Like all of us I have spent the last few days deeply impacted by the events in Manchester.
As a mother who has, like so many of us, lain awake waiting for the turn of the key in the lock to know, however old your kids are, they are home, I grieve for every young life that has been taken from us. Their loss is not just to their families, or communities, but to us all. John Donne puts it so beautifully ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee’.
Youth should be a time of such optimism, such promise, such dreams, such fun, such excitement. Death is something that happens to old people, not you, you are invincible. Yet now, for so many children and young people – no bright new dawn.
So as shock turns to anger, grief to the need to understand why, the narrative changes accordingly.
But what is often missing in debates which feature the great and the good, as this Independent article highlights is the voice of the very young people we are concerned about.
An exception was the interview (47:30 in) on Radio 4’s PM programme with a young Libyan who expressed the kind of views I have heard so many times over the years working with Muslim young people. I was also struck by this analysis from Nafees Ahmed.
It is clear that the Prevent programme is failing and just throwing money at it won’t help – our party has it right in focusing on community engagement. But many of us are very disappointed that there is no mention of our policy on Youth Services in our manifesto.
As Children and Young People Now report, it was a youth and community worker who first warned the authorities about Salman Abedi, to quote NYA CEO Paul Miller
Youth workers are skilled at understanding young people’s vulnerabilities and are often well placed to gauge challenges and threats like radicalisation, and to escalate safeguarding issues where that’s needed, youth workers need to play a regular and stable role in young people’s lives for this to happen and we need to see investment in youth work as an investment in the future of our young people.
Mathew Hulbert, Chair of Lib Dem Friends of Youth Services (Twitter: @LDFOYS), said
Our youth policy-including the need for the statutory funding of Council-run, all-year-round, youth services-was backed unanimously by party Conference, yet it gets no mention in the manifesto.‘That is a crying shame given that, we know, quality youth work can, does and would make all the difference to so many young people, especially many of those who are most vulnerable.‘We should tell the Government to stop ploughing money into NCS (National Citizens Service)-which only runs for a few weeks each Summer-and, instead, refund and revitalize the Youth Service.’
My motivation throughout my career has always been to support our young people, especially our most vulnerable, to realise that bright new dawn. So in my view, our response to Manchester has to include beefing up security services, police, reviewing foreign policy, etc. but please please, let us not forget investing those that have the skills and attitudes to reach into those places others cannot.
* Linda Jack is a former youth worker and member of the party's Federal Policy Committee.
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4 Comments
Excellent article.
I take issue with you criticising prevent. It seems vital to me, I attended a presentation at my council from the local police officer overseeing it and was struck at how important it is and the work it does. In my area it mainly targets far right activists recruiting vulnerable young people so it is not racist at all. Before we listen to those who encourage us to scrap it we should ask why it is they want it scrapped
@Matt Severn
How big is the threat of far right terrorism? My concern with government strategies involving radicalisation is they end up too broad in scope and being too centralised. Most people want limited government funds being spent to protect them from Islamic terror attacks not the far right.
The Prevent programme is working in competition with the preaching of Wahhabi islam which can be found across the Middle East.
Wahhabi islam is said to be the ideology behind IS. It is extremely well funded and operates freely in many Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia.
It is hard for the Prevent programme to operate in arab countries and to acquire the kind of network which Wahhabi preachers have. Consequently, the Prevent programme has to be supplemented in the UK by the intelligence service, the police and the army to arrest and prosecute those who get through the Prevent net.