Category Archives: Young people

Education, Employment, Social exclusion, Young people

Caring and learning: the knowledge gap

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As the 17-year-old unpaid carer of a mother with mental health issues, Holly is often asked – by her peers as well as by professionals – about the particular challenges of having a caring responsibility: “When I have tried to explain my situation, the questions have been, ‘Are you homeless? Are you on drugs? Are you being abused? Well things aren’t too bad then’.”

The reaction she often gets shows the low profile and lack of awareness about the particular challenges facing young adult carers. There are thought to be around 230,000 self-declared young adult carers between the ages of 16-25 in the UK but the figure could be much higher because stigma means many do not talk about their caring responsibilities.

Holly’s story is among the testimonies in a new report published today, Voices of young adult carers, stories of young adult carers’ experiences of caring and learning, to mark the start of Carers Week. The week-long drive raises awareness of the contribution the UK’s six million unpaid carers – as reported today, 40% of carers are put off seeking medical treatment because of the pressure of their caring responsibility.

The report that Holly contributed to comes from NIACE (the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education) and highlights the impact of caring on learning. Today’s publication focuses on young adult carers, young people aged 16–25.

Holly was 10 when she realised “my family did not function or behave the same as my friends’ families did”. Her mother rarely left the house, her brother often got into trouble with the police and her parents’ marriage eventually broke up. Referred to her local young carers service by a social worker, she lived part-time between her parents, moving eight times in almost as many years.

As the NIACE report shows, caring leaves young people with little space for school or college, let alone a social life or thinking about their adults futures. As well as having their education disrupted, it is hard for young adult carers to fit apprenticeships or work around caring.

As Holly explains in the report: “The house moves and disruption caused me to change college education halfway through and move to another college. Whilst at a continuous secondary school I was able to find support and the staff were genuine and made good links to my parents, always making sure I had opportunities. Staff even went out of their way to give me a lift home after any outside school activities, especially in the dark winter months. I achieved to my ability and started college where I built up good relationships with tutors. However, on my move to the college 70 miles away I had to restart the course, and although I tried to tell staff about my issues, I was left isolated and have fallen behind in my studies.”

Historically, provision has mainly focused on carers under-18, or adult carers and while NIACE says this is changing, there is still an awareness gap when it comes to knowledge about young adult carers. The situation is not helped because young people like Holly can find it hard to ask for help which, as today’s report suggests, adds to their difficulties with problems such as isolation, frustration, low aspirations and anxiety and behavioural problems. As well as the impact on the individual, there is an obvious knock-on effect on communities and the economy.

Recently, Holly’s mother has suddenly moved again, back to the area the family originally lived in and the teenager has, once more, started the process of changing college.

* More information on NIACE’s work on young adult carers, including resources to support learning providers in their work with young adult carers, is here.

Employment, Social care, Social exclusion, Uncategorized, Young people

Dads and disability

Zach and his father Kevin, who took part in research about fathers of disabled children published today, Dad & Me.
Imagine feeling under pressure to keep your child a secret from your employer. Imagine, at the other extreme, being abandoned by your friends for focusing too much on the needs of that child. What about if you felt you didn’t fully understand your son or daughter’s abilities, or felt so isolated and condemned to a life of hopelessness that you worry the stress is affecting your health or relationship?

This is the reality facing many fathers of disabled children, according to new research published today among 500 dads carried out by disability charity Scope and online community Netbuddy.

As one father told researchers during the survey carried out in April: “My friends have abandoned me because they don’t understand why I have to care for my child so much. And I know she won’t ever get better….My career, once promising to put me at number one in the world at my specialist area, is now going nowhere as permanent exhaustion means that talking intelligibly is a major achievement. But I love and care for my child. It isn’t her fault.”

The research, Dad & Me, aims to raise awareness about the role of male carers; while an estimated 5% of the population are carer dads, so far there has been little research into their experiences.

Today’s findings suggest that:
• 15% of dads keep their child a secret from their employers
• 40% do not fully understand their child’s disability (“Medical appointments are usually in the day and I cannot always get time off work to attend…this leaves me with less first-hand knowledge of what my daughter’s autism means and makes me feel inadequate.”)
• 72% say caring for a disabled son or daughter has affected their relationship with the partner with stress and tiredness among the causes
• 61% think mums are treated differently from dads

Deborah Gundle, Netbuddy founder and mum to Zach who has Angelman syndrome (pictured with his dad above), says: “We wanted to highlight the important role that dad carers have, but to realise the extent of the problems dads are facing has been overwhelming. Even I had not considered the extent of dads’ involvement – both emotionally and practically – and it is commonly the case that mothers are assumed to take all the responsibilities of caring on board.”

