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Positive Futures in Portsmouth

Three years ago Scott Hymans had a reputation as one of "the lads" in Paulsgrove, a large social housing area on the northern edge of Portsmouth. "Scott was just one of the ‘faces’ in the area," explains Richard Brett, a youth service manager with Portsmouth City Council. "He was typical of a young man from a council estate background who had a reputation to live up to."

His family had a reputation too and the teenage Scott, already in contact with the police, was drifting from "the margins of criminal activity" towards a life of serious crime. "But he always had a little spark about him," says Richard, who’s known Scott for six years. "When you talked to him he always wanted to know a little bit more than the others."

Scott said he wanted to get into sport, so Richard and the council’s team of sports co-ordinators, who run Portsmouth’s Positive Futures project, put together "a package" for him, including football coaching sessions, and gave him social and educational support. Scott took his chance.

Now 18, he has made what Richard calls a "massive transition". Using sport he gradually moved away from his previous activities. The Positive Futures team helped him get training, and he started working with them in the local school. He has gone on to deliver sessions himself, and now runs football-coaching courses for younger kids.

He’s also at college, studying sports science and working towards football coaching qualifications, and co-runs a young men’s group as part of the city’s detached youth project. Last year, Scott’s transformation from local troublemaker to potential community leader was recognised by the authority when he became Portsmouth’s ‘Young Person of the Year’.

"It’s had a really positive impact on the other young people in the area, because they see someone from their own group and background who’s actually done well," says Richard. "The effect in terms of engaging them has been massive. It throws them a lifeline."

Positive Futures has been throwing Portsmouth’s young people a lifeline since it started two and half years ago. Scott might be an exemplary case, but the project has provided sporting opportunities to hundreds of other young people aged between five and 24, giving their sometimes traumatic and often disrupted lives a healthier focus. As well as Paulsgrove, the project targets the neighbouring area of Wymering in the north of the city; Portsea and Somerstown, near the docks; and, since spring this year, the more central Landport and Buckland wards.

With a budget of £134,000 per year (£28,000 from Positive Futures, with other contributions from Sport England, the council’s housing department, the Children’s Fund and the single regeneration budget), the project is managed by the council’s youth service and delivered by its sports department. Project staff began working in the local communities in 2000, building relationships with local police, schools, youth workers, drugs agencies, and other community organisations, identifying crime areas, speaking to the young people, and responding to what they wanted to do.

Inevitably, football was a major hook, and the project has been instrumental in setting up a number of youth teams (including girls’ teams) who play in local leagues under the banner of FC ICE (Inner City Estates). But football is far from the only sporting attraction used to lure youngsters away from crime and drugs, for the five project workers have found innovative ways of responding to young people’s needs.

Take high board diving for example, not a sport that many kids from council estates would normally get a chance to try. Julian Wadsworth, sports co-ordinator for the Portsea and Somerstown patch, explains.

"In the summer there’s always a problem in Portsea with young people jumping off the dockside into the sea, and causing problems round by the ferries," he says. "We knew there was a diving school in Southampton so we set up a scheme to take 10 youngsters from Somerstown and 10 from Portsea for open diving sessions. We said that anyone who showed potential would get taken up for a three months’ coaching course."

The situation at the docks had become so serious that the police set up a quick response unit to deal with it, and Julian told the young people that anyone caught twice would miss out on the diving trips. That was two years ago, when he focused on distracting the older teenagers, 15 to 19 year-olds. The following year he took youngsters aged between 12 and 15 as well. This year he’s been offering the course to 10 year-olds.

"From being potential offenders they’ve now been taught to dive properly, and have accreditation’s to show for it," says Julian. "The kids who I was taking up there were from high risk groups whose concentration span was very limited. But they were brilliant."

The diving instruction satisfied their need for "a buzz sport", he says. Julian also arranged sea fishing trips, using a boat that was given to the project by a local trust, and has used some of the few community facilities in Portsea and Somerstown, as well as nearby naval bases at HMS Nelson and HMS Temeraire, to put on football, tennis, fencing and horse riding courses.

