Reflecting on the Peer Action Collective Grant

Our funding as part of the Peer Action Collective has recently come to an end and we have learned so much. The Peer Action Collective is a partnership project which researched with groups of young people their experience of violence and with this research, there is the aim to turn what we have learned into support and action.

At Space, we have worked in partnership with Young Devon, Young Moves, and Young Gloucestershire to build up a bank of evidence about young people's experiences and concerns around violent behaviour.

Over the last 2 years between September 2021 and January 2023, Space was able to employ 3 peer researchers (young people with lived experiences) who were able to deliver workshops and carry out interviews with young people in Devon. At Space, we had a team that included the 3 peer researchers and 1 senior youth support worker who completed 18 workshops with young people aged between 11 years to 19 years gathering around 300 young people from Devon to hear their voice and experiences.

After gathering the information from all the workshops we were able to see a pattern in what young people were saying and about how well they felt police and schools could deal with violent incidents. We were able to see that young people didn’t feel listened to. Some young people said “I wouldn’t report anything, I don’t trust them at all”, “They don’t do anything, they just let people get away with it”, and “Police don’t respond quickly or follow up”. However, there was some positive feedback too with young people describing their experiences with both police and schools saying, “The teachers actually listen sometimes” and, “There’s loads of fights [...] the police are normally there because they hear that there has been a fight arranged”.

Below are some statistics about the number of young people who had experienced or heard about these types of violence in their local area:

Fighting

Bullying

Knife crime

Sexual violence

Self harm

During these workshops, young people suggested some ways to improve their experiences by offering training and guidance to school staff on how to manage violent incidents and create behaviour policies. Young people felt violent situations were not taken seriously and said they receive the same reprimand as “wearing the wrong uniform”, and this has led to a sense of injustice amongst young people and adds to the feeling of them not being taken seriously.

From these findings, the peer researchers developed a social action day that aimed to build awareness of the youth services available as well as building relationships and trust between young people, the police, counsellors, and school staff. So in Newton Abbot December 2022 Space ran a community fun day which saw the attendance of over 100 people with families and children aged as young as 3 years old.

Check out this video from Young Devon to find out more about how they got on:

Now that we have reached the end of the project it is time for us to reflect on our findings and take the next steps to roll out the research and social action project again in September 2023.

We are delighted to say that Teignbridge District Council recently secured funding for a Harmful Sexual Behaviour project which Space is delivering alongside other organisations throughout 2023. We are looking forward to seeing how this project builds upon the research from this PAC project.