Community safety Volunteering Project

Summary of project

The Project will pilot a new and innovative approach in rural Wrexham aimed at reducing youth crime and anti-social behaviour by recruiting, training and supporting adult volunteers, with appropriate interpersonal skills, to work directly with identified young people known to be involved with / or at risk of involvement in crime and anti-social behaviour.
Primarily the project will seek to recruit and train adult volunteers to act as mentors and match them to young people who have been referred to the project because of concerns about their behaviour. This will make the Project unique in Wrexham. Mentoring is a voluntary (non-statutory) one-to-one relationship between a young person and a supportive adult. It is more than befriending and aims to make constructive changes in the life and behaviour of the young person. The Project will develop and co-ordinate a referral process for the Mentoring Project, enabling public and voluntary sector partner agencies to refer young people into the scheme. The point of referral for a young person entering the scheme will be flexible to reflect the breadth of benefits of the mentoring scheme. Young people may be referred to the project to :

• prevent their behaviour developing into more serious anti-social behaviour
• divert them away from anti-social behaviour and into constructive activities
• reduce the risk of their re-offending
• Apart from the Mentoring Project, adult volunteers will also have access to other opportunities for volunteering within the youth justice context. These may include participating in Referral Panels, escorting a young person and/or a member of their family to important meetings/events in support of changing the young persons offending behaviour.