Too many initiatives and not enough resources for young people.

I spent Friday night with the Stay Safe programme in Salford. The local authority, police and youth offending service have staff who tour the streets of Salford every Friday night from 6pm until midnight in a marked police car and an unmarked car to find children and teenagers on the streets. I arranged my participation through Mike Ormrod of the youth offending service, as we have been working with them on the Local Government Association partnership to develop good practice to keep children out of prison. Salford YOS has done some great work in children’s homes supporting staff so that when there is an altercation the staff do not resort to calling the police which has resulted in a drop in the criminalisation of children in care.

The shock for me was how many young people we found just hanging around, in the freezing cold. We must have stopped to talk to at least 100 young people over the evening, in groups of 5 to 30. They were all polite, friendly, charming, funny and bored out of their minds. Only a couple were smoking (cigarettes) and I didn’t see any drinking. These were lovely young people with nothing to do but hang around in the cold in parks, on swings and on street corners. They were simply standing and chatting to each other.

There was apparently one incident with a broken window when a lad had kicked a football. This ended up with the police filing a report, but could easily have been resolved informally with the young man being asked to apologise and pay for the damage to be repaired.

But my real concern was for the welfare of these young people. They said all they wanted was a warm room, a sofa and some music for dancing.

I understand that the department for children, schools and families is funding the Stay Safe initiative, and that it is costing almost £200,000. Couldn’t that money be spent on providing somewhere for these young people to go for a few hours on a Friday night?

It reminds me of the research we conducted a few years ago on preventing rural crime by young people. A parish council in the South West was concerned that teenagers were hanging around the bus stop in the evening, so instead of providing them with something to do, the council installed CCTV.

We have too many initiatives, too many corrections, too many punitive and control measures, and not enough resources for young people. Goodness, they are not asking for much or anything expensive.

I came away heartened by my encounters with Salford young people. One lad said “thank you for your concern” as I left, and I think he was only partially being ironic.