working together to reduce serious youth violence - wave report 2008

8/14/2019 Working together to reduce serious youth violence - WAVE Report 2008

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Working together to reduce serious youth violence

WAVE Conference for the 33 London boroughs

20 November 2007

Summary of key themes and main messages

Ita WalshWAVE TrustApril 2008

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WAVE report on Conference Working together to reduce serious youth violence London, 20 Nov 2007

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I believe this issue, the subject of this conference, is a great challenge for

practitioners of the many disciplines represented here: each discipline may have

another significant challenge to face within its own professional world: but I believe reducing serious youth violence is the great challenge,

in our generation, which we face collectively together.

Sir Ian Blair

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Preface

In November 2007 the Wave Trust and theMetropolitan Police Service joined togetherto invite over 250 delegates from the publicand third sectors to attend a conferencefocussed on identifying and tackling theroots of violence. The Commissioner, SirIan Blair, signalled the MPS commitment toreducing violence in London by giving theopening address at the conference.

As the lead officer for the MPS YouthStrategy, I know that serious youth violenceand the risks it poses to young people arethe cause of grave concern amongstprofessionals and communities across

London. The Wave Trust are leading the way in developing new thinking on how totackle the roots of violence. Together withcolleagues from the Wave Trust, werecognise that the challenge of tackling serious violence is not one for the policeservice alone.

This report summarises the critically important issues debated by delegates at theNovember 2007 conference, and makes aseries of cogent recommendations that flow from the conference.

We are committed to examining how wecan progress these recommendations inorder to make London a safer city.Effective and enduring partnerships acrossthe public sector and third sectors, and withnon-governmental organisations, areessential if real and lasting change is tobe secured.

Rose Fitzpatrick Deputy Assistant CommissionerMetropolitan Police

WAVE Trust was set up in 1996 with thegoal of reducing violence and child abuse.Our approach has been to apply provenbusiness strategy methods to this hugechallenge. Nine years of research into theroot causes of violence, and global bestpractice in tackling those root causes, wererecorded in our report Violence and what to doabout it,published in October 2005. We arecommitted to finding truly effective ways of making society less violent, and thisconference to address serious youth

violence with the influential support of the Metropolitan Police is another stepalong the path.

Both our previous research and theconference conclusions indicate that whilemuch can be done to alleviate the problemin the short-term, a city dedicated toachieving a sustained reduction in levels of

violence must adopt measures unlikely toshow their full benefits until 5-15 years afterthe initial commitment. This reality conflicts

with the constant political imperative forshort-term results, since governments bothnational and local are elected for only a few years. This pressure, combined with a

natural dislike of increasing taxation, toooften makes investment in the long-term anunattractive political option.

To make London a safer city we mustredress this balance. This calls for leaders

willing to step beyond their short-terminterests and to take a stand for the quality of society in which our children andgrandchildren will grow up.

This report sets out a blueprint to reduceserious youth violence in London. What isnow needed for success is for those leadersto step forward.

George HoskingChief ExecutiveWAVE Trust



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Speakers

Dr Sean Cameron

Pillars of Parenting

Prof Jonathan CregoSchool of Psychology University of Liverpool

Sir Ian BlairCommissionerMetropolitan Police

Prof Friedrich LselInstitute of Criminology University of Cambridge

Dr Suzanne Zeedyk Senior Lecturer in Psychology University of Dundee

Dr Denny GrantPrincipal Educational PsychologistLondon Borough of Enfield

Dr Theo GavrielidesHead of Policy Race on the Agenda

Camila Batmanghelidjh

FounderKids Company

Lord Victor AdebowaleChairLondon Youth CrimePrevention Board

DCS John CarnochanHead

Scottish Violence Reduction UnitGeorge HoskingCEO

WAVE Trust

Commander Shaun SawyerCommander

Violent Crime DirectorateMetropolitan Police

Brojo PillaiStrategy Consultant

WAVE Trust



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However, real and lasting improvement willcome only from long-term actions toprevent the development of propensity to

violence.

The two top areas for action emerging from the pre-Conference consultationreflected this dual approach: 41% of suggestions related to longer-term early prevention and child protection measuresand 30% to shorter-term youth-focusedremedies.

The remainder was split between 16%for remedies which address violence inschools and 13% focused on methods tomake what we do about the problem work better, e.g. in inter-agency partnership.

ProposalsFrom this background and the subsequentConference work, an holistic strategy withthe following 4 main components emerged:

1. A long-term Primary Preventionstrategy, focused on 0-5 year olds,explained in Theme A (page 11) andsupported by a major change in the(currently under-utilised) role of Health,outlined in Theme B (page 18);

2. A medium-term Secondary Preventionstrategy, focused on 6-16 year olds, tounlock the power of schools to deflectchildren who are already on the path-

way to violence, outlined in Theme C(page 21);

3. A short-term strategy, focused on youthactivities and behaviour outside of school, recommending how to tacklegangs and youth problems on the street(Theme D, page 26);

4. Enabling and support measures in theform of a change in focus of Criminal

Justice (Theme E, page 33), and bettermulti-agency working and a proactive20-year strategy by government (ThemeF, page 35).

TerminologyPrevention : Whenever we refer to primary prevention, i.e. a protective action before any damaging symptoms of propensity to

violence have developed, it will be writtenPrevention with an initial capital.

Exclusion: Whenever the terms exclusionor excluded refer to formal SchoolExclusion they are spelt with an initialcapital.

10,000 Volts: This was Professor JonathanCregos system of linked laptop computersenabling delegates to exchange thoughts andideas throughout the day.

At risk register: Throughout this reportthere is reference to the at risk register. In

April 2008, as part of the development of the Integrated Childrens System (ICS), thegovernment has decided that there is noneed for local authorities to keep a separateChild Protection Register. The ICS willinclude all of the functions of the ChildProtection Register (CPR). Once ICS hasbeen introduced and tested, the CPR will bephased out. The tasks previously performedby the CPR remain a part of the ICS. Allprocedures to help keep children safe and torespond to situations when there is concernthat a child may have suffered significantharm remain the same. From April 2008

where previously there was reference to achild being on the CPR, now the reference

will be to a Child subject to a ChildProtection Plan.



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Ex ecutive Summary

Key themes and main messages

Theme A (pp.11-17) Early child protection measures focused on Prevention are by farour most effective (and cost-effective) weapons to combat the development of people

with a propensity to be violentExploring the proactive, long-term strategy needed to stop youths of the future growing up witha propensity to be violent. This theme focuses largely on Primary Prevention (i.e. warding off theinitial onset of a disease or unwanted occurrence)

Message 1: As well as being an urgent youth issue, the problem of gangs is inlarge part a child protection issue that requires early prevention

Message 2: The earlier the intervention, the better Message 3: Empathy is the best known antidote to violence and needs to be

fostered in young children

Message 4: Radically improve early parenting and care both (a) within familiesand (b) in the Care Home system

Theme B (pp.18-20) Place Public Health at the heart of the drive to reduce violencePlacing the strategic focus developed in Theme A in the logical context for delivery of Primary Prevention

Message 5: Health is the only agency naturally involved with children from beforebirth until age 3

Message 6: Shift the focus from Criminal Justice after the fact to Health beforethe fact

Theme C (pp.21-25) Give schools a key role in deflecting children from a pathway to

youth violenceProposing measures to reduce youth violence in London by harnessing the power of schools toinfluence pathways in life. This theme focuses largely on Secondary Prevention

Message 7: Expand Educations role to include emotional as well as academicdevelopment

Message 8: Schools can greatly reduce dysfunctional behaviour, anger, bullyingand violence

Message 9: Violent crime can be reduced by appropriate alternatives to SchoolExclusion

Theme D (pp.26-32) Provide young people with the support they need to becomehealthy, successful, pro-social citizens

