The disadvantaged and anti social youth - our challenge!

Have just returned from a 3 day break in Snowdonia. It was of course beautiful. We were right next to a field with young lambs - so vibrant, energetic and innocent. Our springer also innocently (?) sat for hours wide eyed looking at this scene!!

It got me thinking how lucky I am to have this and so much more... - so many can't and don't have a chance.

Then I caught the news about a high court judge last week openly saying family breakdown is potentially more of a challenge than climate change in terms of the stability of our society.

How do we respond - we need to become more aware of the plight of families in our community who are suffering from breakdown and understand the many factors that create the disadvantages which effect them and seeing the challenges they face as our challenges.

The danger is to reject them as neighbours, to dehumanise them, to erect the barricades. Its easy to understand why we do this but are we actually making things any better?

Yes of course we must strive to make our community a safer place by improving the effectiveness of policing (like the successful 101 police call system being piloted in a number of areas of the country) but we must also consider the root causes of things like anti social behaviour and as a community respond positively to these.

Perhaps local residents groups should consider setting up liaison meetings with the police, youth workers, churches and other interested groups to work together not only to consider the security of our community but also what we as communities can do to lessen the burden of disadvantaged young people and their families.

In the same way that engagement is vital in tackling climate change the same applies to the issue of disadvantage and related anti social behaviour, even in selfish terms I don't think we have a choice, either we act in a positive and charitable way or let things fester and deteriorate further!