Dads feel marginalised as carers as the common view is that women cope better in the home, are listened to more and given more support and sympathy while the role of the father is to support the family financially.

As Richard Hawkes, chief executive of Scope, explains: “This survey shows that everyone involved in supporting families’ needs look long and hard at what can be done to support dads to play a part in caring for their children.” Hawkes argues that if the government is truly to create the family-friendly society it wants, it needs to do more to promote flexible working to support family relationships and finances. Scope also has a support group for fathers, which it hopes to expand.

The fathers in the survey suggest improvements which could help support them in their role as dad carers such as appointments outside working hours, specific help and advice sessions for dads and more employer awareness. Like all parents and siblings of disabled children, they also argue that better social integration – more opportunities for children to integrate with others in their age group in “everyday” social situations – would help.

While in theory parents of disabled children have a right to ask their employers for convenient hours and employers must seriously consider this as an option, there is a gap with reality, according to dads who took part in today’s survey.

Netbuddy has also recently launched a new forum for dads.

James’ story
James is a father to eight-year-old twins Thomas and Alice, who both have dystonic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, and to baby India. A PR consultant, he leaves the house at 6am and returns at 8pm, when his carer role kicks in. “Holding down a demanding job and being a carer can be a stretch at times,” he says. “I’m lucky enough to have a very understanding team of colleagues, but I do worry for dads who get held back in their careers because their employers feel they already have enough on their plate. People are sometimes denied opportunities to move up the ladder.”

James says most people assume that because he works, his wife does all the caring. The dual demands of work and the additional needs of his children means there is precious little time is left James and his wife to be together as a couple. “We have very little time to be together on our own and the pressures of caring for our twins and sleeplessness do take their toll. However, it has had a positive effect too – in building a strong bond through the difficult times we face.”

James would like to see more support for dads in terms of out of working day appointments and extra support services. “All support is during the working day so it’s not accessible for working dads. Asking for support as a father can be seen to be a weakness and a sign that we are not coping. There isn’t enough support or help available to us – and this is essential so that we can provide the best possible care when looking after our loved ones.”

Bullying, Health, Mental health, Wellbeing, Young people

How I fell back in love with learning

The recent Mental Health Awareness Week made me reflect on my experience of mental health problems and how studying is helping me – hopefully – recover.

Recovery from a mental health problem is rarely easy and, in my opinion, highly subjective. Medication may form part of a person’s recovery but those little green and white capsules aren’t the magic “happy pills” you may have envisaged and sometimes the first step is simply trying to access the right help and support to manage your symptoms.

While I’m dubious as to whether I’ll ever fully recover in the medical sense – complete absence of symptoms – by understanding myself and my condition better and am slowly learning what may help alleviate the impact depression and anxiety has on my life.

Last year I began studying with the Open University (OU), a short science course on particle physics which did not require me to leave the house or interact with anybody face to face; my idea of heaven. One of my issues is severe anxiety triggered by social situations, when I’m at my worst I am unable to leave the house for fear of seeing another human being and becoming paranoid, agitated and having to run away.

I’m 23 now and left school with five GCSEs at the age of 16, since then I’ve been in and out of college and university, believing if I was strong enough I could “get over” my mental health problems and fit in with my peers. Unfortunately being in a classroom inevitably triggered my anxiety due in part to bullying in high school which I’ve struggled to recover from.

I was always reluctant to study with the Open University despite encouragement from my mum, a fellow OU student. Part of me felt I was somehow “giving up” by not facing my issues head on and forcing myself to be around people in an educational setting. But, fed up of being a drop-out and realising I’d always preferred the autodidact way of learning I signed up and haven’t looked back since. Studying with the OU allows me to continue my education despite my problems and has helped me fall back in love with learning again, something I doubted would ever happen and believing the opportunity to gain a degree and have a career was something other people had, not some anxious wreck terrified of the world.

