One of the biggest issues we face is simple lack of awareness.
Young people in an inner city environment like ours have so many opportunities right on their doorstep, but all too often they don’t access these. They just don’t know what’s available. On the other hand, those looking at King’s Cross from the outside see all the amazing new developments and don’t expect to find the levels of deprivation that still exist across the neighbourhood.
Sometimes it almost feels like there’s an invisible boundary around these streets.
On our side there are big block of flats, drug dealing and quite a lot of violence too. Social isolation for those living in this little bubble becomes a real problem. We took a group of young people to Granary Square in the summer and they were shocked. They didn’t even know it was there. A lot of people just don’t cross that border.
In this job, you need to be good at building a rapport.
You build trust, and then you use that as your tool. Some of our most important work is in prevention and showing young people the consequences of their actions. Once they’ve started getting into things like gangs and drugs, it’s so hard to pull them back out, at least until something significant happens to them. By that time they’ve either got a criminal record – and good luck to them getting a job with one of those – or they’ve done a jail term, or got really hurt.
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King’s Cross is a vibrant place full of culture, and a lot of that is Bengali culture.
KCBNA head up the annual Camden Mela in Coram’s Field where thousands of people come to celebrate this influence, but our youth centre is actually full of all sorts of ethnicities. It’s beautiful to see how the young people have such a deep understanding of each other’s cultures today. When I was growing up there were a lot of racial tensions around here that I don’t really come across now.
A lot of them are quite defensive, with the constant negative media coverage around Muslims. They just don’t understand how they are being targeted and associated with actions that they totally disagree with and have absolutely nothing to do with.
Planned cuts to the youth service are going to leave a lot of young people isolated.
Cutting crucial services always has a knock-on effect, and I’m worried about that. These youngsters will be on street corners if they don’t have anywhere to go and then you are asking for trouble.
The future is bright for King’s Cross, though. I’ve seen it change so much for the better in the last ten years.
We’ve just got to ensure that the new jobs here go to the people who deserve them – the locals. We’re working on creating a pathway to employment for our young people, putting on jobs fairs with the likes of KX Recruit and the construction companies, but it can still be really frustrating. When an 18-year-old sends off a CV and gets told they don’t have enough experience, it feels like a trap. Give them the experience.
You have to be a certain type of character to do this job.
You have to be hopeful. You need confidence to be able to relate to the challenges young people face and empathise with what they are going through.
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