Youth Programme Enables Street Safety

Youth Association are youth work charity who have been working with young people since 1904. Jimbo’s Fund enabled them to deliver their StreetSafe programme: providing wrap-around support for young people at street level

 

• Can you describe your organisation and the people/communities you support?

Founded in Leeds, our core mission is to grow Yorkshire’s future. TYA works across some of the most disadvantaged communities in West and South Yorkshire, supporting young people aged 11-24.

Our detached youth work programmes provide wrap-around support for young people at street level – a setting where parents, schools and other services have little reach. In Leeds and Bradford, most of our work takes place in Burmantofts, Richmond Hill, Halton and Great Horton.

 

• How have you been supported by Leeds Community Foundation and what has this funding enabled you to do?

Our journey with Leeds Community Foundation has been a very positive one. and we have been very fortunate to have received support from multiple grants across Leeds Community Foundation’s wide spectrum of programmes. Our most recent grant came from the Jimbo’s Fund programme, which enabled us to deliver our StreetSafe programme in Leeds.

StreetSafe provided wrap-around support for young people at street level – a setting where parents, schools and most other services have little reach. A team of youth workers engaged young people at street-level, running interactive street-based workshops on topics such as drugs awareness, knife crime awareness and CPR training.

One of our key aims was to inspire young men to broaden their ambitions. In 2021, we brought several positive role models onto the programme, some of whom had lived experience of crime, violence and prison. This helped us to add authenticity to our street-based work and was a great engagement tool for young people. Young people on the verge of involvement in crime and violence were able to relate to adults who had walked the same path and this engagement encouraged them to do more positive things with youth workers.

 

• Can you give us an example of an individual and or group and how they have responded to this work?

We first met Sam and Stef on the streets of Leeds as we approached them while on detached youth work sessions. During our first session, we asked them and the group they were with to talk about ‘Life in Leeds’ and discuss the positives and negatives of their local area.

Sam and Stef and the rest of the group spoke about gang culture, knife crime, drugs, and what it is like to be Roma Gypsy within their community. They explained some of the conflict they had between different groups, and that some people in their community were involved in carrying knives and drugs.

Sam and Stef decided that they would like to work closely with the StreetSafe team to produce a positive drill rap. Alongside this, youth workers were able to run workshops around topics such as knife crime and drug awareness, to give these young people more information about how these can have a negative impact upon their lives and how social media can influence them.

From when we first met these two young people until now, there has been a clear change in direction within their lives. They have been able to be stretched outside of their comfort zone, and are a lot more motivated, they are now attending college and are going to the gym.

 

• What challenges and opportunities do you face as an organisation in the current climate?

Global movements like Black Lives Matter and the School Strike for the climate crisis have been a source of growing awareness and politicisation for many young people and they are looking for trusted sources of information and support in understanding their own fears, concerns and opinions. Funders of youth work have also been reminded by the pandemic of the negative effects of social inequality on all aspects of young people’s lives, including their physical and mental health.

 

• How is your organisation preparing for the future, and what kind of funding is needed?

Much of our strategic intent will be aimed at investing in our people. We intend to make the next few years a period of real investment in the skills of our team and in our organisational learning as to ‘what works, what matters and what’s sustainable?’  Building on the new planning and personal development models we have already created, we believe that a renewed focus on theories of change, practice-lead innovation and proving impact in changing the things that young people tell us matter the most, will be the best platform for creating scalable youth work programmes for the future.

The pandemic has been a strange time that threatens to cast a long shadow into the future of many young people.  In all this turbulence, we know that there will be challenges to youth work resources from a new austerity and challenges to youth work practice from the legacy of social distancing, but just as much we know that there will be new opportunities for good youth work to establish itself as a long-term part of the solution to the issues Covid-19 has raised.