Following the completion of some short science courses to ease me back in to studying again I’m now aiming for a degree in physics. It’s not always being easy, concentrating on differential equations for hours on end when you’re depressed and crying your eyes out can be horrific but the university has services on offer for students with disabilities which include the Disabled Students Allowance (to pay for any additional costs relating to your disability), flexibility with assignment deadlines and individual support during examinations. I have asked for extensions for a couple of assignments due to struggling to motivate myself because of my depression.

The study is also part-time which makes things less stressful and means I can study alongside receiving treatment for my mental health. The number of hours I study a day or week varies quite a bit, but on average, around two hours a day are dedicated purely to study. I’ve found when my assignments are due I become a bit obsessive with the studying and can spend days or nights on end studying.

Some people find distance learning isolating and admittedly, sometimes it’d be great to sit down and have a chat with fellow students; there are plenty of opportunities to chat online via the forums, Facebook and Twitter, which suits me.

I have used the forums available on the OU website which is part of it “virtual campus”. I have also used one set up by students on Facebook where I just chatted about the course rather than anything mental health related; it helped remind me I wasn’t on my own.

For some courses there are face-to-face or online tutorials every few months where you get to communicate with your tutor, who is always available by email and telephone. I’ve been too anxious to go to face-to-face tutorials which is why I’m so glad online ones were provided.

Studying as a way of managing a mental health problem may not be for everyone but it has managed to keep me focused and helped me realise my life doesn’t have to be defined by being unwell and a mental health service user. Recovery may be long and arduous but I’m convinced studying – and I hope to finish the degree in another four years – will be an integral part of keeping me mentally healthy.

* Carrie is involved in the charity Young Minds’ VIK (Very Important Kids) project which campaigns on youth mental health. You can follow Carrie and Vik on Twitter @vikproject

media & communication, Music & arts, Race, Uncategorized, Young people

Youth film reveals the hidden gems of black theatre

The term black theatre might conjure up images of a niche and very 20th century concept, but from Ira Aldridge playing Othello in Covent Garden in the 1830s to the 1990 production of Amani Napthali’s Ragamuffin and to grime star Bashy in a rap opera a couple of years ago, the genre is historical and diverse – if lesser known than its mainstream counterpart.

A youth-led film being premiered at London’s Royal Court theatre today, Margins to Mainstream, seeks to demystify and tell the story of black theatre in Britain. Made by young people in west London and Birmingham, in a partnership between London’s Octavia Foundation and Nu Century Arts in Birmingham, with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, its visual treasures include forgotten plays and landmark performances.

Those who appear in the film include playwright and broadcaster Kwame Kwei-Armah and Pat Cumper, director of the Talawa Arts Centre. The film was shot at locations including Theatre Royal East, London Southbank Centre, Royal Court Theatre, Old Vic and The Tabernacle.

The cross-city project allowed young people in London and Birmingham to learn and develop skills in media, research and film-making and is the latest in a series of innovative community filmmaking initiatives from the charity.

Zakiya, 18, a sixth form student studying photography, media and sociology and a tenant of Octavia Housing, adds that working on the project has inspired her to see more theatre and be more creative: “I didn’t really know anything about black theatre before, or theatre in general but it was really great and we saw some good productions…this project has helped build my experience in the field – I’m studying media, sociology and photography and want to be a photographer when I’m older. Seeing the finished film and knowing I’ve been a part of it is incredible.”

After the premiere in London the film will be screened at venues throughout London, Birmingham and the rest of the country and made available to theatres, arts and community groups and other interested groups later on this year. You can find out more about the screenings here.

Health, Learning disability, media & communication, Music & arts, Social exclusion, Third sector, Uncategorized, Wellbeing, Young people

Face the facts, not the film fiction

It’s an uphill struggle for those with so-called invisible difficulties (people with conditions on the autistic spectrum, for example,) to achieve mainstream representation or indeed capture the attention of broadcasters, newspaper editors, politicians and the public.

So imagine the challenge for those with more visible differences.

If you see facial disfigurement in movies, its usually a handy hint just in case you have trouble figuring out the baddie (think Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddie Kreuger and just about every Bond villain). Trying to see if I could disprove this theory, I randomly remembered Liam Neeson in Darkman – scarred, with a grudge, ultimately fighting for justice – but then looked up the tagline” “hideously scarred and mentally unstable scientist seeks revenge against the crooks who made him like that”. Ouch.

