place since 2001.
Mike Montrose-Francis, practice manager at the team, says: "There was an emergence of patterns of offending in young people who came through the youth offending team (YOT), in terms of group offending, and possible gang links."
The YOT allocated two workers to look at the issues, and just over a year ago this grew into a five-person unit after neighbourhood renewal funding was accessed to pay for some extra posts.
The members of the team go into local schools to run gang awareness workshops, and also do one-to-one work with individuals who have been referred to them. These are generally young people who have been arrested for one or more offences that could suggest gang involvement - such as intent to supply, or carrying a weapon.
The team raises awareness of gang involvement, working with a range of young people. At the lower end are groups that may carry the insignia of gangs, but are not involved in offending; others may be involved in group offending; and a minority are members of organised criminal gangs.
With this latter group, the team can work to find them ways out of the gang, if the young person requests it.
"You have young people who buy into the gang culture naively," says Montrose-Francis. "We've got a core group of young people who are gang-involved and offending, then a whole group who are known to those young people that buy into the gang culture, but aren't necessarily involved in offending or dealing drugs."