Exploring ways the community can more effectively support and protect young people to helpthem tread a pro-social pathway to maturity

Message 10: There is an urgent need to improve the level and quality of youthsupport at street level

Message 11: Tackle the trigger factors making youngsters particularly vulnerable(e.g. being unoccupied, high alcohol consumption, family breakdown andsocial disadvantage)

Message 12: Consult and involve young people to find solutions to gang violence Message 13: Parents and the wider community can help reduce violence by

working with agencies and services to protect young people



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Message 14: We need to provide more facilities and activities to fulfil youngpeoples need to be occupied and challenged

Theme E (pp.33-34) Shift the focus within Criminal Justice to Prevention and

RehabilitationExploring how Criminal Justice can play its part to support a more holistic approach to theproblem of violence by focusing attention on what works best in the long-term as well as taking care of the immediate needs of policing and containment

Message 15: Need for greater Police focus on Prevention Message 16: Need for radical shift towards prison as rehabilitation

Theme F (pp.35-40) Shift government strategy to proactive, long-term funding andplanning to reduce violenceLooking at the implications of shifting from the present reactive, fire-fighting approach to theproactive, strategic approach needed to deliver on the recommendations that emerged from theConference

Message 17: Long-term success will take a shift to long-term planning andfunding

Message 18: Importance of what we measure because what gets measured getsmanaged

Message 19: True inter-agency partnership plus strong local leadership areessential for success

Note: because their presentations have been re-ordered into the above themes and messages,speakers names have been highlighted each time they are quoted.



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Recommendations These recommendations were summarised from the suggestions of delegates and speakers andare presented under the Theme headings A-F.

A Early child protection measures focused on Prevention are by far our most effective(and cost-effective) weapons to combat the development of people with a propensity tobe violent

1) Progressively reverse the current spending pattern to focus Prevention expenditure onthe very earliest years (pregnancy to 18 months) where it is most effective andeconomic.

2) Foster attunement and empathy from the first months of life by focusing proveninterventions on the 10% most at risk children and families. This will involve thedevelopment of explicit systems of early identification, intervention, support andmonitoring for socially excluded families.

3) Radically improve parenting standards through innovative measures to make parenting

programmes an accepted routine for people with 0-3 year old children.4) Teach parenting to children still at school, to ensure they know how to attune with andfoster empathy in their babies in the future.

Needs of cared-for children not met5) Redesign Care Home systems to ensure they do what it takes to heal the effects of prior

neglect, abuse and rejection. Significantly reduce the inequality of opportunity experienced by children in care.

6) Provide professional psychological support for adopting, fostering and residential carersto ensure they can (a) form secure attachments with children and (b) help them deal

with prior trauma.

B Place Public Health at the heart of the drive to reduce violence

7) Develop tightly integrated strategies between Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and localauthorities so that all at-risk infants are identified before birth, and they and theirfamilies receive focused support until the children reach school age.

8) Put in place excellent antenatal and postnatal mental health services specifically tosupport mothers and fathers to address such challenging issues as depression anddomestic violence which arise in the time surrounding births, and which can interact

with other complex factors such as mental health problems, alcohol and drug abuse.9) Radically increase the therapeutic resources available within Child and Adolescent

Mental Health Services (CAMHS) specifically for the mental health of 0-5 year olds.

C Give schools a key role in deflecting children from a pathway to youth violence

School curriculum10)Teach parenting and relationship skills within the standard school curriculum, covering

both attuning with and fostering empathy in babies (e.g. through Roots of Empathy)( repeat of Recommendation 4 ) and improving the childs own emotional literacy, e.g. throughSocial and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL).

11)Develop alternative, more vocational, curricula in secondary schools for children whoare not academically orientated, especially those on the cusp of gang and groupoffending.

12)Elevate social and life skills to an importance approaching that of academic achievement.



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Preventing offending13)Require schools to maintain visible, transparent systems to identify and monitor all

school violence.14)Adopt effective bullying management systems in schools that also address the longer-

term implications of bullying, that: (i) perpetrators are significantly at risk of futureoffending, and (ii) victims are vulnerable to long-term harm.15)Deliver proven anger management programmes in schools, and ensure the successful

participation of children who have anger issues.16)Introduce good quality conflict management training for teachers.17)Place police officers in all secondary schools, to work in partnership with the schools

and carry out preventive work with their feeder primary schools.18)Set up a system to assess school children with social and emotional issues for Post-

Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and ensure resources are available to treat it early.19)Set high standards to be achieved by Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) and resource them

accordingly. Invest in highly skilled teams to create significant and enduring shifts inoutcomes for pupils.

20)Radically reduce truancy and school Exclusion (including back door exclusion) by running proven programmes, e.g. Dorset Healthy Alliance and Toronto Regents Park.

D Provide young people with the support they need to become healthy, successful,pro-social citizens

21)Radically increase the current ratio of youth support workers to youths; and improve thequality of these workers through appropriate selection, training and remuneration.

22)Adopt the two-pronged approach of strong social work support coupled with toughnesson the really criminal element used in successful US anti-gang violence programmes.

23)Provide intensive support for identifiable at risk young people before they becomecriminalised.

24)Take vigorous steps to improve employment prospects for young people, especially those from disadvantaged ethnic minorities, when they leave school.

25)Form a carefully considered strategy to reduce alcohol consumption by young peopleand then set up a community drive to support its delivery.

26)Working with supportive figures in the media, initiate a programme to provide effectivenon-violent role models for young people.

27)Reverse the trend of recent years and greatly increase the availability of youth clubs andother activity facilities for young people in London. Work with their natural desire toband into groups.

28)Ensure facilities include significant development components such as art, sport,education or skills, and acknowledge and support youngsters need for challenge.

29)Significantly improve employment opportunities for those already out of school butunemployed by e.g. developing relationships with businesses in the community toprovide employment opportunities for unemployed at risk youths.

30)Co-ordinate the resources of the community and voluntary sectors to support andprotect at risk youths, especially those engaged, or at risk of being engaged, in teenage

onset violence.31)Provide specialised support, including assessment for and treatment of PTSD, fordisadvantaged children from war-torn regions.

E Shift the focus within Criminal Justice to Prevention and Rehabilitation

Shift the focus within Police to Prevention32)Shift the time balance of police officers to place more emphasis on prevention and less

on form-filling.33)Be tough on the hardened criminals, drug and gun dealers, but take care to identify the

vulnerable lone children at the front end who need to be on the at risk register.



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Theme A Early child protection measures focused on Prevention are by far our mosteffective (and cost-effective) weapons to combat the development of people with apropensity to be violent

As well as exploring ways to reduce currentyouth violence (see Theme D), theConference put great emphasis on finding

ways to prevent it from happening among future generations. In this context, with 65mentions, Early Intervention/childprotection, was one of the two top pre-Conference delegate recommendations. It

was also echoed repeatedly by the Speakersand was a major message from the 10,000

Volts workshop.Research confirms that early child

protection measures focused on Prevention

are by far our most effective (and cost-effective) weapons to combat thedevelopment of people with a propensity tobe violent.

Message 1: The problem of gangs isin large part a child protection issuethat requires early prevention

Youth violence is part of a cycle thatencompasses all aspects of family life,especially parenting and family breakdown,and is both a cause and an effect. While

many factors contribute, the most seriouscauses are abuse, neglect and poor parenting skills.Sir Ian Blair captured the difficulty of tackling gang or youth violence inisolation:

We need to understand gang membership to be a child protection issue. If you have a 17-year-old gang member with involvement in serious violence, firearms, heavy drug use, etc.,then what is the likely future of his or her 12-year-old brother or sister? That is

a family protection issue and it has to be grasped. That child is as much at danger as a child who is in danger of emotional,sexual, or physical abuse

Camila Batmanghelidjh on childprotection

What follows is a paraphrased summary of part of Camilas overview of the work of her charity Kids Company to help andprotect the most vulnerable inner-city children in London:

Importance of self-referral encouraging even the youngest of children to self-referovercomes the flawed notion in the delivery of services that there is a responsible carerin the lives of vulnerable children to takethem to appointments (when the carers arethe very people causing the harm).