Movie memo to kids (they might not know Freddie Kreuger but you can be sure they know Batman’s The Joker or Harry Potter’s Voldemort): look bad on the outside, and you’re bad inside.

Today, Changing Faces, the charity for people and families whose lives are affected by appearance-altering conditions, marks or scars, launches a nationwide film campaign. Please watch it, it’s powerful, elegantly produced and only a minute long.

You might already have spotted the charity’s poster campaign not so long ago which aimed to stop people in their tracks long enough to make them think (instead of simply staring). Today’s Face Equality on Film campaign, it is hoped, will go some way towards tackling the prejudice and crass assumptions experienced by people with facial disfigurement.

The campaign calls for balanced portrayals of people with disfigurements on screen and the film, which will be shown in 750 Odeon cinemas, invites audiences to challenge their assumptions about Leo Gormley, a man with burn scars. It also stars Downton Abbey actor Michelle Dockery.

As a teenager in the ’80s, my first foray into the mind-boggling world of skincare and “beauty” products involved a desperate desire to cover barely perceptible blemishes, inspired by the seemingly zit-free stars on my Smash Hits front cover. But since, then the concept of “beauty” has become even more extreme, and digital wizardry can clear imperfections in the blink of a heavily-made-up eye.

I’m conscious that my seven-year-old daughter, for example, is growing up in a media environment dominated by images of identikit, airbrushed, photoshopped lovelies projecting an unobtainable and flawless version of “looking good”.

In a world where older women are elbowed off the television news because their faces, rather than their news judgement, start to sag, what hope for those whose features even further removed from what is deemed be aesthetically pleasing? Changing Faces has already worked with Channel Five news to shatter such stereotypes.

But if women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities are under-represented in television, then people whose differences are more obvious are, ironically, even more invisible.

And if facial differences feature on television, they do so in a medical capacity, in documentaries that present abnormality as something to be gawped at or “put right”. While the concept behind The Undateables might have been well-intentioned, it was the title of the show that put me off.

As Changing Faces’ chief executive James Partridge said in response to that Channel 4 series: “TV series with derisory titles makes life just that bit more difficult – it’s so unnecessary and it’s unfair. Very good factual and sensitive documentaries on disfigurement-related topics are frequently spoiled by offensive titles such as ‘Freak show family’, ‘The man with tree trunks for legs’ and ‘Bodyshock’. They are contrived to attract audiences but actually label the human being in the film in a sensationalist and voyeuristic way, treating him or her as an object rather than a person.”

At the risk of getting sidetracked down this road, I remember gritting my teeth a few years ago to get past the utterly ludicrous title of The Strangest Village in Britain. It was, was in fact a sensitive portrayal of life at Camphill’s Botton village which featured much of the good support that has made a difference to my family’s life – not that you’d know that from the objectionable title.

Back to today’s campaign launch; a YouGov survey of 1,741 adults commissioned by the charity last month found that bad teeth, scars, burns and other conditions affecting the face are viewed as the most common indicators of an evil film character. According to the poll, ethnic minorities, bald and disabled people are all thought to be portrayed in more diverse ways than those with disfigurements.

Responding to the poll, 66% said people with bad teeth mainly play evil characters
and 48% said that people with conditions altering their appearance mainly play evil characters. Meanwhile, 30% said that bald people mainly play evil such roles compared to 13% who felt those from ethnic minorities mainly portrayed bad characters.
Interestingly, 6% said that people with physical disabilities (in a wheelchair or have missing limbs) mainly play evil characters.

Partridge adds of today’s campaign: “It would seem as if all the film industry has to do to depict evil and villainy is apply a scar or a prosthetic eye socket or remove a limb and every movie goer knows that it’s time to be suspicious, scared or repulsed…Freddie Krueger, Scarface and Two-Face are just some of the names that our clients get called at school, on the street and at work. They have to put up with people laughing at them, recoiling, running away or staring in disbelief that they can and do live a normal life.”

* You can sign the charity’s online petition demanding an end to the stigma reinforced on screen.

Learning disability, media & communication, Young people

Netbuddy: the special needs Mumsnet

Netbuddy's Emma Sterland and her brother, Ben (pic: Netbuddy)
When Emma Sterland’s older brother Ben, who has Down’s syndrome, was three, their mother saw another child with Down’s walking past their Surrey house. Back then, in the late 1950s, learning disabled people were hidden away in institutional care, and it was the first time June had seen another child like Ben; she ran into the street to shouting: “I’ve got a son like that!”

