Supporting Young People in Jaywick and Clacton

Young people in Jaywick and west Clacton are being offered positive activities to divert them away from a potential life of antisocial behaviour and crime.

Inclusion Ventures works to improve the lives of young people from the most disadvantaged areas of Jaywick and west Clacton, supporting them to discover a wider perspective and positive future.

The charity aims to improve physical health, emotional health and wellbeing, aspiration for future employment and provide opportunities for personal and social awareness while improving community spirit.

The Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Essex (PFCC), Roger Hirst, contributed £15,000 to Inclusion Ventures in the form of a crime and disorder reduction grant from the 2019-2020 Community Safety Development Fund to employ an activity leader. The funding was provided to support the PFCC’s priority to protect vulnerable people and reduce the risk that young people get drawn into life of crime.

The role was set up to engage with young people and entice them away from the temptation of a life of drugs and knife crime.

Using the funding, the charity was able to further train its team and bring in new activities such as Panna Boss street football skills, SERVES tennis development programme and circuit training.

Project director Sarah Hanness said: “In this area, there is no football pitch and no swimming pool. It is at least three miles into town and so you need to be highly motivated to go and do something active and positive. We therefore bring a huge variety of activities to the children to see how we can motivate them.

“Our activity leader retrained the team to get them to think about what activities they could bring to the young people to get them running around. It got the staff reinvigorated.”

The charity holds bike kitchens to ensure young people know how to keep their bikes safe and operational to give them an element of freedom.

During lockdown, they also arranged one-on-one bike rides and “walk and talks” – anything they could do within the restrictions to continue to communicate with young people and to get them out of their home environments and doing something positive.

Sarah said: “We had to really rethink it all. School brings structure and security to these children and so without it, in lockdown, we did not want to stop meeting with our young people.

“The activity leader helped us to still be present for the children. We showed the children we were still out there for them during the pandemic. We gave them consistency and showed that people still cared about them, even when the schools were closed.

“The team were motivated, so that when restrictions lifted, they were ready.”

• If you have skills which could help to provide young people in this area with positive activities to do, contact Inclusion Ventures through inclusionventures.co.uk or the charity’s Facebook page.