In-school therapeutic work is currently set up in response to requests and carriedout by a team of 20-25 including traineesocial workers, psychotherapists, health

workers and artists, musicians and

grandmothers who love children. Withineach school (in addition to such activities asalternative health therapies, art and dramaclubs, bereavement groups, anti-bullying groups), 60 children can receive weekly one-to-one therapy, and social work interventionis provided for some 100 children a year.

Street level centres , where young peoplealso self-refer. The model is 25-30 duty staff and 200-300 children visiting per day.Support includes everything from buying essentials 68% are homeless to trying tostabilise their lives. The typical arrival is an11 or 12-year-old boy or girl, who has beenrun as a drug courier or in prostitution, andhas been out of school for a number of years.

Lone children and the cycle of violence Camila then moved on to analyse theproblem. Chronically abused and neglectedbehind closed doors, these children wereyears in the making and, in effect, drive theculture of violence at street level. Theirhistory has deprived them of a self-calming,self-soothing repertoire and has led to over-programming the emotional centres of theirbrains. The storing of horrific memories iscompounded by the release of vast amountsof adrenalin and stress hormones. The resultis a young child whose understanding of the

world is one in which he is responsible forhis own survival. He sees his own life ascompletely worthless and therefore itbecomes very easy to take the next step anderadicate someone elses quality of life orsomeone elses existence. In a world whereyou have to be self-centred and fight to



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survive, savagery becomes the currency,meaning the violence of these children isneither random nor irrational, but anappropriate construct based on their life

experiences.In these conditions, Camila said, many thousands of children cannot be blamed forturning to crime to survive their childhood.

This route emerges out of the savagery of adults who refrain from paying attention tochild protection and child mental healthissues, who avoid the task of dealing withthese issues robustly.

We need to prevent the development of propensity to violence

A strong dose of love, early on, prevents violence later on, and vice versa

These were the opening words of DrSuzanne Zeedyk, and what follows is aparaphrased summary of part of herpresentation:

The reason early conditions are socrucial in fostering emotional health, andavoiding the development of propensity to

violence, is that childrens brains reflect the world they live in. If their world is one of trauma, fear and chaos, their brains developto cope with that environment.

Baby humans are born prematurerelative to other mammals, becauseevolution faced a difficult choice: forhumans to be born with heads as largerelatively as other mammals, women wouldhave to have hips too wide to allow them torun away from danger. So evolutioncompromised by allowing infant brain (andskull) development to take place outside the

womb. Although this makes babiesrelatively helpless, it gives humans a hugedegree of flexibility. It also makes us very

sensitive to trauma.Human infants come into the worldalready tuned into (and with a reflex tomimic) the facial expressions of thosearound them. This wonderful advantageturns into a disadvantage whenever it is metby the long-term lack of positive expressionon the nearest face, and the result is a

withdrawn child who doesnt understandothers will interact with it, a child who isunlikely to grow up to be happy.

Different parts of the infant brain developat different rates with critical sensitive

windows along the way. One such window relates to learning language, and is the

reason learning a new language is moredifficult to as we get older. The critical window for emotional skills is 0-18 months.

The above slide from Bruce Perrys work inthe States shows what happens if you donthave a positive interaction. The smaller of the two brains on the scan is of a child whoreceived little reinforcement or interaction,and reveals graphically what happens fromextreme neglect. Brains are affected by experience. Note also the higher proportionof dark areas, parts of the brain which havefailed to develop in the neglected child.

3 circles of street violence Camila Batmanghelidjh described themodel of street crime as three concentriccircles: From the central circle theprofessional drug dealer/criminal looks intothe community to recruit from the secondcircle, of lone vulnerable children. Theselone children then run the drugs to the thirdcircle, made up of imitator children, whoare relatively well cared-for, but havebecome aggressive to survive the conditionscreated by those in the two inner circles.

Dealing with lone children and the cycle of violence

When a youngster from this backgroundmoves into the outside world, Camila described societys second opportunity tomeet his needs:

Social care agencies could step in andgive him another chance at reparation andrecovery. At this point he has twopossibilities: does society have something tooffer to enable him to have his humanity



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affirmed and to have a chance in life, ordoes the drug dealer offer him that, in aperverse but more efficient way? In many of our inner cities, said Camila, the drug dealer

does a better social care job than we do in our agencies .

Offender or at risk? The line between young offender or at risk victim is as blurred here as in thedistinctions of offender and victim inrecreational violence described by JohnCarnochan . However, Camila pointed outthat in tackling the three circles it is vital todistinguish accurately between the groups.Our current practice of trying to reach all of them (criminal/drug dealer, lone childrenand aggressive imitators) with the exactsame (policing) solution is mistaken. Thedrug dealer needs policing; the lone childrenneed social care structures robust enough tomeet their needs (so they are not drivenback to the drug dealer as a better socialcare structure than society offers); and theimitator children can be addressed by cultural and educational means.

Camila firmly believes these lonechildren belong on the at risk register andthat if they are not identified as such they are likely to finish up on the young offenders register a key step on the roadto adult criminality.

Message 2: The earlier theintervention, the better

Combined with child protection, early intervention was the second most suggestedaction by delegates in the pre-Conferenceconsultation, and was elevated to the toppriority during the 10,000 Volts workshop.

Aggression is established very earlyGeorge Hosking used statistics to stressthe crucial importance of very early experience and, as a consequence,Prevention and early intervention:

Male aggressive behaviour is highly stable as early as age 2. There is no better predictor of violent or anti-social behaviour by the age of 15-17 than aggression at age 2 not whether children come from single parent homes, broken homes, poor homes, the

lowest social class in society, any ethnic group, anything you could think ofthe earlier the aggression is established in the child, the worse the long-term

outcome. Serious anti-social behaviour is highly resistant to change at school- age and adolescence

The above graph from James Heckman, theNobel Prize winning economist, showsrapidly falling return on capital from pre-school ages to post-school.

This next graph (from Bruce Perry) depictsthe malleability of the brain at different ages(blue line) and spending, by age, onprogrammes to change the brain (red line).It indicates that very early intervention isconsiderably more cost-effective than laterintervention, and that the earlier theintervention takes place, the better thereturn. This is because, at birth, the capacity of a baby to change in response tointeractions is massive, but that capacity diminishes sharply with age. Yet money isspent in precisely the most ineffective way.



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The early starters contribute the most toserious crimeIn his presentation of The chain reaction to

violence and how to interrupt it Professor

Friederich Lsel graphically illustrated thetypical pattern in this cycle as anaccumulation of risks and problems, starting as early as pregnancy, rather than one singlefactor. Since the single most significantthreat is from the tiny minority of early-onset offenders who commit over half of allcrime, including violence, putting our focuson the earliest possible prevention orintervention in the chain reaction will bearthe most fruit in reducing violence.

If more early-onset type offenders weregiven the appropriate level of support andintervention much farther back in the chain,the number of youths behaving in ways to

warrant Exclusion could be significantly reduced.

Message 3: Ensure empathy isfostered in young children throughimproved attachment, attunementand parental nurture

Before taking us through her presentationon the development of the infant brain,Suzanne Zeedyk quoted the conclusion of

psychiatrist Alan Schore that:A childs earliest primary relationship acts as a template permanently moulding the capacity to enter into all later emotional relationships

To put it another way, the human baby arrives incomplete, ready to be programmedby adults. The keys to shaping anemotionally healthy infant brain areattunement and empathy.