In the absence of today’s official support networks, a lasting friendship began between the two mothers.

June could have done with Netbuddy, the self-styled “special needs Mumsnet” managed by her daughter, Emma. Just 18 months old, it crowdsources tips, attracting 6,000 new visitors a month and reaching 4,000 people a month via Facebook. Continue reading the rest of my piece on the Guardian’s social care network.

Netbuddy founder Deborah Gundle and son, Zach (pic: Netbuddy)
Cuts, Housing, media & communication, Older people, Social exclusion, Third sector, Uncategorized, Young people

The truth about rough sleeping

The Truth About Stanley trailer from www.thetruthaboutstanley.com on Vimeo.

Think homelessness and film and you can’t fail but think of Cathy Come Home. While the social action that followed Ken Loach’s cinematic call to arms was a one-off, the film project The Truth About Stanley could be a modern take on that artistic tradition; a visually striking and thought-provoking piece of social realism that seeks to raise not only awareness about homelessness, but funding.

Just today the government’s new homelessness figures showed 48,510 households were classed as homeless in 2011, a 14% rise on 2010. The situation has led one charity chief executive, Leslie Morphy, of Crisis, to demand action from the government amid the “perfect storm” – a combination of economic downturn, joblessness, soaring demand for affordable housing, housing benefit reform and cuts to homelessness services.

This is the dire social and economic backdrop to the forthcoming film shot by award-winning director Lucy Tcherniak. The Truth About Stanley tells the story of two rough sleepers who make unlikely friends; Stanley, an elderly Congelese man, and Sam, 10.

Still from The Truth About Stanley
Stanley (Oliver Litondo) in The Truth About Stanley

The non-linear narrative is intriguing, opening as it does with the death of Stanley and developing into questions about Stanley’s past and the reasons for Sam being on the streets.

Sam (Raif Clarke), The Truth About Stanley
Sam, The Truth About Stanley

The lines between reality and fiction are blurred as the pair’s friendship develops and Stanley regales his young runaway companion with stories from his past. Or, as the website neatly puts it: “No home, no belongings, plenty of baggage. A short film about a man, his stories and the boy who listened.”

The project, a twist on more traditional donation campaigns, aims to raise money for two homelessness organisations, social enterprise The Big Issue Foundation and charity Anchor House.

The film offers a much-needed focus on the twin issues of older and younger rough sleepers. Entrenched rough sleeping is common among older rough sleepers but accurate figures on the issue and that of homelessness among older people are hard to come by, partly because of the hidden homelessness and the lack of age breakdown in head counts.

According to Homeless Link, however, the 2010 total of street counts in authorities with a known or suspected rough sleeping problem was 440 and generally around 18% are over 50-years-old.

As for children sleeping rough, again the figures lack accuracy, but according to the charity Railway Children, at least 100,000 children runaway in the UK every year and many are not reported as missing by their parents or carers. According to youth homelessness charity Centrepoint, 80,000 young people experience homeless in the UK each year.

The 20-minute film is being produced in association with Oscar-winning Trademark Films and features songs by Radiohead and Mumford and Sons. Stanley is played by renowened Kenyan actor Oliver Litondo, the lead from the international feature film The First Grader and Sam by 12-year-old Raif Clarke. This Guardian piece from last year tells you a bit more.

The trailer and shots here (photographs by Ben Millar Cole) have been released ahead of the premiere on April 2 at the Rich Mix cinema in Shoreditch. The film will be and released online on April 4th.

*To donate text STANLEY2, 3 or 6 to 70300 to give £2, £3 OR £6 to The Truth About Stanley fund or visit the project’s
Just Giving page.
100% of the donation will go to homeless charities Anchor House and The Big Issue Foundation. Follow the film on Twitter.

Bullying, Education, Health, Volunteering, Young people

Playgrounds, pupils and promoting mental health

Positive mental health promotion should start in schools and we should teach all our children to be more mentally resilient. This approach means that, as adults, they will face the world with more confidence and have empathy and compassion for others. Currently 1 in 10 – or around 850,000 – children and young people are diganosed with a mental health problem, according to the charity Young Minds.

Research from Warwick University last week suggests that children involved in bullying – as both a victim and a bully – are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts by the time they reach 11-years-old.

