Neighbourhood Projects and Preventing Delinquency
| DOI | 10.1177/147322540100100106 |
| Date | 01 April 2001 |
| Author | Bob Holman |
| Published date | 01 April 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Delinquency
Bob Holman
Easterhouse Neighbourhood Project
Correspondence: Bob Holman, 2/1, 18 Finlarig Street, Easterhouse, Glasgow G34 OAD
Introduction
When I started working as a local authority child care officer in 1962, Children’s Departments
were beginning to work with what were called the ‘delinquent’ as well as the ‘deprived’.
Approved schools were in their hey day, often providing the kind of tough, disciplined regimes
(with corporal punishment) which some politicians still believe are the answer to juvenile crime.
In a history of the Manchester Children’s Department, I have described some of the differences
which arose between a progressive children’s officer and a powerful headmaster of an approved
school (Holman,1996). Barbara Kahan, who died in August 2000, was the children’s officer for
Oxfordshire who famously did everything in her power to persuade local magistrates not to
use approved schools. She was pioneering a welfare approach to juvenile justice and, as I began
to visit approved schools and to be responsible for boys coming out of them, I found myself
in agreement with her view that, by removing young offenders from their families and
neighbourhoods, it did more harm than good.
I subsequently spent a decade in university teaching and identified closely with new ideas
about community social work. I left the academic life with the conviction that young people
and their families might be better served by social workers or community workers (I now prefer
the term neighbourhood workers) who lived close to them, rather than by officials who
commuted in and out of socially deprived areas. In this paper, I wish to describe the two
community projects with which I have been involved over the last quarter of a century and to
identify some of the features which have contributed to their limited achievements.
The Southdown Project
In 1976 our family moved into what had been the doctor’s house on the Southdown estate,
Bath. Sponsored by the Church of England Children’s Society (as it was then called), its
purposes were to improve the quality of lives of local families and to prevent youngsters
needlessly entering public care and custody. Its method was no more than ‘being there’. I soon
formed a crucial friendship with a young resident, Dave Wiles. Dave was unemployed and on
probation but, after a conversion to Christianity, was determined, as he put it, ‘to put
something back into the neighbourhood’. Together we knocked on every door to ask residents
how they felt the project should go about its tasks. Most adults and young people asked us to
start youth clubs, yes, old fashioned, ‘ping-pong’ playing youth clubs. Dave Wiles became chair
of the senior youth club and then joined me as a staff member. Later Jane Sellars was recruited
and stimulated greater involvement of girls and parents. Jim Davis, an 18 year-old born and
bred on the estate, became the fourth member of the team.
The team members organised not just youth clubs but also holidays, sports teams, family
outings, parent and toddlers groups and bank holiday sports days. The first holiday with the
teenagers was at Pontin’s Holiday Camp. It was dreadful. I couldn’t keep the boys and girls
apart at night and, when we returned, some parents criticised my permissive attitudes! There
were fights and the camp manager threatened to kick us out. On the way back, the minibus
was speeding along when one girl stuck her head out of a window to be sick. Never do that.
The vomit shot back in with tremendous force all over the inner windscreen, causing me to
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Neighbourhood Projects and Preventing Delinquency
brake, skid and almost crash. The teenagers thought the holiday was brilliant and voted to
return the following year!
Many of the activities took place in our home where young people got to know and trust
the staff. There evolved what we called ‘resourceful friendships’ which entailed a relationship
between an adult and a youngster based on certain conditions such as obtaining the consent
of parents, defining its purpose, and recording what happened. Later, residents decided that
they wanted their own building and raised much money. After five years, a small but
purpose-built hall was opened and Dave Wiles and I swopped roles with Dave becoming the
project leader. After a further five years, with residents functioning as committee members,
staff and volunteers, my wife, Annette, and I decided to move to her native Glasgow and we
went to live and work there in 1986.
Revisiting Southdown
In 1998 I received a grant to revisit the Southdown ‘youngsters’ to ascertain what had become
of them and what they thought of the project. But which ‘youngsters’? I compiled a list of 88
to whom we had been close for at least three years. Of these I discovered that nine were dead.
Eventually 51 were interviewed by which time they were all in their thirties. In order to assess
what had happened to them, I needed to establish what they were like when they started
coming to the project. Nearly all came from low-incomed families. 59% experienced severe
problems at school. 39% were in trouble with the police. 22% were in families visited by social
workers. Many of the youngsters thus possessed ‘risk factors’ associated with later educational
failure, criminality, unemployment and unstable relationships.
What are they like today as adults? The full details are given in my book (Holman, 2000)
and here...
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