Tonight:
4°c
What the people who work with troubled teenagers think
David Cohen, Evening Standard3 Jun 2008
Ray Lewis, 45
Deputy mayor for young people and founder of the Eastside Young Leaders Academy. The organisation helps young African-Caribbean men develop leadership skills, empowering them to become productive citizens.
ATTITUDE TO KNIVES: “I intend to appoint a gangs' czar to vigorously tackle the problem of kids killing kids in London.”
WHAT NEXT: “Liberal approaches employing armies of therapists to understand why boys turn violent have failed. We need radical new thinking. The problem won't be solved by having more police, building more prisons, or employing yet more psychotherapists in schools. If we want to reach the gangs, we have to find the people who speak their language. At one level, it's simple: communities are deeply hierarchical, each has a champion and if you find that leader, you can bring about change. We know who the gang leaders are across our city. What we need is to begin localised conversations with them and to move away from an us and them' mentality. That's the starting point.
“But the problem we face is broader than gangs. We have given in to this idea that teenagers have a right to be rebellious and have retreated from control of our children. We have feral youth because, in short, we have feral adults. If people volunteer to be mentors for three hours a week, we can prevent youngsters on the cusp of exclusion from going down a bad road.”
Founder of Kids Company, a South London organisation working in 33 schools and supporting the practical and emotional needs of 12,000 at-risk children.
ATTITUDE TO KNIVES: “Youth violence is a criminal justice issue as well as a public health issue and the origins of the problem lie in the abuse that vulnerable children are exposed to at the hands of adults, which builds up a desire for revenge which sadly gets acted out on society.”
WHAT NEXT: “More than 553,000 children a year are referred to child protection but only 30,700 are placed on the at-risk register because of under-investment in social services.
“A new model of care is needed at street level, one that embraces the reality of children who don't have a functioning parent in their lives and offers them a seamless care structure that they can access continually, rather than via weekly appointments. As a society, we need to understand that zero tolerance of child abuse translates into zero violence by children and we need to allocate resources accordingly.”
Uanu Seshmi, 48
Director of the From Boyhood To Manhood Foundation, a Peckham charity working with 30 emotionally damaged young people involved in crime and gangs, providing therapy, counselling and education.
ATTITUDE TO KNIVES: “As a society we need to send out a zero-tolerance message that under no circumstances will we tolerate a person carrying a knife, whether with intent to attack others or to defend themselves, and that any person who carries and uses a knife must be prepared to pay with a stint in prison.”
WHAT NEXT: “I believe stop and search is essential because we're at an extreme point that requires extreme solutions. Parents of children caught with knives should be made to attend behaviour modification or anger-management classes with their children and police should target gang members with the aim of making them feel constantly under surveillance and breaking up the culture of gangs.”
Shaun Bailey, 36
Founder of My Generation, a west London charity working with 500 young people and adults in vulnerable families.
ATTITUDE TO KNIVES: “The police cannot solve it alone, it needs input from parents and communities.”
WHAT NEXT: “We need to take back control of our streets and our estates by increasing police presence while also changing the way police relate to the community. The police need to be seen to be even-handed, with no racial prejudice, so citizens learn to trust them and report troublemakers.
“We also need to educate our young people that they will be stopped and searched and that it's for their own good. Parents need to be involved in any sentence the child is given, so as to improve communication between parents and children and address the family as a cohesive unit. We also need to address the physical aspect of our communities, the layout of our estates and critical factors such as proper lighting so as to make sure people not only feel safe, but are safe.
“There needs to be two-way communication between communities and the authorities — police and councils — so the legitimate concerns of people are addressed and they feel heard. We also need to take seriously the imperative of creating physical environments in which young people can express themselves and feel happy.”
Matt Calvert, 34
Founder of Prospex, a north London charity working with 150 youths disengaged from society.
ATTITUDE TO KNIVES: “A deep-seated problem that needs to be tackled at both ends, with tough sentences for perpetrators and more resources for grassroots organisations like ours trying to form relationships with violent children so as to build enough influence over their lives to change their behaviour.”
WHAT NEXT: “Young people caught with knives should serve a mandatory sentence and whatever it is — six months, three years — it should be served in full, otherwise they will feel they got away with it.
“Most teenagers I know carry knives because with everyone else carrying, it makes them feel secure. But they've no intention of using them, nor have any understanding of the consequences. We also need a comprehensive programme that educates young people in schools on the consequences of using a knife, and tackles the lack of self-worth that enables people to wield a knife with impunity.”
