Youth Violence

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Foxcroft]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who has been doing excellent work with the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime and has worked closely with the Youth Violence Commission. I know that this issue has been close to her heart ever since she was elected.

ACEs are traumatic experiences in a young person’s life that can have massive repercussions on an individual’s life chances. People who have grown up with four or more ACEs—only 9% of the population—are 10 times more likely to be involved in violence by the time they are 18, compared with the 52% of young people who have experienced no ACEs. Sustainable relationships can go some way to reducing the negative consequences of ACEs.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend not only on securing this debate, but on her incredible work since her election in 2015 on pushing this agenda, including the public health aspect. Many people bandy “public health” around and use it to mean lots of different things, but the only way it can be successful is with a truly whole-system approach, meaning that every agency, from the police to schools to youth services, should take adverse childhood experiences into account. Does she agree that that consequently means delivering a trauma-informed approach?

[Vicky Foxcroft]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have had discussions about visiting trauma-informed schools, and we need a much bigger focus on trauma-informed approaches to understand both what they mean and the impact on young people who have experienced trauma.

Turning to some people who do understand that experience, the youth workers I have met completely understand the importance of building and maintaining relationships with the young people they work with. They know the positive impact that that can have on a young person’s life—especially a young person who may not have other adults in their life that they can rely on. They can be that positive role model. However, instead of investment in long-term sustainable relationships, we see piecemeal interventions—little pots of money invested in short programmes.

What can we do? Well, here are a few things that the Youth Violence Commission has recommended. We should develop a national youth policy framework, which would make the provision of youth work a statutory duty. We should ensure that any adult working with young people is professionally trained, especially in recognising signs of trauma. All youth workers should be trained in the same way as social workers. Policies and practices should be evidence informed and developed, and youth workers should be recognised, supported and respected in their field. We need to build young people’s resilience, ensuring that they can cope with and bounce back from adversity. We should provide positive role models and peer mentors to raise low aspirations and self-confidence.

The youth sector is currently an unregulated marketplace. While we want to see innovation, we also want to ensure that we hold youth work to nationally recognised standards. We need a much more consistent approach, with a focus on long-term results, not short-term interventions. Youth centres need to be open access and safe spaces for young people. It should go without saying, but key to youth work is listening to the voices of young people. It should not take a genius to recognise this, but the experiences and views of young people should be at the core of and inform the delivery of youth services. When the Youth Violence Commission conducted the safer lives survey, we asked young people, “If there was one thing you could change that you think would make young people safer, what would it be?” and the most popular response was the provision of more youth centres, sports clubs and other youth activities in their local areas.

I asked the Home Office to respond to this debate as well, because this is not a matter DCMS can tackle by itself, but I do have some questions I would like the Minister here to answer. Youth workers, teachers and police officers told the commission that the most dangerous time for knife attacks involving young people is between 3 pm and 6 pm—after school finishes and before parents finish work—but the Office for National Statistics, the Met police, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, city hall’s London Datastore, London ambulance dispatch data, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and the wonderful House of Commons Library were unable to get us data on the times at which knife attacks take place. When professionals in the field are consistently raising concerns about after-school attacks and grooming, why is this data not published? Will the Minister commit to obtaining the data and publishing it? Does she agree that after-school youth work and activities could help to keep young people safe?

I do not believe that we will ever reduce the level of violence without addressing ACEs. I worry that too many people in Parliament do not understand the impact of ACEs, although I am glad that the expertise of the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who unfortunately is not present, informed our recommendations. Will the Minister commit to reviewing the impact of ACEs and developing a plan to reduce them? Will the Government commit to reviewing the funding model for the sector to ensure it is more collaborative and less competitive, so that we can deliver a regulated youth service that any young person can access, as and when they need it?

Many young people have said to me that they are treated like they are part of the problem when they should be at the heart of the solution. What consultations have the Government conducted with young people to find out what kind of youth provision they want? Finally, I sent the Minister a copy of the Youth Violence Commission’s interim report, and I was glad to hear that she has read our recommendations in detail. Will she commit to or comment on the parts of the report that relate to reforming youth services and the sector?