Parents and babies attune to each otherthrough such contacts as eye gaze and facialexpressions, right from birth. By age 2,children are demonstrating empathy foreach other. Early attunement equals laterempathy. It is only through attunement withothers that we develop the ability to feelempathy for others. That process is crucialboth to preventing violence andunderstanding other peoples emotions.

Empathy is the quality that has now come to be regarded by many scientists as the single greatest inhibitor of the propensity to violence.

We can already predict that low attunementfrom parents at 10-12 months can lay downlonger term problems. At 18 monthsaggression and temper tantrums are evident.

By 2 years, compliance is low and, by 3,there are problems with other children. Tobabies, whose brains are being sculpted forthe rest of their lives, attunement is love. If someone didnt receive the kind of responsiveness needed as a baby, it isnthopeless or too late; but after the early yearsit is harder, less effective and costs far more.

Suzanne listed numerous internationalstudies which trace the roots of violence toearly relations in families, to parenting andchild rearing methods, to types of discipline,and to harsh punishment. In view of theimportance of very early experience, it istragic that the first year of life is the peak age for child abuse in the UK. The now classic Dunedin Study, first published in1996, shows just how important early experience really is:

The development of one thousandchildren born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in1972 was followed and monitored frombirth. When these children were 3, nurses(who knew nothing about theirbackgrounds) assessed them, by watching them at play for 90 minutes, to identify those they judged could be at risk.

At follow-up at age 21, it was found thatthe at risk boys had 2 times as many criminal convictions as the group deemednot to be at risk. In addition, 55% of theoffences were violent for the at risk group,as opposed to 18% of those not at risk; 47%of those in the at risk group were abusing their partners, as opposed to under 10% of the other group.

Far fewer girls than boys had shownconduct disorder by age 21 but, of those

who did, two striking statistics emerge: 30%of the at risk conduct-disordered girls had

become teenage mothers, whereas there hadbeen not a single teenage birth to theconduct-disordered girls from the not at risk group. And of those conduct-disorderedand at risk teenage mothers, 43% were inabusive, violent relationships, having foundtheir partners from within the at risk boys.

Subsequent follow-up at age 26 showedthe pattern was maintained. Thus, before it

was even completed, the study was able toconclude that immature mothers with nostrong parenting skills and violent partners



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had already given birth to the nextgeneration of at risk children.

While it is not totally guaranteed andother factors might arise to alter it, the fact

is that, in general, adult behaviour can bepredicted with statistical accuracy at age 3 when children are still riding their tricycles,because we already know the risk factors.

Further details of the Dunedin study canbe seen in the WAVE Report Violence and what to do about it , and downloaded free from

www.wavetrust.org.

Importance of empathyGeorge Hosking told us that absence of empathy is the key characteristic of violentcriminals, and that the reason most of us arenot violent is that we possess empathy thegreatest single antidote to violent behaviourbecause it stops us from hurting otherpeople. In his book Violence: Our Deadly

Epidemic and Its Causes James Gilligandescribed a murderer who had recently killed a 14-year-old girl and was recounting his feelings just before he murdered her: Ihad no feelings. I just felt empty. No love,no hate, sadness, remorse. And justafterwards: I felt nothing.

Empathy the glue that holds societytogether

The crucial importance of empathy wasreinforced by John Carnochan, quoting theScottish philosopher David Hume:empathy is the glue that holds society together.

In explaining the 4-stage Public Healthmodel he is using in his causal approach totackling violence in Scotland (Individual,Relationship, Community and Society) Johnillustrated the Relationship stage with thefollowing radically different experiences of two sets of potential parents:

First theres a professional couple in an affluent part of town deciding to start a family. They each have well-paid jobs and nice cars. They have a broad family network and a wide social network.

Even so, having that baby will be difficult, and looking after that baby will be difficult.

Now think protective and risk andremove some of those nice things. Takeaway the family network, the socialnetwork, the money and the cars.

This is now a really poor area where the guy next door deals drugs, theres perhaps a paedophile across the road and a really angry guy living upstairs. Imagine you are a teenager on your own

there. Now think how difficult it is to bring upchildren.

John pointed to Heckmans estimate thatfor every 11 spent at the end of the scale

when a youngster is 17-18 years of age, thesame result can be obtained at the other end(0-3 years) for 1, and he urged theConference to challenge those who canchange these spending decisions.

Message 4: Radically improve earlyparenting and care both (a) within

families and (b) in the Care Homesystem

Radically improve early parenting withinfamiliesSpeakers and delegates saw this as crucially important to making sure young people aregiven the sort of start in life that protectsthem from later dysfunction, anti-social and

violent tendencies.

Roots of Empathy a parenting programme with beneficial side-effects

George Hosking described thisprogramme as one of two he believes canmake the greatest difference (the otherbeing Nurse Family Partnership). Roots of Empathy is a hands-on source of dualbenefits that not only protects the nextgeneration, by teaching future parents waysto foster empathy in babies, it also reducesbullying in schools.

Children who may never haveexperienced the critical commodities of loveand empathy in their own lives, and who didnot receive attuned parenting (and so arenot primed to deliver it to their ownchildren in the future), spend nine monthsin close contact with a relationship of attunement and empathy between a real livebaby and its competent, loving parents. Thisprogramme, delivered in a school setting,may transform their ability to parent, and isintended to break the cycle of violence. Afuller description of Roots of Empathy canbe seen in the WAVE Report .



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More support for parents and families What follows is a small, representativeselection of the 26 pre-Conferencesuggestions calling for more support for

parents and families:We dont leave it to parents to figure out how best to educate their children. We see that as a societal/state responsibility. We could, if we wished,see it also as a societal responsibility to assist parents in raising children to the best of their ability

Suggest promoting values of families and providing support to parents in community coupled with continued enforcement such as parenting classes,truancy patrols, etc.

Strengthening courses for families in neutral settings such as Childrens Centres should be a universally available option to enable hard-to-reach families to access them

The lack of familial support is obviously a major factor. Unless a stable framework of support is offered to the kids we will all be fighting a losing battle

Focus on at risk children and families31 of the pre-Conference suggestions citedthe need to focus on at risk children, and 9stressed the need to understand risk factors.

At present strategies to identify, let aloneserve, these families proactively are patchy and it is not always recorded whether or notfamilies in need are seen by ChildrensCentres. In one local authority there wereno targets relating to socially excludedfamilies, and no data management orcaseload analyses were carried out on health

visitor contact with these families at key points.Official figures show at least 350,000

children live in households headed by drug addicted parents, yet addicts are not evenasked to divulge whether they havedependent children when they seek treatment. We know from separate researchthat children from the homes of problemdrinking or addicted parents have anincreased tendency towards truancy, andthat almost 50,000 crimes are committed in

London each year by truanting children. It would therefore seem advisable for agenciesto co-operate to identify these children

wherever possible, so they can be placed on

the at risk register rather than ending up on the young offenders register. The following are typical of pre-

Conference suggestions by delegates:

[ We] require funded and systematic identification of those at risk, followed by coordinated efforts to safeguard early,without recourse to Care

More work has to be done on very early identification, intervention and support and monitoring of families with high levels of problems/dysfunction/abuse

Radically improve early parenting in theCare Home system

Twenty delegate suggestions related toimproving the quality of foster care andCare Homes. Research shows one third of prisoners have been in local authority care,yet only 0.6% of the nations children are incare at any one time.

Needs of cared-for children not met There is an urgent need to transform theexperience of children going through ourCare Home system. Children taken intoCare will have invariably suffered some sortof trauma, ranging from relatively mild tosevere, meaning they arrive in an already damaged condition. For the care deliveredin these exacting circumstances to be of ahigh enough quality to heal the existing damage, it probably needs to be of higherquality than that in a normal, (adequate)domestic environment.

