Projects
The Capacity Building Team
In times past, every street had at least one good neighbour who could be relied on to give a newcomer a cup of sugar and bottle of milk by way of welcome. In Balsall Heath, the good neighbour has been reinvented as a Street Steward who acts a bit like a trade union shop steward, who campaigns for better working conditions on the factory shop floor. The Street Steward helps to organise and support fellow residents to gain better living conditions in the street and home where they live. They greet newcomers with a ‘Welcome Pack’ which is full of useful information.
There is an employed member of staff, Abdullah, who finds, supports and resources 70 voluntary street stewards. And, wherever she looks, there is always another modern day good neighbour who is keen to make a difference to the lives of their fellow residents in their avenue or street.
Not every resident wants to travel from one end of Balsall Heath to the other and back to attend meetings of the whole neighbourhood. So, the street stewards each help to organise a Residents Group in their neck of the woods or go a on walk-about in their few streets to identity problems for the Wardens and others to solve.
There are 15 Residents Groups, and 70 Street Stewards. So the whole neighbourhood is covered. Everyone knows someone and the sense of mutual self-help is fostered.
A good example of what the street stewards do is at Christmas. As well as erecting festive lights on key lampposts on key roads of the neighbourhood, the primary aged school children collect tins of food, biscuits and fruit which the wardens make up into 250 food hampers for elderly folk and those who live alone. Then they are delivered by the Stewards up to and even on Christmas day. It’s not so much the gift of the food which counts, as the fact that someone cares. It’s the thought which counts!
The Street Stewards and resident group leaders hold regular Walk-abouts with key statutory colleagues. They identify problems such as overhanging hedges, dumped cars, street lights which don’t work, and agree on the spot who will solve them. They are a great practical success. They persuade residents generally to bother more and to care for each other. Good role models are singled out, given a Balsall Heath Honour and asked to set an example for others.
Contact Abdullah on 0121 446 6183 if you would like to set up a resident’s group in your section of Balsall Heath.
The Green Team
Balsall Heath, like many neighbourhoods, appeared uncared for. One third of its housing stock is municipal and one third is owned by housing associations. There are 6 small parks and many “confused”, little, public places. There are a host of avenues and alleyways in which people dump rubbish, and walls on which others scribble graffiti.
The overall effect on the eye is unpleasant. It creates the sense that nobody cares. It encourages crime and rats and more rubbish.
The Green Team’s task is to ‘own’ the neighbourhood and act as if they were its ‘estate gardener’. They tend overgrown gardens, create flower beds in the parks, put planters and hanging baskets on main roads and move all the grime and graffiti which has accumulated.
The Green Team’s base is being turned into a Social Enterprise and a Garden Centre. One of the staff acts as a modern version of a Park Keeper.
Further, the staff visit the 5 local primary schools and persuade children and adults to help them in their task, use the bins provided and recover the sense of pride and purpose.
Contact the green team on 0121 446 6183
A host of volunteers come from a number of the local faith establishments. They tackle ‘impossible-to-tackle’ eyesores and succeed in training them and making them look attractive.
Slowly, slowly, the whole area is being cleaned, greened and beautified. It has now reached the point where more and more residents tend their garden, adopt a nearby open space and enter the annual gardening competition.
The Safe Team
Residents succeeded in ending street corner prostitution by ‘picketing’ their own street corners and shooing the kerb crawlers away. Once the ‘demand’ had gone, the ‘supply’ just faded away. But the picketing had to be kept up night after night for three years. The problem did not move elsewhere, it was not displaced, it was dispersed.
The Forum applied for and got 5 neighbourhood warden posts which were funded for three years from the Home Office. They are now paid for by bits and pieces of external grants. But, we hope the police and other partners will soon invest in them and make them secure. They liaise between the police and residents and behave a little like Dixon of Dock Green. They reassure residents, mend their locks and solve low level crime.
There are 15 powerful CCTV cameras which interlink and are monitored by resident volunteers from within the local police station. Volunteer residents also staff the front desk of the police station, and answer residents’ enquiries. Without their cheery presence, the door would be locked and the public dismayed.
Together, the Wardens, CCTV monitors and front desk receptionists form part of an extended police team which helps and reassures residents and also persuades them to play their part by making their complaints or suspicions known in the certain knowledge that they will be dealt with promptly.
On one day a week the reception are of the Police Station is staffed not just by volunteers and the Neighbourhood Wardens. The police, housing, environmental officers, councillors and others are there. Together, they form a ‘one-stop-shop’ so that any resident can visit with a problem and leave with a solution.
A further part of our safety work is to employ a detached youth worker and to link with other youth projects. The local police liaise with the community and visa versa via Neighbourhood Tasking meetings which are chaired by a resident. It has a safety strategy for the neighbourhood. It is developing the principles and practices of neighbourhood policing.
Contact the Safe Team on 0121 446 6183 or email, patrickwing(at)yahoo.co.uk
