Slough Response
The taskforce focuses on four key areas of activity.
Prevention – building resilience and supporting education in schools and communities; creating and promoting a positive view of the town.
Early intervention – identifying young people at risk and providing effective intervention at the earliest opportunity to stop involvement in gangs and serious violence.
Enforcement – robustly tackling knife crime, county lines and related criminality.
Reactive intervention – people already involved in gangs, county lines activity and those committing serious violence will receive the right intervention at the right time.
Examples of specific actions by the taskforce are below.
- Expand CCTV coverage of Salt Hill Park
- Develop a specialist outreach team to work with young people at risk of or involved in violence, gangs and drug dealing
- Communications campaign challenging why young people carry knives to facilitate behaviour change
- Develop an intervention framework from prevention to intensive intervention
- Review school exclusion processes to support young people to remain in mainstream education
- Explore the development of Youth Zones in Slough to provide positive activities
- Identify gaps in services to inform future development and provision
- Use data and insights to inform targeted prevention and early intervention
- Engage with communities to understand social and environmental problems, and design interventions to address these
- Work with other partnerships, including Domestic Abuse and Child Exploitation Groups, to ensure stakeholder support in tackling serious violence