While there are some excellent examplesof Care Homes within the UK and in othercountries, the following statistics from the

recent UK study of cared-for children by Colin Maginn and Sean Cameron (bothfrom Pillars of Parenting) reveal how poorly

we are performing overall in the UK:

While each one of the 60,900 children and young people who were in local authority care at the end of March 2005 had his or her own painful story to tell,there were a few common circumstances which had led to them becoming looked after children, the chief of these being



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abuse and neglect (42%), family dysfunction (13%), intense family stress (12%), parental illness (7%) and socially unacceptable behaviour (6%).

So, rather than viewing these children as ones who exhibit such disturbed and disturbing behaviour they have to be removed temporarily or permanently from their families, the majority appear to have ended up in care through the

problems of adults. The high level of social, emotional and behavioural difficulties experienced by children living in both residential and foster-care indicates that looked after children are among the most disadvantaged in our society.

2003 research showed 68% of children inresidential care and 39% of those placed

with foster-carers were identified as having amental disorder, and a 1996 study foundthat as many as 96% of children inresidential care and 57% of those in foster-care had a variety of psychiatric disorders.

In England in 2004 only 6% of childrenleaving care had achieved good (A-C)grades at GCSE level or equivalent,compared with 53% of pupils overall. Only one in a 100 looked after children went onto university that autumn, compared with 43per cent of people (aged thirty and below) inthe population as a whole and 60% of children in one of the really successfulDanish Care Homes.

Some 25% of all children in care have aStatement of Special Educational Needs.

Pre-conference comments by delegatesincluded the following:Children in foster care are not dealt

with as if they have been through a traumatic incident, which they often have, and this needs to be addressed

The standard of accommodation in Care Homes is ad hoc, the inspection

process flawed and measurable outcome limited

Increase adoption and fostering

capacity to ensure that children remain in structured and caring environments

Too much time is wasted and too much damage is done to children who are left in families for long periods with services trying to support a child in the family long after this is viable

When [children] come into care they are often so damaged, traumatised and lacking in attachment that placements fail and children fall through the net.Too many children are then allowed to drift through multiple placements and multiple schools before they become 16- 18 and are kicked out of the system

we need to stop washing our hands of these children

Care is an environment where teenagers have to stand up for themselves; they learn that violence is an effective way to do this. Care support often finishes too early, and young people at 16 do not have the skills they need for adult life,and hence resort to a life of crime

Potential improvements in Careconditions

The June 2007 White Paper Care Matters Time for Change discusses various measuresto improve Care provision for children.

These are wide-ranging, from pilot studiesto explore the effectiveness of Europeansocial pedagogy models, through working

with birth parents while children are in care,to funding specialist interventions foryoungsters on the edge of care. The

measures under discussion also includetackling the problems of truancy and schoolExclusion.



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Theme B Place Public Health at the heart of the drive to reduce violence

Message 5: Health is the only agencynaturally involved with children frombefore birth until age 3

The US Surgeon General gave the following definition of Primary Prevention:

Preventing an illness from occurring is inherently better than having to treat the illness after its onset. The classic public health definition of primary prevention refers to interventions which ward off the initial onset of a disorder

Research shows that very many of theearliest signs of physical or personality riskslikely to result in later violence are either

visible, or identifiable, at birth (or even pre-birth in the cases of Foetal AlcoholSyndrome or drug addiction). This is one of many factors to make Health the obviousservice of first choice in a strategic approachto combating violence as well as preventing other mental and physical disorders.

Health-related risk factors in the chainreactionIn his presentation on the chain reaction to

violence, Friederich Lsel specified someof the risk factors along the chain, and they could all be said to be Health issues. Theproblem is when many or all of these factorscoincide. If just two or three factors arepresent, the likelihood of severe problems islow, but the risk increases exponentially

with an increase in the number of risk factors. Health care professionals involved

with pregnancy and young children are bestplaced of all groups to detect risks at themost crucial and potentially fruitful (interms of the effectiveness of intervention)

stage in a childs life.Pregnancy risks include foetal alcoholsyndrome (neurological development isimpaired by alcohol during pregnancy),delivery complications and very low birth

weight (only a minor risk, but can play a roleif it is not compensated for later).Physiological markers include under-arousal a low resting heart rate is acorrelate of youth violence, particularly inthe more proactive, cold-blooded

perpetrators; neurotransmitter dysfunctionsand serotonin transference in the brain play

a role; hormonal factors (too high or toolow); cortisone level (cortisone is a stressindicator).

Genetic protective factor in violence One very early protective factor is thepresence in some children of high levels of monoamine oxidase activity (MAOA).

When children are not subjected tochildhood maltreatment the level of MAOactivity has no impact on levels of violence.

When children are subjected to seriouslevels of maltreatment, high levels of MAO

activity have a protective effect, andchildren with this protective factor are lesslikely to develop anti-social behaviour.Serious maltreatment together with low levels of MAO activity does give adisposition for higher levels of anti-socialbehaviour and aggression.

Professor Lsel also cited inappropriate nutrition , including too much meat and junk food, as a minor risk factor along the chaintowards violence.

That diet plays a role in mood (and hencecould be a triggering factor in aggressivebehaviour) has been established in a numberof studies with both schoolchildren andoffenders in prison.

Message 6: Shift the focus fromCriminal Justice after the fact toHealth before the fact

Criminal justice was meant to be the service of last resort, but its become the service of first resort because its easy to count John Carnochan

John adopted, and adapted, the WorldHealth Organisation model because theCriminal Justice model is not effective forpreventing violence.

He illustrated the point by speculating on the likely success rate of tackling measlesor tuberculosis via the Criminal Justicemodel (Event, Report, Investigate, and then

Act). In that model, society would wait untilsomeone developed TB before providing medical intervention. In severe cases,



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patients would be put in a sanatorium andallowed out again only after the disease hadcleared up. Had this absurd approach beenadopted by Public Health, many diseases

such as TB and measles would still be rife.In contrast, the Public Health modelfocuses on finding the cause of a problemand, once identified, looks at risk factorsand reduces them, finds protective factorsand increases them building around the

most at risk group and then scaling up thethings that work. John described making Criminal Justice the service of first resort asbeing as sensible as:

wondering where to position the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff,instead of building a wall at the top

Public Health Model

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Poor parenting skills Lack of knowledge Friends that engage inviolence Prevalence of gang culture Violent families siblings/parents Lack of significantadults/positive role model

Cultural norms Legitimisation of violence Access to and use of alcohol Lack of aspiration Dependancy

Lack of punishment forpre cursor offences knifecarrying Lack of visible swift

justice Lack of appropriate courtdisposals Lack of appropriatechange programmes Links to deprivation

Lack of communication skills Poor behavioural control Impulsiveness Aggressive behaviour Lack of skills to deal withconflict Lack of life skills Exclusion fromServices/Schools Nutrition Diet Health Alcohol Lack of employmentopportunities

How Criminal Justice practices fit inside the Public Health model of the 4 dimensions: Individual,Relationship, Community and Society Components of the Public Health model1 Individual those life skills that allow usto make good decisions about ourselves, tonegotiate life without bumping into it;about what we drink and eat, how weexercise, who we run with or, as John put it:

The first time young people are offered drugs or alcohol or that big risk, they dont have somebody standing on their shoulder to tell them the right thing to do. You just hope theyve been equipped to make the right decisions before they

get there.

2 Relationships basically about couplesand parenting (see Empathy in Theme B ).

3 Community about cultural norms and whats acceptable. For lots of these young men involved in gangs, thats just what they do. Their dads, their uncles and granddads

were all in gangs.

