Graduates ‘could protect children from being lured into gang crime'

Police and ministers blame county lines for fuelling violent crime
PA Wire/PA Images
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An elite group of highly skilled graduates should be hired as youth workers to stop children being lured into gang crime, the Children’s Commissioner said today.

Anne Longfield said recruits should be hired under a scheme similar to the Teach First charity programme which trains teachers, and sent into schools to work directly with vulnerable pupils.

She also urged councils in London to set up a hotline that parents worried about children being targeted by gangs could use to find help, and urged ministers to hold weekly Cobra-style meetings on the violent crime ­“emergency”.

In an interview with the Standard Ms Longfield expressed her dismay at the threat from “county lines” drug trading, in which London gangs use often young recruits to ferry drugs to other parts of the country.

Police and ministers blame county lines for fuelling violent crime.

Anne Longfield, Children's Commissioner for England
PA

She said there were known to be about 500 county lines operating in London, involving about 7,000 to 10,000 children, including some as young as eight. But she warned that despite the scale of the problem there was a “shocking” level of awareness and insufficient action to tackle it.

The answers, she said, include basing a police officer and a youth worker at every school in London. The latter should include recruits from a Teach First-type scheme to create a cadre of youth workers with expertise in diverting children from violent crime.

“There’s been lots of baby steps locally and nationally but there isn’t yet the level of response that the horrific scale of the threat to kids should demand,” Ms Longfield said.

“The extreme violence and the threat that those children are in is something that most people wouldn’t be able to com­prehend.

“We have had conversations with quite a few parents aware that their kids in various parts of London are involved or being groomed by gangs and they just are amazed that no one steps forward to help them.

“Until the kids are in a really bad ­situation, usually A&E, no one thinks they are at risk enough to step in.”

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