Time to listen to Carwood youth

by John Robinson, Ellesmere Youth Project 

A recent meeting at St Peter’s Church, organised by the police, heard from a number of residents how young people in the Ellesmere and Carwood areas were ‘out of control’ and ‘making their lives hell’.

• Local residents complain about young people hanging about, making noise, smoking, and smashing windows.
• Police target the young people and one described them as “the bane of my life. If they were removed there would be no more trouble.”

Strategies have included a truancy sweep, an exclusion order for a local young woman, the taking of names by police as part of an ‘Youth Inclusion Project’. Children from our community as young as 13 are being arrested.

The meeting also heard a passionate plea to involve young people in decision making. But how can we listen to their voices and stories and begin to see our young people in a more positive light? 

“ ‘cos when you get that name you’ve got a name haven’t you? So if you’ve got a name to the police and they know you like as a right bad person, and stuff like that”
Young person, Carwood Estate

Project worker, Philip Hoppner, explained that Ellesmere Youth Project was set up by local people to develop safe supportive relationships with young people in the Ellesmere area. 

“People think we’re bad and horrible… causing trouble if we stand in a group… All we want to do is what normal young people do… to hangout with our friends, without being hassled” 

EYP tries to engage our young people on the streets. We want the streets to be a safe place for our young people and for the whole community. Our workers listen seriously to what these young people are telling us about their lives. This approach means spending lots of time standing on street corners, talking with and listening to young people. 

Here are examples of what the young people have been sharing with our workers:

“It feels good when people keep you out of trouble, so you don’t get done by the police, you don’t get hit and so all your family is a happy family” 

The young people love adventure and camping. A group of mainly teenage boys from the Carwood Estate have been camping by themselves in the local industrial estate, local fields and on a roundabout near Rotherham. They have been having difficulties staying dry and local neighbours have complained about the group making too much noise. The boys asked for some help to arrange some camping trips. 

“We’ve been working together as a group. Teamwork, we’ve been helping each other put tents up, sharing food, helping each other with things. We’ve learnt how to use an axe, gone a day with out causing trouble - been with these all day. We got away from the outside world - got arrested though! Got away from all the trouble down our area. It’s been good, it’s been good today”

This was only a small group of local young people and the camp took a long-time to organise, but we believe that it is small opportunities like this that can make a big difference in the lives of young people and the community.

Find out more about Crime and Policing in Burngreave. What do you think? Join the debate on our Crime and Policing bulletin board.