It’s been an interesting couple of months. For the last few years, I’ve been writing about the challenges our young people face, having experienced a pandemic, a cost of living crisis, increased poverty, a housing crisis, a climate crisis and now global uncertainty. Throw into that social media, the rise of the right and toxic masculinity, and you have a mix of pressures and influences, that I’m glad I didn’t need to deal with as a young person whilst trying to work who I was, where I fitted in and how to cope with adult life. And all this has been exacerbated by year-on-year cuts to the key services young people need to support their development, like youth work.
Of course, most of our young people are coping amazingly well. In some online forums I follow, I’ve definitely noticed an increase in people positively talking about young people and commenting on prosocial behaviours.
But as I predicted, for politicians at least, the impact of all these negative influences on young people is starting to play out on the streets. Recently, the headlines have sadly been about young people being stabbed in Portobello and, tragically, a young person being murdered at Troon beach.
First Minister John Swinney was grilled at FM questions about the government’s response, and it was encouraging that whilst he emphasised ‘enforcement’, he acknowledged that it’s not only about that, but about early intervention and prevention. The FM has also held a ‘youth violence summit’ firstly with young people and later with representatives of the youth work sector.
Venture Scotland was also recently invited to attend a ‘Reducing Youth Violence’ workshop in Edinburgh, organized by the Violence Reduction Unit and Police Scotland.
A few people recently asked me about the work Venture Scotland does and commented that we don’t really work with young people involved in the justice system.
But I disagree.
Many of the newspaper reports on youth violence are saying it’s actually organised crime and gangs that are driving this violence, and we don’t work with ‘those’ young people, but we need to look at why it’s been so easy for criminals to recruit young people.
We need to understand that organised criminals are targeting the most vulnerable young people within our communities. Those young people who are excluded from school, those struggling to express and understand their emotions, those young people who are trying to work out who they are and how they fit into this world, those struggling with isolation and their mental health. Those young people who are being let down by ‘the system’.
And how do they do it? They get alongside these young people and offer them respect, they surround them with peers and adults to create a sense of belonging, they give them a means to protect themselves and financial incentives which feels empowering, they give them responsibility which feels like trust and they say they are going to look after them in a world that doesn’t care, which feels like compassion.
Do trust, respect, compassion, belonging and empowering ring a bell? Yes, they are Venture Scotland’s values!
The young people we support and engage with are exactly the type of young people organised criminals are targeting, drawing them into a life of crime and exploiting them for their own ends.
Of course, what they are offering is not the same. It’s a life full of anxiety, risk-taking, offending, violence, physical and emotional threat, incarceration and possible injury or death. Importantly, it is a life without hope, without a future.
What we do is surround our young people with adults who really care, volunteers who give up their time for free to support them, skilled staff who can help them understand their emotions and a safe space to explore who they really are. We give them the skills to live a positive, happy and fulfilling life. We give them hope.
So NOW there are headlines in the papers, and politicians are sitting up and taking note. They are holding summits with young people and youth workers, acknowledging the key role youth work plays in early intervention and prevention. They are also realising the damaging impact of reducing funding.
They’re asking, ‘Is NOW too late?’ Suggesting the damage has been done to a whole generation of young people? That we just need to strengthen our criminal justice system to cope with more criminals?
Again, I disagree!
Every young person deserves to have hope in their life. Our Venture Scotland Vision states we endeavour to create ‘A world in which people see their self-worth and have hope for the future’. It is NEVER too late. What we need to do is get alongside young people, no matter their background, surround them with trust, respect, belonging, compassion and empowering AND trusted positive adult role models, and we can change lives for the better.
Our politicians need to understand that investing in youthwork NOW is not only a down payment for all our futures, but a key way to support the individual, our economy, our communities and our society. Time will tell if they agree and follow their words with actions.
David Brackenridge, CEO