Mr Campbell visited South Tyneside Safer Partnership on 30 January. During his visit, he went on a walkabout of the Cleadon Park Estate accompanied by Kay Howes, Regional Manager of Crime Reduction and Anti-social Behaviour at Government Office for the North East and Nick Brook, Head of Anti-social Behaviour at the Home Office.
They met with local residents and saw some of the initiatives that the partnership has set up in consultation with the public, including youth activities.
He met with young people from the Park Avenue Detached Youth Project. The partnership used Government’s Youth Crime Action Plan funding to deliver the School Safe, Street Stop and Safe Stop initiatives. The initiatives improve communications with young people and deploy street-based teams of youth workers, including ex-offenders, to focus on anti-social behaviour and ensure that children at risk on the streets, are taken to a place of safety, where they can be collected by their parents.
The minister also heard about the "We asked, you said, we did" initiative that ran across Tyne and Wear. It used adverts in key locations on the transport network to promote that agencies wanted to hear the communities’ views, and how partnerships had responded to concerns. An evaluation of the campaign in South Tyneside saw the number of people who believed the authorities were listening and responding to their concerns rise from 71 per cent to 80 per cent.
This visit is the first of ten anti-social behaviour themed visits across the country.
