Lambeth X-it project scoops top national award

Lambeth's X-it programme, which offers young people an alternative to gang life, has won the prestigious children's services award in the Guardian newspaper's Public Services Awards.

The innovative programme works directly with young people at risk of gang membership.

It uses intensive support through group work sessions, residential courses and leadership programmes to develop self awareness and empowerment amongst young people and helps them make positive choices.

An evaluation of the programme showed that 72 per cent of participants (18 of 25 young people) had desisted from offending during their involvement with the programme.

Operated by Lambeth Council's Children and Young People's Service, the project has also developed close working links with a number of agencies including the police, community safety teams, tenant associations, youth workers and, most importantly, the young people themselves.

Fundamental to the programme is that it is led by the young people themselves. They go through the programme and are then encouraged to become peer mentors for other young people.

X-it was highlighted in the recommendations made in Home Affairs Committee report, Young Black People and The Criminal Justice System.

The report said successful gang exit schemes at a local level like X-it are the best means of combating the influence of gang culture and peer pressure.

Lambeth Council Town Centre Team Leader Julia Wolton, who took the lead in setting up X-it, says "the programme offers choices. For instance, we get young people to think if it's worth robbing a mobile phone for £10 when they risk a prison sentence. We also talk about their reasons for being strapped (carrying a weapon.)"

An early 'graduate' of the programme, Dennis, has been a peer mentor for the last two years. Aged 18, and a former small-time drug dealer and crew member, he is now a photography student and aspiring script writer.

"I heard about the programme from someone I did judo with on the estate," he recalls. "At the time I spent much of my life on the street. Sometimes I wouldn't get home until the morning. We started robbing phones and selling drugs to make money.

"It started getting out of hand. Someone I knew went to jail. That's when I heard about the programme. I thought maybe I needed to change my ways."

Councillor Mark Bennett, Lambeth Council Cabinet Member for Safer Communities, welcomed the award. "This recognition follows the singling out of X-it by the Home Office as a template for other local authorities to follow," he commented.

"There are no easy answers to the problem of diverting young people from gang culture and crime, but it is an issue which must be tackled. We owe it to the young people themselves and to society as a whole."