If the Government are serious about adopting a public health strategy, it is the responsibility of every Department to understand and address the root causes of violence. Youth services play a role in tackling youth violence, as do schools, councils, social workers, hospitals, mental health services, the police and every other service that touches the life of a young person. A genuine public health approach to violence must be cross-departmental and cross-party, so I hope the Minister will raise my concerns with her Department and her counterparts across Government. I look forward to hearing her response to my questions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tracey Crouch]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that. I am now something of an expert on cross-departmental strategies, having been the Minister responsible for the sports strategy, which involves 10 Departments, for the Office for Civil Society strategy, which involves numerous Departments, and for the forthcoming loneliness strategy, which covers nine Departments. I therefore completely appreciate and understand the important point she is making.

Although I might not know all the answers to the hon. Lady’s questions, I do know that this Government have no higher priority for young people than to keep them safe, which is why I am pleased to say that we broadly welcome the commission’s recommendations, some of which anticipated policy announcements we have since made. There is much that we can agree on: the roots to the problem of youth violence are complex and there are no quick fixes; the solution does not lie with any particular Department or single part of the community; and we need a systematic approach, backed by strong and consistent leadership. I am sure that we can all agree that the Home Secretary’s recent announcement on consulting on a new legal duty to underpin a public health approach to serious violence is welcome. That would mean that police officers, education partners, and local authority and healthcare professionals would have a new legal duty to take action and prevent violent crime. That statutory duty would make tackling serious violence a top priority for all key partners, ensuring that all agencies are working together to prevent young people being caught in the criminal cycle.

[Louise Haigh]

When I saw the Home Secretary’s announcement, I questioned how the situation would be any different from these people’s current responsibilities under crime and disorder reduction partnerships, which were introduced under the last Labour Government. I appreciate that this is not necessarily the Minister’s responsibility, but I would be grateful if she could elaborate somehow on how the duty would enhance existing responsibilities, which do require these people to work together to prevent crime.

[Tracey Crouch]

I would not dream of inadvertently misleading the House by trying to respond to a question for another Department to which I would not know the answer. However, there is a Home Office official in the Box this evening, and they will be able to provide a written response to the hon. Lady’s questions. I am sure that Home Office questions are also just around the corner.

An essential part of the approach, as the report notes, will be to address early intervention. The bit of money I am responsible for—the £90 million dormant accounts money that was recently announced—and the £200 million youth endowment fund announced by the Home Secretary will help to address this issue. I am not pretending that they will solve the issues, but both are designed to provide long-term support and learning.

The commission also calls for a reform of youth services. I agree with a number of the points in that section of the report, including the finding that funding and services are fragmented and siloed. The House might have missed it, but in early August I published the civil society strategy, within which I committed to a review of the statutory duty for local authority youth services. If, following that review, the guidance needs to be strengthened, we will do so. However, this is not all about the Government, and that was very much acknowledged in the commission’s report. We need the public, private, social and faith sectors to work much more closely at a community level.

It is really important that the House gets to celebrate the positive role that youth work can play in keeping our young people safe. I recognise, as I am sure we all do, the transformational impact that high-quality interventions can have on all young people, but especially on those who are vulnerable to exploitation or at risk of making poor life choices. We value the role that community youth organisations have in building trust between young people and the wider community. They can play an important role in signposting and facilitating access to services and overcoming barriers to engagement. It would be foolish not to acknowledge that there have been cuts to local authority youth services, but there has also been substantial innovation in new forms of delivery—not least in the hon. Lady’s home borough, where Youth First, the mutual that delivers youth services in Lewisham, has received direct funding from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to develop its capacity.

It is also worth acknowledging the support that the Home Office is giving to the “For Jimmy” project in three schools in Deptford as part of the Safe Havens programme. A trusted relationship with a responsible adult or peer, a safe space, and finding a “teachable moment” are key parts of the youth work approach and we support them.