Youth workers say Lambeth council failing on gangs

Having visited two projects involving young people in Lambeth yesterday - one at Livity in Brixton, and another involving the arts in ten Lambeth schools on display at the Festival Hall, it was alarming to hear the comments of Youth Workers in Lambeth yesterday.

Youth workers have come out publicly and criticised Lambeth council for their failures around gangs.

The particular comments - made to James O'Brien on LBC 97.3 - referred to the shooting of a five year old girl in Stockwell. They said it exposed serious failings in the way Lambeth is trying to tackle gang crime.

Youth workers point out that millions in funding has been cut for services that were helping to address the issue – and this has been one of the direct causes of the spread of gang crime.

This is what one Youth Worker said:

“There are parts of Lambeth they refer to as Gaza Strip or so forth. So the young people recognise that they live in a war zone and they join gangs for protection, because they are not getting protection from the police or the local authority.

“Lambeth [Council] withdrew critical funding for these workers – and these are amongst the best workers that you can get to work with these gang members.”

This is an issue that has been raised by many people. I went down to Knight's Youth Centre in Streatham, which has faced cuts, recently to find out what the impact has been. I have also stayed in touch since then, and it was confirmed that they have seen a big surge in knife crime in particular, usually between gangs and sometimes within gangs, in recent months.

Lambeth's work with young offenders found to be 'poor' in wake of wave of stabbings

There is a worrying piece in the Evening Standard concerning Lambeth Council's failures around monitoring of young offenders.

It concerns a report, published yesterday, by HM Inspectorate of Probation.

The report found that serious young offenders in Lambeth (which the article points out is currently being hit by a wave of stabbings) are not being properly monitored by council staff.

Recent stabbings include the fatal attack on 17-year-old student Kwame Ofosu-Asare who was chased and stabbed while walking through the Moorlands Estate in Brixton to visit a friend on March 2.

Among the problems highlighted by the Inspectorate report:

- a widespread failure to identify the “risk of harm” that violent teenagers, including gang members, pose to other members of the public.

- inadequate work to reduce the likelihood of juvenile criminals re-offending

- poor management supervision to ensure that they are dealt with properly after their release.

The report warns that risk of harm assessments are done inadequately in nearly six out of 10 cases, with many under-rating the danger posed by juvenile offenders. Work on reducing the risk of re-offending is also done well only 52 per cent of the time.

Announcing the findings, Chief Inspector of Probation Liz Calderbank said: “We found a number of areas where practice fell below what was needed. Overall, we consider this a poor set of findings.”

I recently talked with young workers in Lambeth, who are greatly concerned about the violence that they are now routinely seeing, including many incidents of knife crime. It seems that the poor performance by Lambeth in monitoring and working with young offenders mixed with Lambeth's severe cuts to youth services, is contributing to the creation of a lethal cocktail of violence in the borough.

Knights Youth Centre facing cuts to vital programmes

Today the Government's Victim's Panel comes to Lambeth, following the recent riots and looting. This is being welcomed by Labour councillors.

The good work that this might do will be undermined however by the fact that central Government and these same councillors between them are pushing ahead with cutting youth services in Lambeth. This is already having a serious affect on youth centres around the borough, and will do so on young people and communities for years to come.

This includes Knight's Youth Centre in Clapham/ Streatham, which I remember from 40 years ago when I was growing up. As reported in the print edition of Tuesday's South London Press (not online at the moment) the Centre gets 200 children through the doors each week (mainly from the Clapham Park Estate) but is already having to cut staff and services. It is £85,000 short on the funding it needs for this year alone (about half its budget). A vital mentoring and apprenticeship programme looks as if it may have to close, which would be a tragedy, as this trains up children to be youth workers themselves.

The Centre is applying for a small amount of money from the NatWest community fund, and it will get the grant if enough people vote for it. You can do so here (You have until 23rd October to vote).

Responding to Tottenham - and now Lambeth

The trouble that began in Tottenham has now spread to Lambeth.

Some politicians and commentators have gone no further than expressions of outrage, suggesting simply that what has happened isn’t supported by the overwhelming majority of people in a community, and heaping the blame on a few ‘criminals’.

But this does nothing to explain the timing, let alone make any headway in getting to the root of the problems and issues involved.

Several observations can be made, and there are concrete actions that should be taken:

1. To locate those involved in the rioting and looting ‘outside’ our communities is to wash our hands and abdicate responsibility. No one exists in a vacuum. What is taking place affects all our lives. Those directly involved also have friends, families, and surrounding networks, whose attitudes, opinions and behaviour will have a direct influence and bearing on what is going on. This is not simply about the behaviour of a handful of people, but the feelings and actions of whole communities.

2. Central are the relationships of these communities with the police, both in the broadest sense, but also in the events which were the catalyst for the rioting and looting - the shooting of Mark Duggan and the subsequent protest.

3. The Broadwater Farm riots in 1985 were triggered by the death of Cynthia Jarrett, who suffered a stroke after police officers searched her home. As we saw over her death the truth is a vital part of the healing and restoration process. A full and urgent investigation is needed into the shooting of Mark Duggan.

4. We need an urgent independent review of the wider relationship between police and local communities, and in particular of stop and search powers. I travelled through Brixton every day at the time of the Brixton riots 30 years ago, when the 'Sus' law under which anybody could be stopped and searched if officers merely suspected they might be planning to carry out a crime, were used. The Scarman report which looked into the riots eventually led to their abolition. But the impact of current laws needs to be urgently examined.

5. It is notable that the trouble has not taken place in the leafy suburbs, or the richer areas of London. The wider economic climate, in particular large rates of youth unemployment must be taken into account. The situation is made all the more worse by cuts to youth services. In Lambeth there have been cuts of £11.85m to the council’s children and youth services budget, including a £250,000 reduction to the youth offending team budget alone. This makes the possibilities of addressing the underlying problems even more remote. We need swift action to restore vital youth services.