Four years ago when I worked for the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, myself and a non-clinical colleague, Marjorie Wilson, who worked in the Information Department, created a storytelling-based approach to mental health for use in primary schools.

We based our idea on Virginia Ironside’s book The Huge Bag of Worries. It seemed the perfect choice to deliver a powerful message in a creative and interactive way. Our Huge Bag of Worries Emotional Health and Wellbeing Project aimed to highlight the detrimental impact of bullying on a child’s emotional health and wellbeing and promote more understanding of mental health, thus challenging the stigma aspect.

Each session lasted approximately 45 minutes and we visited over 30 schools, fitting in at least four classes into the day

We started by introducing ourselves and asking the children what a nurse did. I then explained the role of a mental health nurse and we asked what the term “mental” meant? After a chat about this, Marjorie then read the book which we also had on a Power Point display so the children could see the beautiful graphics.

We then got a volunteer from the class to put balloons – each of them representing a worry – into a large, colourful sack one by one as we recalled the story’s key messages. The child then walked up and down with the bag to show how difficult it was to carrying around your worries.

We tried to emphasise that you don’t need to carry around your worries and often we have to take each worry out and hand it to our parents or teachers. Children don’t often realise they don’t have to be burdened by adults’ worries.

We specifically highlighted bullying as a worry and what we could all do to prevent and deal with this. At the end of the day 25 children, five from each class, would line up in the playground and one by one they would release the helium balloons. The rest of the school and the parents would stand around in a large circle and watch. Everyone would clap and cheer – that was one of the highlights of our day.

The project was funded for a year but we went on to deliver it voluntarily for a further two years. We still deliver it now voluntarily.

The project was successful as the book carries a simple yet powerful message. It has beautiful graphics and words and we used colourful materials in an informal, creative approach.

It seemed to resonate well with pupils in their final year of primary school who were apprehensive about starting a new school. We also found many of the children were also less judgemental and had far fewer preconceived ideas around mental health than adults.

The children would often say who their best friends were and that they would talk to them if they were being bullied or felt stressed. This was quite touching. One school had a “friendship bench” in the playground that a child could go and sit on if they felt alone so that others would know this and play with them.

We met a number of children who were caring for parents with ongoing mental health issues. Often, they enjoyed their caring roles and in a way they felt proud of what they were doing. I feel our project helped them to ‘normalise’ their circumstances and showed the other children in the class that because mental health affects one in four of us, they were not so different to their classmates.

The path to positive mental health and the shattering of stereotypes and stigma can start in the classroom and children. While the government’s new mental health strategy, No health without mental health, promotes more teaching of mental strength, or “resilience”, in schools so children grow up better prepared to face the stressors of the world, the caveat is that there will be no extra money to fund this.

Cuts, Social exclusion, Third sector, Young people, Youth crime

“Enough is enough”: London teens campaign against knife crime

The poster for the London anti-knife crime campaign designed by young people
“We see 12-year-olds holding knives. They are doing it in daylight.” That’s the shocking reality of gang membership on south London’s Rockingham estate, as witnessed by 18-year-old Tanvir Hussain.

On my way to meet Tanvir and his friends, I pick up the Evening Standard. It carries a couple of stories on gang-related crime, including a heart-wrenching plea for an end to the violence from the mother of a 15-year-old boy stabbed to death while out on his bike. It’s a reminder, if any were needed, of the terrible impact of knife crime in our capital city.

Last year, more than 2,000 young people were injured by a knife in London and south of the river the problem is particularly bad, with Lambeth and Southwark last year recording the highest number of knife crimes in the capital. Earlier this month the Met launched a new drive to target gang crime.

For youngsters on the Rockingham, a spate of nine knife assaults three years ago was the final straw. They decided to come together to warn others about the grim consequences of gang culture and have since produced two films and, most recently, a hard-hitting poster campaign on knife crime.

“We’ve been affected by knife crime – we are telling a true story, it comes from the heart and it’s not like something you see on TV,” says 18-year-old Shabir Ali. “We just really felt enough was enough and we wanted to get the message out.” What’s so impressive about the youngsters’ work, through their Faces in Focus Boys’ Group, is that they have led the project every step of the way, inspired by their own experiences – and in some cases their own brushes with the law.

They are aiming their message at the youngsters, often only just at secondary school, who get involved with gangs to try and look cool. They’ve run sessions in schools to discuss gang violence and significantly have also opened a dialogue with the police about how policing methods such as stop and search can fuel community tensions.

