Youth workers given Metrolink passes in bid to speed up pursuit of troublemakers

A team of youth workers in Oldham have been given passes for the Metrolink system so they can pursue young troublemakers without needing wait to buy a ticket on the platform.

The strategy was revealed at a meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny board on Tuesday night following questions from councillors about how the youth team was dealing with youngsters on the network.

The Oldham and Rochdale Metrolink line has become notorious for incidents of crime and antisocial behaviour in recent years.

Committee chair Councillor Colin McLaren said that activity on the tram had been ‘one of our major headaches’.
He referenced both Freehold and Westwood stops as particular hotspots.

Quizzing Jodie Barber, the head of the youth service, he said: “I think there’s problems at various stops, but I just wonder how you are coordinating the work from the youth service with the police and other agencies possibly in order to try and address the problems in that particular area?”

Ms Barber said that the service works ‘really closely’ with Greater Manchester Police around the Metrolink.

“Our detached youth work teams have Metrolink passes that they’ve had for a while now that gives them free access to travel on the Metrolink,” she said.

“Because we discovered a problem was that the young people would jump on the Metrolink really quickly as it went off and the youth workers didn’t always have time to buy a ticket and jump on after them.

“So we’d got that in place. They have regular meetings with colleagues in GMP, community safety, TFGM right across the board.

“A lot of their targeted response work is along the Metrolink corridor and it is various stops, Freehold definitely is up there but there are other hotspots along the way so we are consistently addressing the work on the Metrolink.”

Coun McLaren also raised the activity of the detached youth team, which is a team of two full time and four part-time youth workers who deliver community based and response work.

He said: “How do you actually prioritise because you could send them to every ward every night basically.”

Ms Barber explained that it was a mix of responding directly to calls from partners about where youth workers were needed, and also proactive work in communities.

“That could be anything from there’s been a number of incidents in this area can you put that on the radar, to whilst the youth workers are out they receive a call from one of the neighbourhood officers to say that there is a large gathering of young people in X park and the youth workers will respond immediately and go over there,” she said.

“So they prioritise it as they come in. 

“But the other aspect of that is what we call the universal offer where we try and make sure there is a detached team present in each of the districts at least once a week because it’s important not to just wait for a call to come in but to be building relationships with the young people working with the community.”

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