Riots!

Interesting discussion on Radio 4 today coming back from Fife. The riots across England have shocked quite a few people and we are now reacting and engaging in a debate about young people and crime.

I think that you really have to look at these situations in two timeframes, one short term re how we need to deal with the criminality and the other long term about the causes and solutions.

The first I'm sure we will all agree needs to be clear enforcement of the law by our police colleagues though I can understand the difficult choices when you have limited manpower.

I am more interested in the second, more strategic challenge particularly in the middle of reducing public services. Lets firstly agree that there is no excuse for the criminality and thuggery we have seen on our TV screens and I am in no way trying to excuse that. However there is a huge question for me if we intentionally withdraw from any relationship with vulnerable young people knowing that we are further alienating and excluding them.

Who is the ‘we' here? It's us as society. For the past year YMCA Scotland has been warning that the cuts in public services have been hitting community engagement provision ie services that engage and support vulnerable young people in deprived communities. This has meant for instance that across Scotland from 2008 - 2010 we lost 23% of our local Council youth work staff.

Now if I am a teenager and am going to even think of changing my behaviour or choices then this is only going to happen through a person whom I respect and trust and who is ‘in relationship' with me. Forgive my generalisation but this will rarely be a social worker or policeman or teacher or parent or indeed any other figure of authority. It is quite likely however that it will be a youth worker or community worker.

So as we continue this debate lets revisit the wisdom of taking away from vulnerable teenagers the very people who can change behaviour and influence choices.

In YMCA's mentoring work evaluators found in 2011 that through a trusted relationship we were able to achieve...

"...significant improvement in behaviour and attitudes in 86% of young people"

This working with some of the highest risk young people across Scotland.

No doubt we will go into great depth in our scrutiny of the current problem and rightly so. But just maybe I wonder if we already know the solution?