A lesson in listening

Are we tone deaf or just plain deaf? According to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rown Williams, a contributor to The Good Childhood Inquiry, commissioned by the Children’s Society, we have become ‘tone deaf to the real requirements of children’. And, according to the Audit Commission’s report, Tired of Hanging Around, ‘consultation with young people about new projects or activities is rare. Consultation with those young people likely to use them is rarer’.

The Children’s Society report, more philosphical in tone and wider ranging in its scope, grabbed all the headlines and column inches, though its findings were condensed down to the usual mix of prejudices about single or working mums and absentee dads in the press coverage. The Audit Commission’s report, focusing directly on the provision of sports and leisure facilities for the young was, if anything, even more damning in its conclusions. It described funding for youth leisure services as a ‘dog’s breakfast’.

The Audit Commission starts from the premise that sport and leisure have an important role to play in preventing anti-social behaviour and that preventive projects are much more cost effective than punitive action, like the handing out of ASBOs. ‘A young person who starts showing behavioural problems at the age of five and is dealt with through the criminal justice system will cost the taxpayer around £207,000 by the age of 16,’ the report says. But alternative interventions to support behaviour cost less than £50,000. The Audit Commission estimates that something like £113 million a year would be saved if just one in ten young offenders was diverted towards effective support.

Lack of joined-up thinking is identified as the main culprit. Although central government policy now links prevention and enforcement this has not yet been translated into coordinated action at a local level. The Audit Commission describes national funding arrangements as ‘wasteful, inefficient and bureaucratic’, and says that few local authorities, children’s trusts or CDRPs (crime and disorder reduction partnerships) are aware of where activities are available, what gaps they have in provision or instances of unnecessary duplication of facilities.

It also points out that a typical youth project leader spends around a third of their time chasing new funds and reporting to their current funders, that the full cost of applying for smaller grants often exceeds the value of the grant itself and that most funding arrangements are too short in term (typically less than three years) to be effective and sustainable.

Councils, children’s trusts and CDRPs are also taken to task for their failure to research and evaluate their projects. This goes further than the glaring omission of actually consulting with young people about what facilities they are likely to use. The Audit Commission says they lack the performance data to make intelligent commissioning decisions about new or repeat schemes. Nearly half (48%) of projects could not provide evidence of their effectiveness and only 27% collected evidence in a way that permitted a value-for-money assessment.

Inefficient funding arrangements do not explain all the weaknesses in youth sport and leisure facilities. The gap between how young people see themselves and how they are viewed by adults is fundamental to the debate. The 2007/08 British Crime Survey found that adults are more concerned about teenagers hanging around on the streets than they are about vandalism and graffiti, drug dealing or public drunkeness and general rowdiness. Young people, however, see it very differently. Eight out of ten say they hang around in public to socialise cheaply and they do it in groups to keep safe.

The point that it’s far more effective to engage with young people rather than demonise them is well illustrated by the Audit Commission’s case study of the experiences of a private golf club in Gateshead. The club had reported incidents of young people intimidating players, stealing golf balls and equipment while an underpass and bridge that linked two areas of the golf course had become disfigured by graffiti and rubbish.

The club’s initial reaction had been to call the police to deal with each incident and individual club members had also got involved in altercations with the offenders. The problem was escalating until the club’s chairperson adopted a radical new strategy. The youngsters were asked what they wanted and when a significant number said they were interested in playing the game, the club provided free lessons and equipment.

Working together with partners that included the police, the local council’s youth service and anti-social behaviour team, and community and voluntary groups, the club also set up a project that involved young people working with a local graffiti artist to repaint the underpass.

The results of this project have been little short of spectacular. Within a few months more than 100 young people were actively involved with the club and the incidents of graffiti and intimidation have dwindled to nothing. The club sought no external funding for the scheme, reckoning that it had actually saved money by not having to build a perimeter fence or beefing up its security arrangements. As the Audit Commission reports, ‘the cost to the public purse has been negligible’.

The full report can be downloaded from the Audit Commission’s website. Go to www.audit-commission.gov.uk/hangingaround/