4 Society the wider community and how it responds and handles the problems.

What follows is a brief selection of comments relevant to the role of Healthfrom the 10,000 Volts workshop:`Up to 3 years old, how do the police have an impact? Thats the point; they dont (apart from their involvement with parents). Its the role of Health and Education



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colleagues in Health do not attend and participate. Cant they see the benefits in Prevention?

Excellent speaker [John Carnochan] this needs to be cascaded to every borough, good point about Health why is Health so poorly represented today?

Government must see violence as a disease that can be prevented. Disease

prevention must have Health provision as part of the solution. Indeed violence reduction should be led by Health services

Health colleagues must get involved and we need to break down organisational barriers

Strategic Health Authority should be required to participate and map out

participation locally

Please can we ask the PM to require Health to participate in violence reduction?

There is nowhere near enough resource put into child mental health when people end up in custody and have mental health problems which are not addressed, custody does not have the ability to deal with such people. If the resource was put it at a much earlier stage then maybe we could address this

Lets appoint more health visitors. Lets get dentists to ask why womens jaws are broken. Lets let speech and language therapists work with mothers and infants

Drawing the health impacts of getting involved in violence should be used as an education for those involved



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Theme C Give schools a key role in deflecting children from a pathway to youth violence

It shall be the duty of the local education authority for every area, so far as their powers

extend, to continue towards the spiritual, mental and physical development of the community para II 7 of the 1944 Education Act

Message 7: Expand Educations roleto include emotional as well asacademic development

As discussed in the previous sections,because aggression can be well-establishedas early as the age of 2, action to ensurechildren are non-violent at school needs tobe taken well in advance of their entry into

the educational system. The great grandparents and grandparentsof todays school children grew up in anenvironment of strict discipline in whichchildren had little voice and teachersgenerally were both respected and feared. The pendulum has swung in the oppositedirection, and it is now often the case thatthe teachers are afraid of the children they teach. Clearly, neither extreme is ideal and we need to synthesise them in a way thatrespects the rights and needs of everyone. The long-term answer lies not only with

schools but within all of society, particularly within families.Short-term solutions could include

improved conflict management training forteachers and anger management courses forpupils.

School practices and curriculaSchool practices and curricula ranked thirdin pre-Conference suggestions for reducing youth violence. Specific suggestionsincluded:

A comprehensive approach totruancy and youths Excluded fromschool, with better support for thelatter

Increased availability of work-relatedlearning opportunities at age 14

Significant investment in voluntarycommunity programmes on self-esteem and identity

An alternative curriculum for youngpeople on the cusp of gang andgroup offending

Greater focus on pre- and post-school activities

Education for better parentingincluded in the standard schoolcurriculum

Police officers based in all secondaryschools, with an additionalrequirement to deliver PSHE to theircatchment area of local primary

schools Personal development in all schools A well-rounded person is able to be

both practical and academic andgood teachers foster that

The following is a representative selectionof the many other suggestions from the10,000 Volts workshops:

Early identification of whetherchildren are basically academic or

vocationally oriented Teach a broad range of practical

subjects from hairdressing to carmaintenance, to first aid and publicspeaking

Teach homemaking skills such ascooking and cleaning as well asparenting skills

Hold healthy living workshops Elevate social and life skills to the

same height as academicachievement

Other suggestions for how school couldprovide a more fruitful and secure place foryoungsters included lengthening the schoolday and not allowing pupils off the premisesuntil the end of the day, since much troubleand crime take place during the lunchperiod.

The early personality and behaviourrisksIn current practice, any child entering theschool system could well have beenpreviously unobserved and unmonitored by



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anyone outside immediate family since birth. Therefore, the first days and weeks in theschool system offer a valuable opportunity to assess a childs general welfare including

whether there might be risk factors in thehome. Professor Lsel identified thefollowing markers for risk in the young personality:

temperamental difficulties hyperactivity attention deficit impulsiveness sensation-seeking (more

adventurous, more risk-taking) early lying and early stealing cruelty to animals a particular risk

predictor because it is early onsetaggression

A system for schools to raise alerts whenever a risk factor is observed could bea very powerful strategic string to the bow of the Grand Alliance envisaged by Sir IanBlair (page 38). This would imply a massiveshift in the focus of the role of Education,to encompass the development of the wholechild in every sense of the word.

Message 8: Schools can greatlyreduce dysfunctional behaviour,anger, bullying and violence

Conflict resolution for pupils is both a childprotection and a violence reduction issue.Since bullying and aggression in school-agechildren are predictors of later actual violence, handling these effectively presentsan opportunity to interrupt the chainreaction.

George Hosking recommended thatbullying, conflict and violence could bereduced by delivering anger managementprogrammes in schools rather than waiting until people have been sent to prison. Thisidea was echoed by delegates and otherspeakers who made recommendations for various programmes to reduce conflict andbullying in our schools.

Government guidelinesSafe to learn (DCSF 2007) renews theguidance for schools to record and report allincidents of bullying, any false denial of its

presence contravenes governmentguidelines.

Indicator 1 in the PSA on improving child safety is the Percentage of children

who have experienced bullying:Bullying is a primary safety concern for children and young people. In the TellUs2 survey in 2007, 30% of children said they had been bullied in school in the last four weeks, with 5% of all children saying that they were bullied on most days

Reasons for denial of bullying There was a great deal of feedback on thisproblem and the need for schools in denialto admit that they do have bullying, as thefirst step in improving the situation.

Because they are judged not only onacademic success but also on the perceivedsafety they provide, delegates (many of themfrom schools) stated that when schools deny bullying exists, or greatly under-report it, itis because to admit its true level could lowerthe perceived attractiveness of the school orperceived competence of its seniorteachers. When this happens, because theproblem is not owned, it gets neithermeasured nor managed. The denial can thencreate frustration and disrespect amongstthe pupils. It also acts as an obstacle toteachers acquiring the skills to deal with theproblems of conflict and bullying. In the

words of a 10,000 Volts contributor:

teachers dont understand gang culture. When one child told her teacher Miss, the Olders are after me, the teacher just laughed and sent her on her way. That is a training issue

Bullying as a warning signFrequently bullied children are 4 times more

likely to be suicidal than children notinvolved in bullying if boys; 8 times morelikely if girls. By age 24, almost 60% of those boys classified by researchers asbullies in grades 6-9 were convicted of atleast one crime and 40% of them had 3 ormore convictions. Research also shows thathalf or more of all bullying can be preventedand that those youngsters with the mostserious behaviour problems benefit mostfrom effective programmes. Four rigorously tested interventions have proved effective:



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The Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme developed in Norway afterthe suicides of a number of victims of bullying. Now implemented in several

hundred schools around the world, itproduced a 50% reduction in bullying andother anti-social behaviour in Norway, and a20% reduction in a South Carolina test.

Roots of Empathy (RoE) In researchevaluations RoE has consistently shownsignificant decreases in pupils aggressionand bullying, and an increase in pro-socialbehaviours (see page 15). These benefits were maintained 3 years after the end of theprogramme.

Linking the Interests of Families and Teachers (LIFT) LIFT shows long-termresults are possible from a 10-week anti-aggression programme.

Compared to LIFT participants, 5 th graders whose schools did not receive theprogramme were, by 8 th grade, 59% morelikely to drink alcohol regularly, and twice aslikely to have been arrested than those whoreceived the programme.

The Incredible Years originally designedfor children aged 2-8 with high levels of aggressive behaviour, this program trainsparents and children in problem-solving andother non-aggressive social skills. It hasbeen able to stop the cycle of aggression forapproximately two-thirds of the familiesreceiving help.

The conflict management modelDenny Grant took us through his 5-stageconflict management model, which herecommends on the basis that there is nosuch thing as a conflict-free zone whetherthe conflict is internal or external, betweenpeople or between nations, there is always a

state of some kind of conflict. So, stage one,managed conflict, is about as good as itgets.

