Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 219)
TUESDAY 19 DECEMBER 2006
JASON LORD
COVER, HAYLEY
LITTEK, DEXTER
PADMORE, LEON
SIMMONDS, BIANCA
WAITE AND
JULIA WOLTON
Q200 Mr Winnick: I can understand
that.
Bianca: If I did want to be part
of the police, nothing could stop me, no-one could stop me, that
is just not what I want to do, but I really do not mind working
with the police to improve what I think is right.
Leon: It is not because it is
not what I want to do, but I can say from what I know, how I have
been brought up, it has been known that the police have been negative,
they have not done anything where it has been positive, if you
see what I am saying, for me to join the police, to think, "Oh,
yes, I am going to be getting something positive out of this."
The police do not do nothing to bond with the community, if you
see what I am saying, to make the community feel a lot safer and
assure us that they have got someone to talk to or someone to
go to with their actual problems that they feel inside. The police
in my estate are just seen as—I cannot even find the word
for it, I do not even know the word for it.
Q201 Mr Winnick: Shall we start with
"enemy"?
Leon: Something like that, yes.
Dexter: Monsters.
Q202 Mr Winnick: Monsters?
Dexter: Yes, monsters.
Chairman: We need to move on. Ann Cryer.
Q203 Mrs Cryer: I hope you do not
think I am prying in asking this, but can you tell me, are any
of you still living with your parents in a happy home? Jason is
and Leon is. ***
Julia: Can I just make a point
that when we made these notes for people to read, the young people
were quite keen that they were not reflected back into the Committee.
I think some of those notes are quite personal, and I can see
tension building up here.
Bob Russell: Can I say I am very impressed
with Bianca's turn around. I am very impressed with Bianca's current
lifestyle, the positive side.
Chairman: Thank you for clearing that
up, Julia. What you can see is that members of the Committee have
read your personal statements, because we found them very useful,
but we will keep them completely as background information.
Mrs Cryer: At least two of you (and I
am not going to refer to who) were actually asked to leave by
your parents. I wonder if those who were asked to leave home could
tell us why it was that their parents asked them to leave their
home and what their view is of that: whether they felt that it
was unfair or whether they could understand why their parents
wanted them to leave? It looks to me as if leaving home was probably
a turning point in your lives.
Q204 Chairman: If you want to talk
more generally about people you know or friends rather than yourselves,
please do so.
Bianca: I cannot really answer
that for myself, because I was not asked to leave home at a young
age, but the situation I have is totally different anyway. We
are not going into that, but in having experience and knowing
other people who have been asked to move out, like young boys,
because they are constantly getting in trouble, their mum cannot
take it any more. Then they go to their dad and their dad is not
really showing them attention, so they end up staying at a friend's
home and, basically, in the end, they end up with nowhere stable
to live and then, obviously, that leads them to more unnecessary
crime and the crime gets more serious. It comes from petty crime
and it turns into more serious crime, because now they are on
their own, mummy and daddy are not there any more, so in that
experience, yes, I think it gets worse.
Q205 Mrs Cryer: You are talking about
the people that you know. Once their parents ejected them from
their home, for whatever reason, whether it was right or wrong,
was any help given to them either by social services or any other
organisation to help them access funds to pay their rents?
Hayley: No, I was not given any
help. When I left home I was at "the housing" and "the
housing" gave me the number for an emergency place to stay
with another family because I had nowhere to stay for the night.
They made me come back the next day and I was there for about
three days until I got my hostel. After that I just went to collect
my keys and I was by myself. I had to sort out my own benefits,
I never had a key worker, I had no-one to help me, I had to rely
on myself and do things all by myself. There was not no-one to
help me.
Q206 Mrs Cryer: At that point if,
say, a friendly social worker, at whatever level, were able to
come into your life and say, "Look, Hayley, this is what
you can do. You can access funds to help you." How old were
you—18?
Hayley: 17.
Q207 Chairman: If you wanted to stay
at school, say, you did not want to get a job, if someone had
said at that point, someone in the school or a social worker,
"Look, this is how you do it. You can get some money to pay
your rent, you can stay on at school", would that have been
helpful to you, do you think?
Hayley: Yes, it would be helpful
to anyone. To have information is to be able to make decisions
that make a change on your life. I could have been at school at
that time and felt that I had to leave school and go and work
in a hairdressers or something just to get my rent, or go and
commit crime to get my rent. That would have changed my life if
someone came to me and said to me, "Oh, you can do this,
you can get this and that benefit." I had to find it all
out myself. I was not prepared to go down that route. I found
it all out myself and I was out of college at that time as well.
It was all right for me, it was not such a big thing, but for
someone else at a younger age who was at school or someone that
is in college or someone who needs that help and support and is
not independent enough to go and do it themselves, they need it.
