Taking action to keep every man and boy in our city safe will make the city a safer place for everyone.
To help us help do this we will create a Keeping Men and Boys Safe Taskforce with a focus on understanding and addressing the experience of men and boys who are the victims of crime, anti-social behaviour and risky behaviour.
One of the broader strategic objectives is to build the Male Social Capital that occurs at an individual, cultural and community level and can be measured by an individual man or boy’s capacity to seek help and support AND in a community’s capacity to give help to men and boys. We also want to understand why individuals and communities with low male social capital are more likely to experience crime, violence and abuse, anti-social behaviour and risky behaviour.
We’d like the Safety Taskforce to consider how we can help boost make social capital at a societal level by seeking to challenge collective attitudes that make us more tolerant of violence and abuse against men and boys, result in lower expectations of men and boys and normalize negative behaviour both towards and by men and boys.
The overriding objectives of this Taskforce would be to:
- Identify the types of crime, violence and abuse, anti-social behaviour and risky behaviour that most impact on men as victims and take action
- Identify the types of crime, violence and abuse, anti-social behaviour and risky behaviour that most impact on men as perpetrators and take action
- Identify and support ways to involve more men and fathers as role models, mentors and champions in this work
- Identify the barriers that prevent more men and boys living a life free from offending and support more boys/men at risk of offending to overcome these barriers and make positive life choices
- Identify the social and cultural norms that make men and boys more likely to be involved crime, violence and abuse, anti-social behaviour and risky behaviour and challenge these norms wherever appropriate
One vehicle for this work could be a annual event will called The Goodwill Project that we aim to pilot in December 2011.
We’d also like this Taskforce to work with other stakeholders to help improve provision of positive activities during school holidays and out of school time, which could become a year round initiative.
Most importantly, we want the Safety Taskforce to help us to boost the role of male mentoring with an Every Man A Mentor campaign that draws upon and builds on a wide range of existing examples of mentoring such as the Fire & Rescue Services LIFE Project (Local Intervention Fire Education) and abandofbrothers Beyond The Hero training for male mentors.
The ten safety objectives we’d like the Keeping Men and Boys Safe Network to consider delivering are:
| Promote and develop men to men and men to boy mentoring in the city |
| Develop an initiative on prevention of violence against men and boys |
| Help develop existing initiatives to improve safety of men and boys on the road |
| Develop services for male victims of domestic violence and abuse |
| Support and develop existing services for male and female perpetrators of domestic violence |
| Review the provision of services for couples in mutually violent relationships and identify how the way this issue is handled impacts on men, women and children |
| Develop services to support men in prison, prison leavers and support initiatives supporting dads in prison to stay in contact with their families |
| Develop and support services for male victims of sexual abuse |
| Support and develop positive activities for young people |
| Support and develop initiatives working with homeless men |
Glen Poole is UK co-ordinator for International Men's Day, Director at the consultancy Helping Men and news editor of insideMAN magazine. Follow him on twitter @HelpingMen or find out more about his work at www.helpingmen.co.uk.
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