‘Children will power the city’s progress and they need protecting’
WHAT is a gang? When I was younger a gang was a group of kids, hanging out together, normally either outside the local shop or down the local park.
Today though gangs are becoming increasingly linked with serious crime, violence and exploitation.
Often our communities think the culprits are the young people we see on the street, too many of our young people are pigeonholed by their own communities as simply ‘wrong uns’.
In many cases this simply is not the case. We need to recognise that these young people are vulnerable, they are victims, and indeed in far too many cases across our city they are the ones being intimidated, threatened and exploited.
The path these children will take is not set in stone and through the work of our early intervention and youth offending services we can support them and their families to ensure that they feel safe and can go on to achieve.
It is a sad fact that across our country, serious organised criminals are taking advantage of our young people, exploiting their need to belong and taking them down a road of criminality that none of us would want for our own children.
We are working hard with Staffordshire Police and other partners to ensure that those who wish to exploit our children feel the full force of law.
So the question becomes what do we do about it? What should our response be? I believe the very first thing we need to be clear about is that giving up on our young people is not an option. We need to provide that sense of belonging that many of our young people are searching for.
We need to be inclusive in our communities, providing space for young people to not only spend their time but to make their own.
We’ve seen this approach work already in Stoke-on-trent, in our city centre, voluntary organisations like Ruff and Ruby providing space for young people, space they have the ownership of.
We need to be more joined up in terms of the service that is provided to young people.
At present in Stoke-on-trent there is a plethora of organisations all doing fantastic work with some of our hardest to reach young people, whether it be large groups like the YMCA or smaller more local organisations like Together We Make a Difference, not to mention the city council’s own youth service who do a brilliant job providing sessions for young children, teenagers and learning difficulties.
People such as these provide an integral offer for our young people, often being able to build relationships in a way that statutory services simply can’t.
The landscape across our city is diverse when it comes to youth provision but by working together, and using the city council to facilitate the discussion,
These voluntary sector providers can really drive change in the lived experience of children and young people within our city.
Finally, our schools, they play a massive part in the lives of our young people in Stoke-on-trent, often acting as the link between differing agencies.
We need to support our schools to recognise when children are going through challenging times and to be able to access the support needed.
Recently, the city council adopted the child exploitation strategy, an important document that makes clear that for young people in Stoke-on-trent gangs are as much a threat as any other and that we have a duty as a city to recognise this.
It has to go further than just recognising that this is an issue in Stoke-on-trent, an issue that permeates into every community across our city, whether it be my own ward of Baddeley, Milton and Norton right through to Trentham.
We have to look at the way we drive things forward, recently we have created an early help and intervention board again to bring partners together around our you people.
Children are our number one priority in Stoke-on-trent, they are the force that will power this city’s continual economic progress and that is a resource that needs protecting and nurturing.
That is the job that we have take on.