However, in the second stage, someaspect of the inherent conflict develops intoopen challenge, usually of the authority of ateacher or teachers. Then the third stage isabout negotiating differences to identify andtry to resolve what was behind thechallenge. During this key stage, many day-to-day conflicts are resolved over varying time periods. However, whenever this

crucial stage is not managed adequately oris missed altogether Exclusion can result.

A failure at the third stage leads to stages4 and 5 involvement by external third

parties, followed by resolution in the formof the youngsters involved being eitherrehabilitated back into the originalenvironment or permanently re-located.

Denny said that when schools fall downbadly it is at the third stage in the process.

Yale University study The most important finding reported aftera Yale University study of developmentaltrajectories toward violence over middlechildhood (Years 1-6) was that:

children whose teachers taught a high number of lessons in the conflict resolution curriculum demonstrated

positive changes in their social- emotional developmental trajectories and deflections from a path toward future aggression and violence

Making youth crime-prevention inschools more effective

Two of the initiatives of the London YouthCrime Prevention Board are relevant to therole of schools in reducing violence. Whatfollows is a paraphrased summary of Lord

Victor Adebowales presentation of theBoards work, which focuses primarily oncutting the flow of young people into early criminality, because entering the criminaljustice system is a watershed from which itis very hard to turn back

He explained that the LYCPB arose outof the conviction that further progress onyouth crime would ultimately depend ontwo things: improved prevention effort, anda forum that genuinely bridges the worlds of community safety and childrens services.

Schools Award One strand of the LYCPB work is toestablish a new benchmark for Londonschools, bringing together the key characteristics of excellence in creating saferschools, and then disseminating thesecharacteristics to schools, pupils, parentsand the wider community. This benchmark

will form the basis for a new school Awardto demonstrate, and celebrate, genuinely stepping up to the plate when it comes tothe safety of pupils, schools, and the



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community. One of the elements of thebenchmark is a positive, productiverelationship with the Police.

Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) The Board is also exploring alternativeeducation provision, including PupilReferral Units. PRUs need to be a classicsite for best prevention work for many children, being potentially the last safety netbefore they risk falling out of the systemaltogether. The next step could well besupervision, if thats not already the case, orindeed custody.

Pupil Referral Units can offer young people a second chance to turn around theireducation and their behaviour, to live a lifethat isnt solely governed by the harshculture of the street.

The success of PRUs varies with thequality of delivery. While some do a greatjob, the Board will be looking hard over thecoming months at how to raise all units inLondon up to the standard of the best,because inadequacy cannot be tolerated if were serious about youth crime prevention.

One commentator made the point thatPupil Referral Units can be located either onthe same site as the school from which thepupil has been referred or off-site at adifferent location. In his experience, it is farbetter to run these units on-site because itfacilitates the rehabilitation of referredpupils back into the regular schoolenvironment.

Message 9: Violent crime can bereduced by appropriate alternativesto School Exclusion

We have to understand the link between exclusion from school and criminality,the connection between literacy and anti-social behaviour Sir Ian Blair

Some statistics showing why Exclusionand truancy really matterDenny Grant lamented the fact that thebest current indicator of violence in schools(coyly labelled aggression rather thanviolence in the UK) lies in Exclusionstatistics, because we do not routinely collect any other data. His research showedthat many of the youngsters who ended upas runners in gangs had been Excluded from

schools that did not invest resources inresolving existing conflict betweencommunity needs and the pupils position.His Hampshire study of offenders showed

that 93% of them had received some formof Exclusion over a 3-year period. This bleak picture is borne out in

Government statistics: Home Officeresearch suggests 78% of males and 53% of females who truant once or more in a week commit offences. Excluded children are 2.3times more likely to commit an offence(MORI, 2004) and 50% more likely tocommit very serious offences than otherpupils. A DfES 2004 survey of 14-year oldsfound that 60% of those truanting were alsodrinking frequently or fighting.

A retrospective study (Home Office,2001) of young people who had beenExcluded across a ten year period from1988-98 found that 44% of youths had norecorded offences prior to permanentExclusion but had a record of offending following permanent Exclusion. 11% of these youths had their first offence in thesame month they were Excluded.

David Gilbertson provides data from theMetropolitan Police showing that nearly half of all offences of Theft and Handling by juveniles are committed during schoolhours. Gilbertsons view is that:

There is a direct and palpable link between Exclusion, truanting and crime

This view is supported by the AuditCommissions survey of young offenders,

which found that 42% had been Excludedfrom school while a further 23% truantedsignificantly. Prisoners are 10 times morelikely than the general population to havebeen habitual truants.

Measures need to foster the emotional

development of teenagersExcluding troublesome youths from schoolsimply shifts the problem out into the widercommunity. The Excluded ones willnaturally band together and either create or

worsen conditions that increase thelikelihood of violence. This phenomenon

was described by Professor Lsel in termsof a concentration of people with violenttendencies in a particular area, or group,raising the overall level of violenceexponentially. Once Excluded and mixing



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only with others in the same category,youngsters lose the protective factor of positive role models in the form of teachers. They also lose the protective factor of the

diluting effect of the usual mix in the peergroup. The absence of these protectivefactors can make it all too easy for violenceand general anti-social behaviour to becometheir norm.

Back door Exclusion The following comment came from the10,000 Volts workshop:

some head teachers dont record young people not being in schoolback door Exclusion is the elephant in the room that nobody talks about its a highly contentious political issue

The challenge faced by many schools ishuge: emotionally immature youngsters canbe physically fully grown, frightening and very aggressive; sometimes they are armed.It is not surprising if many a teacher feels ill-equipped to cope. However, turning thesedifficult youths loose on society is anabdication rather than a viable solution tothe problem. If the formality of SchoolExclusion were required to be part of anintegrated approach that ensured Excludedyouth receive comprehensive support todeflect them from anti-social pathways andencourage pro-social choices in their lives,the current multiple consequences of Exclusions could be avoided.

Alternatives to Truancy and Exclusion The workshop on truancy and Exclusionlooked at two effective programmes forreducing these problems.

The Dorset Healthy Alliance Projectaddressed the relationship betweeneducation, health and anti-social behaviour.

It promoted closer parent-school links whiletackling truancy and bullying. Aneducational social worker based at a localprimary school continued to work with thechildren and their families after they hadmoved up to the local secondary school.

Truancy was virtually eliminated in theprimary school and fell from 28% to 16% atthe secondary level. There were reductionsin theft, vandalism, under-age drinking,

solvent and drug abuse. Academicperformance improved significantly. Theproject produced financial returns of morethan double its cost.

The Pathways to Education Program in Torontos Regents Park provided students with moral, financial and intellectualsupport. Academic support took the formof tutoring for 4 nights a week, and financialsupport the form of bus tickets earnedthrough school attendance. Student-ParentSupport Workers helped build bridgesbetween pupils, parents and teachers.

The programme reduced absenteeism by 50% while the percentage of academically at risk students fell from 40 to 16. The highschool drop out rate fell from 56% to 10%.

The Boston Consulting Group evaluationconcluded the long-term benefit to society for every $ invested in Pathways is $12.

Steps to improve the situation in schoolsPSA Delivery Agreement 12 stipulates that:

Schools will also promote emotionalhealth and resilience

By 2011 all schools will offer accessto extended services, which couldinclude health or therapy services

All primary schools and 50% of secondary schools will implement the Social andEmotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL)programme by 2012, to:

Promote childrens emotional well-being and early intervention work for those children and young peopleat risk of mental health problems

Increase the numbers of schoolsdelivering school-based mentalhealth support

While it is designed to improve childrensemotional intelligence, as yet there is noresearch evidence that SEAL increases theirempathy. Nor does it teach attunement andparenting of babies. Because all of thesebenefits are delivered by the Roots of Empathy programme, for schools to offerboth SEAL and Roots of Empathy wouldbe a very strong step towards preparing children for life and parenthood.



