Here are a selection of remarks from the 2019 series of Forums in Southwark. They come from 10/11 year olds, 13 year olds, 16 year olds:
- why isn’t it safe to be a child here in Southwark?
- stop telling us what you’ve already done and start telling us what you will do
- In order for us to dig deeper into the situation of crime we need to think of people’s mental health
- another thing that needs to be worked on as well is keeping people safe mentally as well, because it’s not a thing you can see easily but I feel like no-one takes it really seriously unless someone has a breakdown or something like that.
- I have left my house one day and I’ve seen a shooting, and someone was killed opposite my house.
- if I spoke to my family they would get too worried and then they would do something that I don’t want them to do
- we just need to sit people’s parents down and just have a chat with them about things going on in society.
- I wouldn’t even bother to go out of my house, I’m that scared.
- Because the park where my little brother goes to play like, if you walk through there in the bushes you can see knives in the park where all the kids are playing. And hammers and stuff like that. Yeah, and even kids areas it’s not a safe environment
- Sometimes boys just going to football and home, sometimes they’re just going to basketball and home and they’re getting stopped and searched and its kind of like a panic for them. – Like some students, as soon as they see the police officers, they start to get rude because they feel like the officers are going to react in a very negative way, so we start as young kids like … – Defending ourselves. – Yeah, defending ourselves, because some police officers they are just like “excuse me, stop right there!” and I’m like, “what did I do wrong? I’m just on my own”
Below are audio files from the 2020 Forum at Surrey Square Primary School near the Old Kent Road in Southwark.
Chicken & Chips
Gangs have changed
You have to say no to some things
Forums like these are so important, says Head of Year 6 at SSQ
Highshore School in Southwark hosted our third Forum of 2020. A member of staff said afterwards: “It was really good to see what the young people wanted to bring up and a lot more in depth than even I thought.”