Build communities to tackle knife crime

It is a great headline for a journalist and from a distance the public can easily join the dots. However, in reality, the picture is far more complex.

Over the past decade, £781m has been removed by local authorities from youth services, and this has impacted our own ability to deliver youth work where it is needed most.

The rise in knife crime among young people is more than just youth service cuts, it goes back to the heart of what we call community. In our towns and cities it feels like we have lost this sense among young people. Go back a generation and our young people were playing on the street, over the park or at a local youth centre. They were doing this from a young age and building relationships with other people from their area.

Currently, there is a generation where some do not interact with anyone else outside of school unless it is online. The conduit for this is predominantly their phones or games consoles. The opportunities for positive engagements in person are severely lacking and the spaces where young people were able to meet previously have either reduced or disappeared altogether.

The issue now - and why people are making the link between knife crime and youth service cuts - is that these budgetary choices seemed fine while there were no immediate repercussions. Government and local authority policy has failed to foster a sense of community among young people, instead choosing to leave them to their own devices, literally.

You cannot form a community unless you care about the people within it and they in turn care about you. Unfortunately, for some young people their first taste of community is through gangs. Those turning to knife crime represent a small percentage of young people but they will more often than not be situated in the most deprived communities, where youth work previously thrived.

If we are to overcome the escalation in violence, young people need to come together to build trust and relationships with each other and in their wider community, they have to feel they have a stake and ownership over the future of their local area. What has remained constant despite these cuts is that the best way to facilitate relationships is still through quality youth work with a trusted adult and in a safe environment.

To resolve knife crime, policymakers have to get to the core of why it is acceptable to both use a knife and also feel the necessity to carry one. Young people in many communities do not feel safe. The best way to combat this long term is bringing young people together at an early age; forming the relationships which will ultimately build the communities we are lacking today.

• Denise Hatton is chief executive of YMCA UK