Renewed political spotlight puts focus on reaching out to gangs
Neil Puffett
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Despite encouraging signs that youth violence is on the wane, youth work experts are warning that better co-ordination is needed to engage and divert a hardcore of young people involved in street gangs.
In the time since the government's strategy to tackle youth and gang violence was published in the wake of the August 2011 riots, the issue has fallen down the pecking order of the national media.
But the topic re-emerged into the spotlight last month when Cabinet Office minister Nick Hurd announced a £2m fund for charities working with vulnerable young people, including those at risk of getting involved with gangs, while around the same time Mayor of London Boris Johnson appointed Ray Lewis as the capital's gangs tsar to tackle the problem.
National statistics on gangs and youth violence are scarce, but figures for London indicate that significant progress is already being made.
Totalling 11 in 2012, the number of murders of teenagers in the capital hit a seven-year low. So far this year, the number has risen to 15, but that is still significantly down on the 2008 peak of 30.
Meanwhile, overall youth violence in London is down 28 per cent, from 6,899 offences in 2011/12 to 4,968 offences in 2012/13. And knife injuries to under-25s have also reduced by 28 per cent - 1,380 offences in 2012/13 compared to 1,905 in 2011/12.
Future improvements
So what has been the catalyst behind the improvements, and will the new funding and London tsar help cement these further?
Stephen Greenhalgh, the Mayor or London's policing chief, says the formation of the Metropolitan Police's Trident Gang Crime Command, launched in February 2012, has had a big part to play in the reductions. The unit takes a more co-ordinated and consistent approach to gangs across London, working alongside dedicated gang units to take tougher enforcement action in the capital's 20 youth violence "hot spot" boroughs.
The command also works closely with local groups to help support young people to enable them to be diverted away from a life in gangs and crime - including the Damilola Taylor Foundation, Safer London Foundation, the Princes Trust, Growing Against Gangs and Violence, and the St Giles Trust.
Youth justice responsibility
However, Greenhalgh wants even more co-ordination across boroughs and, alongside Johnson, advocates responsibility for youth justice being handed to City Hall rather than individual youth offending teams across London.
"We would like to have strategic oversight of youth justice," he says. "We need coherence in how we fund initiatives to ensure we get a system that gives young people a second chance."
He also concedes that the evidence base for projects must be improved before they can be adopted more widely.
"We have to know what works," he says. "We can't just fund initiatives because they sound good. We need to improve the evidence base around these problems."
One project that is currently being evaluated that is showing promising results is the St Giles Trust SOS project. Staffed and managed by ex-offenders, it works in 13 boroughs across London, helping clients access benefits, get housed, find educational courses and gain training and employment.
Junior Smart, founder of the project, says reoffending rates for those taking part, at about 25 per cent, are well down on the current 70 per cent rate for 10- to 17-year-olds leaving custody.
He says the project's success can be put down in large part to a personalised approach by staff. They try to find out what the underlying issues for gang involvement is - and then attempt to address it.
"If someone commits a robbery, it could be for a number of reasons," Smart says. "It could be for financial gain or it could be an initiation.
"Once you have tracked down a reason, you can provide a service."
However, Smart concedes that some of the issues, such as housing and employment, are difficult to address without action at a higher level.
"The biggest thing the government can do is support the grassroots agencies and voluntary sector organisations doing the frontline work," he says. "But it also has to take note of the larger underlying issues.
"These young people are desperate for opportunities, but there aren't any for them. There have been cutbacks in youth activities and youth support.
"I understand that we are in a deficit situation, but these young people are desperate to get involved in the community and take responsibility."
Different tactics
Smart is also mindful of the need for police and other agencies to adapt to ways gangs are evolving and using different tactics.
"Gangs are setting up 'franchises' up and down the country," he says. "They are moving into provincial towns.
"If they get locked up, they are learning that they can build new alliances in young offender institutions, and there is now a lot of violence in custody that is gang-related.
"The authorities have to be aware of this."
But London is not the only city facing a problem with gangs and youth violence.
