Youth Endowment Fund suggests violence is causing children to skip school
A new survey from the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) has found that a fear of violence has caused a fifth of children to miss school at least once within the past year.
In a tragic turn of events, researchers discovered that from a survey of over 7,500 children 16% aged between 13-17 have been a victim of violence. Results on the survey were published on Monday.
To conduct their research, experts launched an online survey with Walr and found 1,244 of the 7,574 respondents in England and Wales had been a victim of violence within the last 12 months. In addition, from the children that took part, 1,533 – or 20% – had skipped school due to feeling unsafe.
When speaking about violence on this particular occasion, YEF defined it as ‘the use of force or threat of force against another person or people’, including sexual assault.
In addition, the survey also found that of the 1,244 children who said they had experienced violence, almost half said they had also perpetrated it. 58% of perpetrators said no one of authority learnt about the violence they had committed and a mere 16% said they were offered support to help them control their behaviour.
Commenting on this statistic, Mr Rose, a member of the Youth Advisory Board, said school teachers could be the key to helping support children if they have a good relationship with them. He said ‘growing up, a lot of the times we didn’t call the police when stuff happened because we didn’t trust the police’ but one teacher ‘saved a lot of my friends’.
Mr Rose added: ‘Him being a black teacher, he’s gone through what we’ve gone through.’
Against this backdrop, chief constable Catherine Roper, the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead for children and young people, said ‘building relationships with young people is a vital element in community policing.’
Ms Roper has said that the organisation is now working with YEF on a study to evaluate the use of police in schools to help build a better support system.
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