 Parents are seen as just "mates", Mr Congreve said |
Children join gangs due to poor relationships with their families, a youth worker in south London has said. Ivan Congreve, who runs the Salvation Army's Springfield Lodge in Camberwell, said some joined gangs as an alternative to their own family. "All of our guys are from a broken family of one sort or another and that leads them into gangs," he said. Springfield Lodge provides men aged 16 to 21 with a home and teaches them the skills to become independent. Nineteen teenagers have died in 2008 in London due to violent attacks. In the whole of last year, 26 teenagers died in violent circumstances. Last week Barbara Wilding, Chief Constable of South Wales, said family life had been replaced by gang culture based on drugs and violence for "almost feral groups" of young people. Violence and drugs "Many have experienced family breakdown, and in place of parental and family role models the gang culture is now established," she said. "Tribal loyalty has replaced family loyalty and gang culture based on violence and drugs is a way of life." Mr Congreve echoed this, saying: "We are set in between Peckham and Brixton. We have a lot of gang culture in the area. "That's where they seem to be able to find the family they are looking for.  |  They are accepted, looked after and respected in ways that they don't feel they get from their family |
"They are accepted, looked after and respected in ways that they don't feel they get from their family. "Although a gang is quite a dysfunctional family, they still see it as a family." Many of the young men have relationships with both their mother and father but see them as "mates" rather than parents, Mr Congreve said. "They would go to them to get something but not for advice. They haven't built up a relationship with them. "We are very good at letting children spend a lot of time by themselves, on the computer. "That doesn't build communication or teach them how to have relationships." Mr Congreve said gangs could provide a surrogate family but young men usually arrive at Springfield Lodge after months of sleeping on friends' sofas and floors. "They realise they don't want to be there in 10 years' time," he said. Exceptionally brave He said it took an "exceptionally brave" person to look at their life and decide they needed to change it because they did not like what they saw. The Salvation Army is calling for vulnerable families to be identified early so parents and children can be given support. On Tuesday the organisation published its Seeds of Exclusion report which is based on interviews with 438 people who used Salvation Army homelessness services in the UK between October 2007 and March 2008. It shows that almost half (47%) said they had no close relationship with their father during childhood and nearly a third (31%) said their relationship with their mother had not been close. Nearly half (44%) of those interviewed said they had felt ignored at home, 43% said they had been emotionally abused, 40% said they were neglected and 35% said they had suffered physical abuse. Almost a third (29%) said they had been homeless before the age of 18. Of those the average age for first experiencing homelessness was 15. Commissioner John Matear, leader of The Salvation Army in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, added: "To break this cycle we must stop assuming that good parenting just comes naturally or that people in need will find their own way to the services on offer. "Unless we find ways of identifying families at risk and supporting them today, right where they are in their own communities, we are just storing up problems for the future."
| 
Breakfast 
E-mail this to a friend 
Printable version 
BBC News
Bookmark with:
What are these?