Of the 33 "hotspots" identified by the government in 2011, 13 are outside the capital - Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Knowsley, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Oldham, Salford, Sandwell, Sheffield and Wolverhampton.
YMCA Sutton Coldfield, in the north of Birmingham, runs a detached youth work project to engage and signpost at-risk young people and their families to existing support services and opportunities.
Stephanie Winter, deputy chief executive of Sutton Coldfield YMCA, says gang activity in the area has remained at a relatively constant level in recent years, but believes the project is making a difference in making young people aware of the consequences of their decisions and turning them away from gang crime.
Activities with young people include "diversionary" trips, such as ice-skating, go-karting and rock-climbing.
But Winter fears that their work can only achieve so much unless it is accompanied by long-term youth provision.
"It's not just about the immediate prevention work, it is about what you can divert them to," she says.
"All the areas we are working in have no youth provision - either voluntary or statutory.
"These young people are not engaged and have no aspiration. An increase in youth provision would make a big difference."
In numbers
250 - Gangs in London (of which, 167 are criminally active and 54 considered "high harm")
800 - Number of youth engagement events Trident's Gang Crime Command has attended since April 2012
28% - Amount youth violence in London is down, from 6,899 offences in 2011/12 to 4,968 in 2012/13
Source: Met Police
HEALTH AND WELLBEING BOARDS
Local health and wellbeing boards, which came into force in April this year, were identified in the Home Office's 2011 Ending Gang and Youth Violence report as having a role to play in addressing the issue.
However, a study last month by crime prevention charity Catch22 found that more than 80 per cent of boards in England's 33 gang "hotspots" do not have a strategy in place to tackle the kind of health problems that can contribute to youth and gang violence.
Tom Sackville, assistant director of Catch22's research team, the Dawes Unit, says health and wellbeing boards are well placed to provide services that can support young people leaving the lifestyle, as well as the kind of prevention services that can stop them getting involved in the first place.
"Employment and housing is often the best way for young people to get out of that lifestyle, but health issues can stop them being able to get either of those," he says. "Finding ways of meeting the health needs that can prevent that, such as mental health issues or substance misuse, is vital.
"The use of a key worker who understands the local context, and can support the young person to negotiate the complex map of services they need to move forward, is also important."
Sackville says that, in some instances, there is a need for a radical redesign of services in order to get those young people who are involved with gangs and youth violence to engage with health services.
He adds that there is also a need to consider thresholds for people being referred to services and the way that primary care services - such as doctor's surgeries - are arranged for them.
"There is a strong argument to consider the design of services so they meet the needs of service users," he says.
"Many service users wouldn't necessarily go to a GP in the first place, and wouldn't necessarily attend a referral appointment that had been made two weeks in advance. That whole system does not really meet the needs of people they work with, who very much live in the present.
"There are some interesting examples of services being taken to young people. There is a real need for outreach services."
In terms of prevention, Sackville wants health and wellbeing boards to consider projects that can help develop resilience in young people to manage their issues before they become problematic and potentially result in mental health or substance misuse problems.
South London-based youth work charity Redthread has had success at developing partnerships with health agencies over the past decade.
In 2004, it set up a project with King's College Hospital to offer young people with violence-related injuries attending the emergency department the opportunity to speak to trained youth workers.
This has developed over time, with the service now employing a specialist worker to support girls who are suspected of being exploited by gangs.
Once engaged, young people can access GPs, mental health professionals or addiction specialists in the community. To this end, the creation of The Well Centre in Streatham in 2011 - a partnership between Redthread and the Herne Hill GP Group Practice - has been instrumental.
Redthread chief executive John Poyton says: "In young people's health, we can engage and build rapport with them, and support them with whatever they turn up with.
"No young person is happy to be labelled or identified by their moment of crisis. Whether it be, for example, a victim of serious youth violence, a hay fever sufferer or a self harmer - young people are not the sum of their condition.
"When youth work works hand in hand with health, we enable young people to feel comfortable having built a rapport with the team and to get the help they need quickly, and move on from crisis and back to their lives."