Case studies
Back to previous pagePositive Futures in Barking and Dagenham
Two years ago Paulo Silva (not his real name) seemed to be on a collision course with the law. Aged 15, he’d arrived at the Gascoigne estate in Barking, east London from Portugal with his Mum and two brothers, fleeing an abusive father.In an area of ‘young tear-aways’ he was tearing faster than most, remembers Grant Cornwell, programme manager at Leyton Orient Community Sports Programme, who had just started the Barking and Dagenham Positive Futures project on the estate.
For the first few months of the project Paulo and Grant had "running battles". But gradually, they managed to develop some kind of mutual respect. Whatever else he was up to, Paulo turned up to the evening football sessions Grant held on a small, hard play area between the flats. And he was clearly a fantastic player.
"I have never seen a kid with balance and agility like him," says Grant. "He would ride a tackle like Maradona. He was brilliant, fantastic."
Grant told him so too. As the project progressed and a team was formed, Paulo became the main man on the pitch, and football became his life. Gradually, the days of dicing with the law were left behind.
The Barking and Dagenham Positive Futures project began working with young people like Paulo in July 2000. It’s one of three led by the Leyton Orient Community Sports Programme, an independent charity based at the third division football club that’s been going for 13 years, running a vast array of sports-related initiatives in the east London boroughs of Hackney, Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets.
Barking was thought to be a bit outside the programme’s usual patch and was certainly not an area where LOCSP had built any history with local communities or a network of contacts. Grant had to "hit the ground running".
"I just went over there and wandered around," he says. "I saw there was a hard play area that was fairly run down, but you could use it. I did some leaflets and walked around for three nights where the kids were hanging out, asking them if they were interested in football. I told them I’d be there on Monday night, and they were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, all right.’"
Come Monday there were 12 teenagers there aged between 13 and 16. So Grant did a session on Wednesday too and, gradually, the numbers grew. "That first period was just about trying to build up a rapport, to understand what kind of kids I was working with, what kind of problems I was going to face," he says. "Really, I was sussing out what they were about, and giving them a chance to find out the same about me.
"I could see they thought, ‘Yeah, he’ll be here this week, but he won’t be here the week after.’ But you just continue, rain or shine."
Grant did a bit of coaching, but mostly just organised informal games and five-a-sides. He told the young people if they kept coming he’d organise a team and get them some proper games. He fought "battles" with the community caretaker who held the keys for the floodlights to the play area and resented them being there. After six months Grant moved the session to a better facility at a school three miles up the road. It was a test.
"I come from an estate in Bow in the east end and I know people get an estate mentality," he says. "They become very sceptical of anything that comes from outside the estate and very wary of going off it because that’s not where they feel comfortable. I think that’s the sort of mentality these kids had and I was really determined to break it down."
To his surprise, 80 to 90 teenagers turned up to the sessions, travelling on buses to get there. He entered them for five-a-side competitions and the team called themselves the Gascoigne Estate Crew. Then they played their first 11-a-side game against Barking and Dagenham police station, which the police won 2-1.
"That was a really good eye opener," remembers Grant. "It broke down a lot of barriers. Our kids saw them out of uniform and a little bit more human. And it showed the police that the kids can be disciplined, and have got a bit more to them."
In the summer the Crew entered the London Nations Football Festival and the following season joined the London Intermediate League, finishing joint second in their division. It meant long nights for Grant – Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings – but the project developed. They had a Christmas do, went ten-pin bowling, and did outdoor activities. "It was all about breaking down barriers," says Grant.
They even went on a tour of Holland and Belgium, together with young people from the Woodberry Down estate, where LOCSP’s Ose Albangee runs the Hackney Positive Futures project. Many of the Gascoigne crew are refugees or relatively recent immigrants – from Albania, Kosovo, Turkey, Congo, Kenya, Bosnia and French Guyana – while Ose’s lot are mostly Caribbean in origin, "a bit more street wise and in your face", says Grant.
"It was an interesting cross over," he says. "But they all pulled together and have friendships now that came from that trip. Just giving them opportunities like that shows them there’s a little bit more to life than phone jacking or getting into trouble."
