Violence

Today was our third Amsterdam prep meeting. We arrived in a sombre mood as we discussed the murder of the 17-year old Black boy Myron Yarde who was killed in London at the weekend. The story was all over the papers so was on everyone’s mind. Michael decided to tweak the theme of the day’s meeting to address the event in our work. We were asked to come up with 5 best pest practices for youth workers dealing with knife crime, gang violence or police brutality. This is what our group came up with:

• When violent events happen - especially if they relate to young people - it is important for them to be given the time, space and opportunity to air their thoughts and feelings on the issues. How do they feel? Are they scared, sad, angry, confused? Knowing that there is a safe space to discuss these issues is important. Odiri noted that if a young person reveals something particularly worrying, it is important for them to be taken for a one to one immediately so that it can be dealt with promptly. Most importantly, it was made apparent that young people needed to be given the space to articulate their feelings on violence and for them to feel heard, listened to and taken seriously.

• Meaningful education or training should be provided on how to deal with interactions with the police. Stop and search procedures are unfortunately a frequent reality for many young Black people. Kristina in our group let us know that the centre she worked in provides small cards (that fit in an Oyster card holder) to their young people. On one side it provides simple and clear guidelines on what police are and are not allowed to do in a stop and search procedure. On the other side there was a phrase (that they could memorise) to say to the police during the interaction. What we liked about this example was that it was very practical – it told them their rights and exactly what they could do – giving them some form of agency within the situation.

• Macey gave an example of real engagement with the police on a project she worked on. At her organisation the youth workers approached the local police, they invited them to their centre on the condition that they not wear their uniforms and were prepared to get involved in a role play. The police officers and young people did a drama workshop where the young people played the police and vice versa. This interaction forced the police to consider what being stopped and search might feel like from a young person’s perspective. For the young people, they got an insight into the role police felt they had to play. This type of interaction had a positive impact on both parties.

• Another best practice was to have one’s ear to the ground in terms of what may be happening outside of the youth centre. What issues might there be amongst the young people, could something culminate in violence, what areas are the kids from, who might potentially have an issues with who? It became clear that youth workers from the same areas or similar backgrounds to the children they worked with were more au fait with this and tended to do it naturally. I posed the question that rather than just a best practice could this be down to the background of the youth workers themselves. To be a good youth worker do you need to have the same background as those you work with? Can you be taught the cultural knowledge of that group, can you learn to pick up on implicit subtleties and red flags?

• Finally, it was suggested that to be an effective youth worker, you needed to not treat it as a 9:00 - 5:00 job. That if the young people needed you outside of your scheduled shift, you needed to be available and prepared to show up and follow through. I thought this was a noble and important role to play in young people’s lives - especially as youth workers generally work with marginalised and under served groups who may not have individuals in their lives who go the extra mile. However, in my eyes it showed that a lot of work that youth workers do goes unseen as it is done in their own and on their own dime... In my eyes, youth workers play a very important role in our society but do not seem to be treated so or compensated accordingly. As such, whilst doing things outside of the work day may be a norm for many, I felt it was important that their extra work - and the extra value it offers - be compensated so it could be done my more youth workers but also to limit burn out. If the real hours a youth worker did were logged, would that identify the reality that they are working more than they legally should and more funding and more staff need to be provided to make it fairer and safer for all?