Community church hosts talk about youth issues
A community came together to discuss solutions to issues affecting young people in Wolverhampton.
St Joseph's Church in Merry Hill was the host for the Youth Forum meeting, which brought a wide cross-section of people together for a group discussion on anti-social behaviour, knife crime and other areas of concern.
Representatives from groups such as The Way Youth Zone, West Midlands Police and Highfields School were in attendance, as well as representatives of churches around the Merry Hill and Warstones areas and members of the public who had been affected by youth crime.
The meeting on Friday, October 25 saw the attendees divided into groups, with four sessions of discussion and feedback organised around the themes of Issues, Dream, Expertise and Action.
These themes helped to shape the discussion through an exchange of ideas and suggetions and begin the development of a strategy going forward from the meeting.
Speeches were also given by Wolverhampton South West MP Eleanor Smith and Tyrone Stanley, a youth worker who spoke about his journey through spending time in prison for violent youth crime to turning his life around after engaging with the Princes Trust while in HMP Werrington.
Ms Smith spoke about her hopes from the meeting and the strategy needed going forward.
She said: "This forum is just the beginning. It's not something that we can just suddenly have the solution to, but what we're planning to do is find out from young people from the community and, for me, that's important as well from the church.
"With all these community leaders involved, it will push the subject going forward. It means that the community wants to do something about it and take it seriously, but it also needs to ask the young people 'what is it and why?' and those are the questions they need to answer.
"It would be fantastic if Wolverhampton had those ideas and we could spread it out to central government, because nobody has the one solution and don't forget that Wolverhampton has its own uniqueness, like anywhere else, but it would be great and I'd be more than happy to spread that.