There is no doubt about it.
Bianca: It also does come down
to the age difference as well, because obviously at a younger
age, if you are under 16, there is no benefits or income help
you can get other than child benefit, and that all goes back to
your parents. Obviously, if you have moved out, they only offer
you social services and foster care, and children are not going
to be happy, "Let's go into foster care." That is just
against everything; they are not going to do it, so they think,
"I can do it by myself", and when they realise how hard
it really is they turn to crime. I was living by myself when I
was 14; when I was 16 I was living by myself as well. I had benefits
for that, and obviously I was in college, but it took so long
for that to happen and they gave me a flat. They did not want
to help me, give me money, to do up my flat, so that leads to:
"What else am I supposed to do?" I cannot work because
if I work I will be earning too much where they will take me off
benefits. If it does not work, I will be working basically just
enough to pay for my rent and go to college, just about that,
and there is things like cookers, washing machines, fridges and
things like that that are necessities that you need, and they
did not help me get that, so obviously I had to find other ways
to get that. It comes back to obviously getting kicked out and
leaving home early. I think that does play a big role, and when
that happens to you, you feel like it rubs off and you need to
get on your feet and you feel that the only person who can do
that is yourself and there is no help out there for you. Like
Hayley says, if you do not have the information, you do not feel
you have that much decision open to you.
Mrs Cryer: You were all thrown into a
situation very young when you had to start making decisions that
usually much older people have to make. I was just trying to get
at what help you could get to young people at that point when
they are perhaps thrown out of home and they just need someone
to guide them in the right direction—where to get benefits,
where to get help. You have been very helpful. Thank you very
much.
Q208 Chairman: Can I chip in a question.
I heard a couple of my colleagues over there asking it. There
is a service called Connexions which is supposed to provide support
for 14 to 19 year olds. Did any of you—
Bianca: I have been there. I do
not want to put it down, because in some sense it does work for
certain people, but basically, not being funny, but it is sort
of if you cannot really access a computer, if you do not know
how to use the internet or you are not that confident in speaking
on the phone or something, basically they just give you the facilities
to use, they do not help you, they give you that. I have been
there and thinking, "There must be something more that they
can tell me", and basically everything I have researched
on the internet and checked up in the books, it is the same thing
they are going to tell you. It is not really that much help, not
homes for young people. I know they do help young people out with
food shopping and that, they will get vouchers for that, Iceland
and all that. I have never had experience of that, but you have
to be in a serious circumstance to get that, but other than that
I think Connexions is rubbish.
Q209 Mrs Cryer: I want to move on
now from family to school. We have got notes about you having
dropped out of school. How many of you dropped out of school through
choice and how many of you were actually ejected from school,
expelled from school? You were expelled, Leon.
Leon: Yes.
Q210 Mrs Cryer: Dexter?
Dexter: I dropped out.
Q211 Mrs Cryer: Hayley, did you have
to leave school?
Hayley: I finished school.
Q212 Mrs Cryer: You finished school?
Hayley: Yes.
Q213 Mrs Cryer: You left when you
were 17?
Hayley: College. I left home when
I was 17.
Q214 Mrs Cryer: I am talking about
school now. When did you leave school?
Hayley: College. Do you mean education?
Q215 Mrs Cryer: Yes.
Hayley: At 17.
Q216 Mrs Cryer: Bianca?
Bianca: I got kicked out of school,
but now I am in college.
Q217 Mrs Cryer: Jason?
Jason: I got told to leave. I
never got kicked out, but I was told to leave.
Q218 Mrs Cryer: You were expelled
from school. What impact do you think it had on you all whether
you left from choice or whether you were expelled from school
as to what you did then so far as getting involved in criminal
activity?
Hayley: I could say from college
rather than school, I got kicked out of college and it made me
feel kind of like a waste of time, because I chose to go to college,
school is compulsory. I am not saying that it makes a difference
whether it is school or college how you feel, but from college
I felt let down because I found my way to college, I completed
my first year, and the teacher threatened me towards the end of
my first year saying that he is not going to let me do the second
year, but because my work was a more higher standard he had to
put me through and shortly after I got kicked out, a month into
the course, so I felt like it was a waste of time. It was too
late for me to join any other college, and I was just lost for
the rest of the year. It puts your life on hold, it makes you
feel frustrated and you do not know what to do—if it is
really worth it or not, if it is the right thing to do—because
it feels like you cannot win. It feels like you are a loser: you
got kicked out; there is nothing you can do; you are just stuck.
Q219 Mrs Cryer: Did the school discuss
the problems with you. Did they actually say, "Look, whatever
it is about your behaviour, if it continues you are going to be
expelled"?
Hayley: No.
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