(Samaj Weekly)- Labour’s Shadow Mayor for the West Midlands, Liam Byrne MP, has set out plans to transform youth services across the region to help tackle spiralling knife crime and youth unemployment – with a pledge to start funding youth workers in every community in the West Midlands.
Speaking during a visit to Bilston Town Football Club in Wolverhampton on Friday 19 March he explained:
“Here in Bilston we have a wonderful community football club, rooted in a community which gives hundreds of young people the opportunity to have fun, build networks, learn skills, and steer clear of the perils of gangs.
“But right now too many of our young people simply don’t have this sort of support. And frankly, it’s costing young lives lost to knife crime and young livelihoods lost to unemployment.
“Parents and grandparents across the West Midlands have watched in horror as youth centres have been closed and youth workers laid off, while knife crime has surged by a third in the last four years. We have to ask ourselves: how many more young lives are we prepared to see snatched away from us before we act.
“I say, we can stand by no more. The time to act is now.
Byrne laid out a three-point plan to drive through in the weeks after the May elections:
– An emergency budget to help release investment into youth workers
– A Jobs Taskforce to rapidly identify jobs opportunities for young people backed by a plan to double apprenticeships
– Support for Simon Foster’s plan to put extra police back into neighbourhoods.
Byrne went on:
“My first emergency budget as Mayor will encourage councils to rebuild their services for young people with a specialist youth worker in every ward.
“We’ll back these teams with funding from the Arts Council, Sport England, the Football Foundation, to provide first class sport, music and arts at a neighbourhood level.
“I will set up a jobs taskforce to create a plan to tackle youth unemployment. Both HS2 and the Commonwealth Games offer great opportunities to create new jobs.
“We will need skilled workers to develop the West Midlands as the centre of the green industrial revolution. So we will double the number of apprenticeships to create new ways to enable school leavers to find the career which is right for them.
“We especially need to work with the health and social workers to improve our mental health services for children and teenagers.
“We are the youngest region in Europe. We should be the place with the best life chances for the young.
“Crucially, we have to end the basic injustice that the postcode where you’re born defines your possibilities in life. And for young people to have hope and faith in the future, we need to show we have hope and faith in them“