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Theme D Provide young people with the support they need to become healthy,successful, pro-social citizens

In his introduction, Sean Cameron quoted

Socrates as a reminder of the vulnerability and humanity of the youngsters at the heartof the subject of the Conference:

In no order of things is adolescence a simple time of life

Gangs or groups? Just as banding into co-operative hunting groups was crucial in the survival andsuccess of our species, it is entirely naturalfor todays developing youngsters to bandtogether once they outgrow the need for

close parental care and protection. Delegatecomments in 10,000 Volts and speakerssuch as Denny Grant and JohnCarnochan observed that gang is apejorative term for a group, which couldequally be called a team, depending on theirpurpose or activity or, as John Carnochan put it

You could say Strathclyde Police is a gang of 65,000

and Denny Grant illustrated the point with the tale of a group of small boys asking their teacher to help them to:

become a gang, but we dont want to be the sort of gang that bullies people and fights; we want to be a different kind of gang

What is not acceptable but can be atendency when there is not enoughopportunity for energy to be dischargedpositively is when youths band together with the intention deliberately to harmothers, as has been increasingly happening with gangs in London.

Teenage onset violence Adolescence can be a really severely challenging time while youngsters learn how to handle increased feelings of anger andfrustration triggered by surges in hormones. When youths in this phase turn to violencefor the first time (teenage onset offenders),they are in a different category from theearly onset violent aggressors who resultfrom very harsh early circumstances referred

to earlier. Much youth violence is carried

out by these teenage onset offenders and issimply grown out of by the time thesurvivors of it reach their early 20s.

Rising levels of youth violenceFollowing the Conference, the Channel 4Dispatches documentary ( Why Kids Kill,

January 2008) found that:

murder of children by childrentripled in the UK in the last 3 years;the number of killings in which both

victim and assailant were under 18

jumped from 12 in 2005 to 37 in 2007; more than half of these killings are

believed to be gang-related; there has been a six-fold increase in

the number of gangs in some partsof London since 2000; and

children as young as five are now joining gangs and even throwingpetrol bombs

Disadvantaged children from war-tornregions

A new source of problems on our streets

and in our schools comes with childrenfrom war-torn parts of the world, whoseattitude to violence has been distorted by this experience. Specialised support,including assessment for and treatment of PTSD, is needed for these children if they are not to contribute to a normalisation of extreme violence amongst their associates.

Without the right sort of support, they arealso likely to contribute disproportionately to the next generation of infants in need of early intervention.

Low UK youth wellbeingSuzanne Zeedyk told us that the 2006UNICEF study of child poverty ranked UK youth wellbeing the lowest in the 19European countries measured. This study has since been updated for 2007. Currentfigures rank UK youth wellbeing at thebottom of the 21 countries evaluated, and inthe bottom quartile on 5 of the 6 measures.Our best score was 12 th out of 21 (onHealth and Safety).



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Message 10: There is an urgent needto improve the level and quality of

youth support at street level

The Dispatches documentary quoted abovegave the actual ratio of youth workers toyouths in London in January 2008 as 1 in800, against a target of 1 in 400. The needfor more, and better quality, youth workers was stressed by many delegates:

Lack of youth workers

I would re-introduce Detached Youth Workers who work with hard to reach

young people in the community

Put more money into youth provision & diversion (iPe) at the partnership level e.g. Met track, Kicks, outreach workers

More money into youth centres; training for all youth workers

Funding for youth workers

Models for success To increase our understanding of how todivert youngsters into safer activities, BrojoPillai took us through WAVEs research

into four promising approaches adopted inthe US to reduce youth homicide levels andgang crime:

1. Boston2. Philadelphia3. Chicagos Little Village4. Los Angeles Boyle Heights pilot

The following is a paraphrased summary of his presentation:

1. Boston The success of the Boston approach(incorporating the well-known OperationCeasefire) was grounded in one principleand two operational strategies: the principle was a network based on capacity and trust, where stakeholders with very differentperspectives on gang violence were broughttogether. This wasnt some police action with an advisory community group, but acohesive working group with members froma 10-point coalition including a group of black ministers representing the minority community in Boston. These were street

workers, or social workers, who the policesaw as little better than gang members they looked and spoke like gang membersand had often been gang members in the

past. Their responsibility was to connectcurrent gang members to the social servicesavailable, e.g. job opportunities. There wasalso an anti-gang unit, which was reshapedafter the community erupted around certainracial discrimination issues at that time. Thekey operational innovations were OperationNightlight and Operation Ceasefire.

Operation Nightlight Here probationofficers who usually sat in their offices wentout on to the streets with police officers,carrying out joint patrols to track the samepeople breaking their parole conditions. Theresult was a significant change in thedynamic, putting the probationers under

very strict supervision conditions.

Operation Ceasefire In this, gang members involved in serious violence weresubjected to a united, multi-agency frontsaying, essentially, We know who you are.

We know what you do. If you cross this line serious violence we will come down onyou, and it will be a multi-agency coming down on you. On the other hand, if you

want a way out, here is the 10-pointcoalition. The street workers, who sat in theaudience during these conversations, thensaid: We are here to help you. As a gang member, you are seven times more likely todie, and we dont want you to die. So if youneed to get connected to a job, if you needto get back to school, if your mum needs anoperation, give us a ring and well help you.

In parallel with the community initiative,the Boston project focused intense policing on the sources of illegal firearms and madethe lives of gun runners supplying the gangs

very difficult. These combined strategies

brought a very successful period of homicide reductions to Boston.

2. Philadelphia The Philadelphia approach sought toreplicate Bostons success but with a highlevel partnership involving the mayor,district attorney, police and social services.

They identified Bostons two critical successfactors as (a) the network of capacity andtrust and (b) Operation Nightlight.



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They targeted a set of 100 young probationers who were most likely to kill orbe killed before they reached 25. These werethen assigned a team of two: a probation

officer and a street worker. Each teamhandled a case load of 25 as opposed to theregular load of 200. The probation officer was responsible for very strict supervisionto ensure the probationer met paroleconditions. The street worker wasresponsible for connecting that individual tosupportive services. The dynamic was tosupport, but impose graduated sanctions toensure that the support was taken up.

This operation has been successfulenough to be expanded to cover half of theunder-25 probationers in the area.

3. Chicagos Little Village (thecomprehensive gang approach) This approach was initiated by Irving Spergel, a social worker in New York during the 1950s, at a time when there had been asignificant rise in gang violence and NY hadopted for the social work solution.

The core of this strategy is the admissionthat it is not just youth who are the problembut also the community and institutions,and that any approach taking a single perspective (such as suppression, or harshsentences, or more support, or morecommunity mobilisation) is unlikely tosucceed. Spergel put forward acomprehensive model with two key points:

1. create the street team, similar to thecurrent one in Philadelphia, and

2. balance for each individual, determine what kind of sanctions to impose and what kind of support to provide. Foreach individual, balance the strategy.

This comprehensive approach has been very successful.

4. Los Angeles (Boyle Heights) Like New York, Los Angeles faced agrowing gang problem in the 1950s, and theLA Chief of Police opted for hard policing rather than the social work approach.

450,000 LA juveniles have been arrestedin the last ten years one of the operations was so intense the Red Cross offeredresidents disaster relief. The hard policing approach has not worked. By their owndefinition of gangs, last year LA had 49

times the gang crimes of New York astaggering statistic as New York is larger.

After all these years and the billions of dollars spent, LA has twice as many gang

members, six times the number of gangs,and accounts for 75% of homicides in

working together to reduce serious youth violence - wave report 2008

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