The police reckon crime on the estate has fallen by some 70 per cent since the project started but Grant "wouldn’t begin to take credit for that". What he does know, though, is that 18 of the 190-odd young people who’ve engaged with the project are now qualified as coaches themselves, that six work for LOCSP, four for the Arsenal community scheme, and that many more have been influenced by him to go back to school, on towards college, or into jobs.
One former participant, a young Albanian man called Gazmand Dauti, now leads the Gascoigne Estate Crew’s training sessions for younger members, and works as a part-time coach on Saturday mornings, allowing Grant to step back a little. "Now the next generation of 15 and 16 year-olds are keen to emulate him," says Grant. "They don’t just want to be footballers now, but coaches too."
The project also worked with local schools, delivering healthy lifestyle sessions to Gascoigne primary school pupils and coaching young people at the Eastbury pupil referral unit during lunch times. They teamed up with a Befrienders mentoring project and supplied coaches for the local YIP’s summer project. They helped 35 young people form a basketball team, and one of LOCSP’s sports development workers ran a 10-week netball programme. They introduced some to a local rugby league team, and others to cricket courses.
"The whole thing has its own identity," says Grant. "All these things call themselves Gascoigne Estate Crew now and, for our sins, you see GEC sprayed everywhere." There’s even a GEC music trio cutting disks, and a pirate radio station. "We’ve given them their own sense of being, they have something that is theirs, that they set up."
It’s how he knows Positive Futures has been a success, so far, although he insists "there’s no blueprint for it, no magic wand". While the credibility of being from a professional football club certainly helped, in the end, he says, "it’s about having the right people out there, week in, week out, building those relationships with the kids. Without that, it doesn’t matter how much money you throw at it, or how good your intentions are, it just won’t work."
As for targeting the ‘core 50’ most at risk, Grant stands by his experience of using a broader approach. When he connected with the YIP manager, six months after the project started, Grant found that he was already working with 44 of the 50 who had been identified.
"My thinking is that if you start something in the right area you will at least get some of them coming along. If you get the project running and build some credibility, then you can try and identify them. What credibility have you got if you’re not doing something already?"
This year, LOCSP added a third Positive Futures project to its portfolio, winning funding to expand the work it was already doing on the Beaumont and Oliver Close estates in Waltham Forest, adding more activities and education programmes to its staple football coaching sessions. Now it is looking at how to secure the long-term future of the Barking and Hackney projects, perhaps with help from the local authorities and youth offending teams.
Ultimately though, Grant hopes they’ll leave "a legacy of activities and qualified workers on the estates that are self-sustainable, a set up where they can manage themselves".
And what of Paulo Silva? Eighteen months ago Grant took him to a nearby semi-professional side, where he shone. And last October he signed a two-year contract as a full-time trainee at a Nationwide Football League club, with a chance to become a full professional when he’s 19.
"When you look at what he was like when he started and where he is now . . . how do you measure that?" asks Grant. "What sort of cost and benefit can you attach to that? Paulo is now an icon to our kids for what can be achieved."
Factfile
- Area: Gascoigne Estate, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
- Lead agency: Leyton Orient Community Sports Programme
- Funding: Positive Futures grant of £52,800 for 2003/4.
- Key partners: London Borough of Barking & Dagenham Education, Housing and Social services; Youth Offending Team, Youth Inclusion Project, Barking and Dagenham Police, probation service.
- Other agencies involved: Baseline drugs project; Befrienders mentoring project; Eastbury secondary school (PRU); Gascoigne Primary school; Leyton All Stars, Waltham Forest Positive Futures; Stansted Football Club; Woodberry Down FC, Hackney Positive Futures.
- Activities offered: mainly football; plus basketball, netball, rugby league, cricket, ten-pin bowling, outdoor activities.
- What next: work with London Borough of Barking & Dagenham to secure future funding; continue to train young people as coaches and team managers.
- Top tip: Find the right person for the job, someone who understands the nature of the work and of these young people, the kids will do the rest for you.