"They just wouldn’t get taken to places like that normally because they are seen as such a risk," says Julian. "These are young people from low income and single parent families who have never seen education as important because they’ve always relied on the dockyards. Many people don’t ever leave their areas, so you have to physically take them and support them for a long time.

"Sport can boost their confidence, give them opportunities to make new friends, give them some discipline, help them develop leadership skills and get used to working as part of a team." The football teams, in particular, have helped to cut down the amount of bullying in the area, he says. Indeed, the police report that youth crime has fallen in all the Positive Futures areas since the project started.

However, while sport is "a good tool" for "personal development", Julian insists it is not "the whole package". As another sports officer Dru Bailey puts it: "It’s all right playing football with the lads twice a week, but you’ve got to have a bit of insight into where they’re coming from education- and offending-wise, or you are just going to be kicking them out all the time because of their behaviour."

Each worker sits on multi-agency teams with representatives from the police, social services, youth offending teams and voluntary groups, all of which refer young people to the project. Craig Lindsay is the sports co-ordinator for Paulsgrove. "Sport really is a good way of them learning without realising they’re learning," he says. "If you try to talk to some of these young people about learning they’ll just switch off straight away. But with sport they don’t realise they’re developing social skills as well as motor skills.

"Sport is a very informal way of doing group work. You can drop all that education work in as you are running a session – messages about smoking or whatever – as opposed to trying to sit them down and handing out leaflets or something. The informal approach helps you develop relationships with the young people; you have to meet them on a personal level."

Craig explains that Paulsgrove is particularly "insular and territorial" because it feels cut off from the rest of the city by a motorway. It gained national notoriety a few years ago when residents protested in favour of "naming and shaming" paedophiles, an episode that merely "gave young people an opportunity to play up to the bad boy image", he says.

Craig uses the Grove Centre, a local community and multi-sports facility, and King Richards School, to provide sessions for Paulsgrove’s young people. But he has a problem in neighbouring Wymering where there are no indoor facilities. People from the two areas harbour a long-held rivalry which means Wymering youths won’t go to the Grove Centre because "it’s full of ‘grovers’ and there will be fights".

However, Craig has managed to set up scuba diving and horse riding courses, sports which youngsters from neither area would usually get a chance to do. Horse riding, in particular, has helped the project attract a greater proportion of teenage girls to the scheme. Indeed, Richard reckons about 40 per cent of the project’s participants are female, a great improvement from the early days when almost 80 per cent were young men.

A new girls’ football programme under the Activate initiative, due to start next year, should improve that ratio still further, as could the project’s expanding tennis programme, partly funded by the housing department. Richard has also set a target for getting local parents involved – not always an easy task – and hopes to have five volunteers from each area trained by the end of next year.

Similarly, some of the older teenagers now do voluntary or part-time paid work for the project – on condition that they turn up for other commitments, such as appointments with their YOT key worker, or education welfare officer. "At one time I had about 10 or 12 young people working with me," says Julian. "Out of that you’ll get maybe three or four who show enough responsibility and maturity to carry on."

People like Scott Hymans, for example, for whom sport became the first step towards a more positive future.

Factfile

• Area: Paulsgrove and Wymering; Portsea and Somerstown; Landport and Buckland; in Portsmouth.
• Lead agency: Portsmouth Youth and Leisure services
• Funding: Positive Futures grant of £58,000 for 2003/4.
• Key partners: Portsmouth Youth and Leisure services, police, youth offending team, social services, local schools, Portsmouth youth inclusion project.
• Other agencies involved: The Grove Centre; HMS Nelson; HMS Temeraire; Fort Widdly Equestrian centre; John Pound Community Centre, King Richards School; Portsmouth Lions; Portsmouth Football Club; Portsmouth Ladies Football Club; Portsea.
• Sports offered: basketball; boxercise; dance; fencing; fishing; football; high board diving; horse riding; netball; scuba diving; tennis; trampolining; volleyball.
• What next: expand scuba diving, tennis, basketball, horse riding and fencing programmes; create cross community football clubs; train five community volunteers for each area; run Activates girls’ football programme.
• Top tip: Find ways to respond to what the young people want, if local opportunities don’t exist, create them.

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