I have been involved in several discussions about British youth over the last few weeks and three things have stood out.
1. Everybody has a strong opinion about the attitudes and behaviour of young people in our communites
2. There is a lot of anger towards teenagers in general.
3. They all struggled to find more than a handful of clubs, organisations or resources for teenagers in the local area
It seems to me that teenagers come low down on our priorities and they are just a pain. They do have an attitude problem, but then so did we when we were that age. We may not remember all the arguments, but I bet our parents can. We have developed such an attitude ourselves towards teenagers, that if any dare to speak to us we think they might attack us. I am about to say now, that they probably will attack us – so how bad is that!
So, we also need to change our attitudes towards teenagers generally and not see them all as a threat. We need to look for some positives.
Also, when large developments are given planning permission, they sometimes have to add some benefit to the community. Why not make all new housing developments over a certain size build a community centre on site, which must include activities for teenagers or an advice centre for parents. Now that the supermarkets are changing their tack by setting up smaller ‘express’ stores in the local areas, why not insist that they employ a certain number of teenagers on a flexible basis, like Macdonalds does. These are just two small ways where resources can be improved for youth, without costing the Council any money at all and all local communities across the country can benefit!
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