Talk to many HR professionals and they will tell you that your workforce is your most valuable asset. If this is the case then the young people of UK PLC must surely be the most precious resource of potential we have? The Frontier Youth Trust (FYT) are of the opinion that all people regardless of faith, ethnicity, background or multiplicity of choices are just that.

During the riots last year I was driving between several different residential summer schools where young people from diverse backgrounds were expressing their creativity through music, art, sport and dance. As I left the Wirral one evening to drive down to the East Midlands, my own family who live in Stretford, Manchester were within walking distance of the disturbances in Salford which spread to central Manchester. Recent reports have highlighted differences between the motivational nature of these two outbreaks so I won’t comment on that.

Instead it was while I was in the East Midlands at my next residential event I had the most encouraging conversation of the summer with a leader who normally lived in Nunhead, South London. While he was away, the rioting had commenced 24 hours earlier in his community. He was concerned for the young people he worked with. In the end he needn’t have been. Much was made of the riot clean up undertaken by young people and communities the morning after the night before which his own young people were at the centre of. 

However one thing that wasn’t as widely reported was what happened next: his young people knew those who had been at the centre of the violence but instead of condemning them, they arranged for a simple game of rounders. This sporting act went beyond a simple clean-up but instead provided an opportunity for wounds between individuals to be healed in community through rebuilding relationships. This summer we have another sporting event on a slightly larger scale but I don’t know if that will be more or less significant in the lives of young people in that community than that simple game on that day.

There did appear to be no concept of action and consequence in the scenes we saw that were motivated by an opportunity to “get something that I wanted”, and cohesion between individuals within a community is one way of helping young people understand the consequences of actions but also to help reduce the disregard for the impact of such actions.

A colleague is undertaking research on the influence of the market on faith based youth work and he makes a compelling argument that increasingly young people with multiple issues and their outcomes are beginning to be seen as commodities to bid for. This week I read more about Social Impact Bonds, asking if they are the new way of funding work with young people or just over-hyped.

While any opportunism or criminality displayed on our streets last summer was inexcusable, is there a correlation between the market forces and culture around such funding - and the pervading culture of such models - and the smash and grab mentality of rioters who could have been taking the opportunity to grab what they could because it appeared to be what had become a cultural norm?

I’m not arguing that we should not measure good quality youth work which is something that FYT and StreetSpace, a detached youth work project of ours, has been pioneering and places a priority on. There are sadly examples of well-funded youth projects that have had a poor impact in the life of the communities and young people they were set up to work with. However, an unhealthy emphasis on cash for outcomes can perpetuate the culture around wealth gathering. We have found in FYT that it is only where an individual is treated holistically – viewed as a precious individual and not merely redacted to a set of problems or issues to solve that we see real transformation in the life of an individual.

The Citizen’s Inquiry into the Tottenham Riots facilitated by North London Citizens aside from Community- Police relations highlighted the condition and reputation of the community and powerlessness experienced by the community. The other area they highlighted was that of unemployment. Although youth unemployment has dropped slightly in recent figures, it is still over one million and alarmingly the number of long term unemployed young people has quadrupled in the past 12 months.

FYT has recently researched in partnership with CUF and it was found that young people felt trapped in powerlessness and a sense of loss of value as a person as they continue to struggle to get out of the cycle of long term unemployment. The sad reality is that eventually some young people get to the point where they lose the energy to struggle anymore. So we believe one approach to help reduce the risk of future riots is once more to give young people the hope they need to feel valued.

Find out more about ResPublica/ NCVYS Commission on Youth here. 

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About The Authors

Dr Alastair Jones

Dr Alastair Jones is the CEO of Frontier Youth Trust. He has been involved in youth work for over 20 years as a volunt...