Youngsters left voiceless in Llantwit Fardre by council youth club takeover

Most people would agree that young people need facilities to keep them occupied and to give them a place to go outside of school hours. Until recently the Llantwit Fardre Young Peoples Project (LLYPS) operated two nights a week out of the Garth Olwg Youth Centre. RCT Council's in house youth provision ran on two other nights of the week.

I met with the project shortly before its agreement with RCT Council was annulled by the Labour-run Local Authority. In the same week the Council Leader was speaking in his capacity as a member of the Police Authority, saying money was being made available for youth projects! As Council Leader, Cllr Roberts was ending the provision of a succesful youth service at Llantwit Fardre.

LLYPS has been praised by local police officers because they had contributed to the reduction of so-called "anti-social behaviour" and crime in the area through their street-based youth work. A success story! LLYPS also offered people the opportunity to improve, for example through the Duke of Edinburgh award.

LLYPS was a specialised service run by volunteers as a charity. Young people could dress as they wanted to, play music and generally be themselves. This contrasted with the council-run nights which were described as being much more strict- and not as well attended. Young people described some staff members at the Council-run nights as “walking around like security guards”.

RCT Council have now taken over all nights at the Garth Olwg Youth Centre, cancelling the LLYPS provision with no consultation and an inadequate explanation. The voices of the young people were not heard. I wrote to the Children's Commissioner for Wales, who said that he was unable to intervene in a specific Local Authority decision. There is a danger now that the poorly attended Council-run nights at the Youth Centre will not meet the needs of the youth in the area.
For now, Rachel Brydon who used to run LLYPS is continuing her work as a street-based youth worker. But LLYPS needs the use of a building. RCT has let down the young people in the Llantwit Fardre and Church Village areas, and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.

New survey on children is madness

This week, the First Minister Rhodri Morgan has offered some welcome criticism of Gordon Brown's 'Britishness' agenda. The Western Mail reported that Rhodri Morgan opposes the "criminalisation of the nation’s youth and a “fortress-like” attitude to asylum seekers". In my criminal justice report which I launched earlier this year, I referenced some of the First Minister's previous comments on youth justice which have been far more progressive than what we can expect from New Labour. I also quoted Rod Morgan (no relation to Rhodri!), who is a former head of the Youth Justice Board. Professor Morgan holds the view that the policies of the UK government criminalise children to a greater extent than any other country in Europe.

Both Rod and Rhodri are right, and a survey highlighted by the BBC this week seems to show that the UK government's victimisation of children is having a negative effect on general attitudes. The YouGov poll interviewed 2,021 UK adults, and over half believed that children are feral, behave like animals and present a danger to adults. So this is the perception. The facts are that most crime in the UK is caused by adults and the majority of victims of anti-social behaviour are children.

I fully support Barnardo's UK-wide advertising campaign which aims to highlight and challenge these negative perceptions of children. Children do not deserve to be scapegoated and blamed for all of society's problems. Finland is a country not that much bigger than Wales, but it is a country which treats its children and young people consistently better than we do, and perceptions are different as a result. Finland's youth crime rate that is almost non-existent. Isn't that the kind of system we should be aiming for?

Howard League petition on children in custody

I support the Howard League's Growing up shut up campaign. The campaign has placed a petition on the 10 Downing Street website which I would encourage anyone with an interest in getting children out of custody to sign. Sign the petition here and support the campaign to improve the care for children in the penal system by recognising the child behind the crime, improving access to justice for children, and making sure every child has a safe home. We should be ashamed that the UK government locks up more children than any other country in Europe.

Interns for Plaid

I'd like to help promote Plaid's new internship programme. Anybody wishing to gain experience of working with Plaid Cymru can apply to be an intern at our new headquarters at Ty Gwynfor in Cardiff Bay. This is a great opportunity for young people to become involved with the party and is open to everyone. Interested people should email caijones@plaidcymru.org for an application form.

Why are young people so criminalised?

An interesting article that appeared in the Weekly Worker this week points out that in 2005, 71% of all media stories about young people were negative. Young people are demonised and criminalised in the UK to an extent that is unheard of anywhere else in Europe. Our own Children's Commissioner for Wales has pointed out how young people in Wales are being vilified.

It was against this backdrop that I contributed to a debate in the Senedd yesterday about school exclusions. My argument was that the behaviour of school children has not changed in any dramatic sense over time, but that it's society's view of what constitutes bad behaviour that has changed. A decrease in the price of alcohol may have enabled more school children to purchase alcohol than young people in the past. The reason I mention alcohol is because of the news coverage of the World Health Organisation's recent report that puts Wales at the bottom of a world league table with regards to children getting drunk. People have probably always drunk too much, at all ages. Alcohol is an intrinsic part of our culture and until this changes we cannot expect our young people to behave in a different way to the adults they see around them.