But although the project is very much young person-led, it’s brought together a range of partners across local government, housing, voluntary organisations and the private sector. They include the Southwark-based charity Faces in Focus, Peabody Housing Trust, which has supported the work as part of its cross-London Staying Safe anti-crime project and Poached Creative, the social enterprise which brought its design skills to the table. The launch of the drive was hosted by campaigning charity Art Against Knives last month.

Khalis Miah, who helped the youngsters get their ideas off the ground after approaching them through the Connexions service three years ago, says their experience is a positive one on many levels. “Some were in court themselves,” he says. “But they have turned their lives around – they have been doing something positive for the community instead of getting into trouble.” The pay-off projects like these can have in terms of building confidence, leadership and employment skills is important too.

But with young people’s services hit hard by the cuts, support is crucial from social landlords like Peabody, which is currently supporting nine different anti-crime campaigns under the Staying Safe banner.

“Our approach is working with young people, not patronising them but working with them on a professional level,” says Lajaune Lincoln, Peabody’s Staying Safe and special projects manager. “Not only are they putting out an important message on crime, but it is also productive for them, improving their skills and helping with employers.” The members of the Faces in Focus Boys’ Group are continuing to work hard to get their message across – including to London Mayor Boris Johnson, who, they say, has not yet responded to their offer to discuss ways of tackling knife crime.

“We just want to get the word out,” says Shabir. “Knife crime is still going up and we want people to know it does have consequences.”

Education, Employment, Third sector, Young people

Lessons in leadership: how to grow youth talent

Guest post by Alison Bradley, youth charity Mosaic
The world is changing rapidly for young people who have to learn to survive and perform in a competitive global environment. Now, more than ever, is the time for young people to take the lead in developing themselves and in having a positive impact on the individuals and communities around them.

The question is, how?

Despite their best attempts, with the current economic climate, a growing number of young people in the UK and abroad face unemployment. In addition, in the last year we have seen the disenchantment of young people culminate in large scale events, both in the UK riots in the summer, and in the ongoing protests for regime change across the Middle East.

I work for Mosaic, a charitable initiative of HRH The Prince of Wales, creating opportunities for young people of every background. We aim to have a positive effect on confidence, employability and self efficacy. By showing young people what inspirational leadership looks like, introducing them to role models who they can relate to, and persuading them that they too can be leaders who make a positive impact on the people around them – we aim to turn frustration and inertia into action and responsibility.

A Mosaic secondary school mentoring session

We have found some key factors to encouraging young people to discover their leadership skills. First is the definition of what is successful and inspiring leadership. For many young people, they do not consider themselves leadership material because they are not famous enough or wealthy enough or old enough.

However, through examining the character traits of effective leaders, using real life examples, we identify that the skills of a good leader are those which can be trained and developed – they are not simply based on an individual’s position or celebrity or charisma but instead are focused on serving others and behaving responsibly and consistently. A good example is that of listening skills. Every leader needs to demonstrate that they can fully attend to a colleague’s concerns, reflecting back on what they have heard, and asking clarifying questions to help reach a solution. This is a skill which can be taught and honed amongst young people.

Mosaic runs mentoring programmes for primary schools

Second is the recognition of personal emotional resilience. It is critical to understand that all leaders face difficulties on a daily basis, and that the ability to navigate these with a positive outlook and bounce back from disappointments, brings strength rather than demonstrates failure. We ask young people to recall a time when they have felt particularly under pressure, and to consider how they endured this and who supported them. This has as much relevance for school aged students as it does for those in the work environment, and is certainly a skill that can be developed.

Third, and related to resilience, is the need for leaders to have a network in which they can share resources, continue learning and be open to feedback. The Mosaic International Summit, our international leadership development programme is a great example of this; by bringing together leaders from different backgrounds and perspectives, invaluable exchange of ideas takes place and also, many cross cultural stereotypes and fears are shattered. As one of our alumni said, “there is no source of inspiration greater than a person who has been in the same place you are, yet has surmounted the odds. “

* Alison Bradley is the international director at Mosaic, a charitable initiative of HRH The Prince of Wales. She oversees the leadership development programme, which aims to grow leadership ability in young people and equip them to be a positive part of their communities. Alison has previously worked in a number of organisations which support young people, in the UK and abroad.