A bright idea makes a safer community
14 May 2008
An idea proposed by a Mandurah mother and educator and taken up by Lane Ford, the police and local not-for-profit organisation, Community First, is set to keep children off the streets at night.
The result, Mandurah’s Community Youth Patrol, with its instantly-recognizable crew cab vehicle, was launched today at a special presentation on the Mandurah foreshore.
Getting parents to take responsibility for their children sounds like a good idea - but making it happen is sometimes much harder. Katie Bennell, who works as an Aboriginal and Islander Education Officer at Coodanup School, lived in Geraldton almost 14 years ago, and was involved with The Geraldton Patrol.
“It was a great way of making the community a safer place both for children and for elderly people and others, because we made sure the kids weren’t roaming the streets at all hours, getting into trouble,” she said.
Katie, who has seven children of her own and two foster children, decided that the key to keeping children out of trouble was to make parents take responsibility for them. One of her own children was in trouble when she decided that was the best course of action.
“I thought, if the patrol worked well in Geraldton, why not here in Mandurah where we’ve got kids from Mandurah, Pinjarra and Waroona? So I went to see Senior Sergeant Jeff Beaman, the officer in charge of the Mandurah police station. He told me that there were sometimes children as young as eight out on the streets in Mandurah some nights. He said there were patrols in Fremantle and Perth, and he thought one for Mandurah was a great idea.”
From there, the idea gained momentum. Senior Sergeant Beaman suggested getting information about the protocols needed to run a patrol, finding sponsors to provide a vehicle and support and a team of volunteers to staff it. He then applied for police funding to start the project.
Lane Ford offered to provide a vehicle, and Community First, which offers people a step up to a better life through its employment and community services, offered financial management of the project. Katie mentioned the proposal to friends and family and within days had 17 volunteers to help staff the patrols.
“It’s not just for indigenous youth and volunteers - it’s for the whole community,” she said. “We’ve got non-indigenous people already keen to help and to be volunteers, but we will need more people.”
Now the Mandurah Community Youth Patrol trial will have teams of volunteers on duty every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night for the next three months. They will meet at the base office at Coodanup Community House (provided by the Department for Child Protection, who will also make a worker available as needed), and each night’s five person team will drive into town where three of them will get out and start walking the beat and talking to young people. Two of the team will stay in the car and drive to local hot spots where young people and children congregate.
Team members will talk to children who are still out on the streets at 10.30 at night and suggest it’s time for them to go home. They will record details of young people and children under the influence of alcohol and will contact their homes to arrange for a responsible adult to come and collect them.
“Based on expeprience elsewhere it’s likely that a percentage of the young people will need to be taken home or to another responsible adult. In some cases the patrol will take them to the Coodanup Centre and DCP will be notified,” Katie said.
“At the end of the day, it’s up to us as parents to provide the role models for our children.”
Mandurah Community Youth Patrols will run from 7.30pm until 11pm on Thursday nights and from 9.30pm until 3.00am on Fridays and Saturdays. Both men and women are needed as volunteers for the service. Anyone who would like to be a part of the patrol can contact Katie on 0404258713.
Contacts: Katie Bennell 0404258713; Senior Sergeant Jeff Beaman 9581 0222.