Rushden Academy among first schools to work with anti-social behaviour early intervention team

Rushden Academy is among the first schools to work with the police, fire and crime commissioner’s ASB early intervention team as part of Danielle Stone’s mission to protect young people from crime.

This initiative comes at a time when Rushden has been suffering a spate of youth and vehicle crime, as was recently highlighted at a public meeting led by the police.

For one day a week, students who have been involved in low-level incidents, either at school or in the community, will be referred to an ASB targeted intervention officer for a drop-in session.

Danielle’s team will work with the students on a one-to-one basis and try to ‘unpick’ what’s happening in their life, which could lead to longer intervention for up to 12 weeks, including support for the whole family.

Targeted sessions can also be used to reintegrate children aged 11 to 16, who have been suspended, back into school.

This work forms a larger pilot project by the ASB early intervention team in Rushden to co-ordinate and strengthen policing response to anti-social behaviour after issues involving among young people were identified using localised data.

Danielle Stone said: “Young people in this county deserve the very best start to life and we must find bold and engaging ways of working with schools to make a meaningful difference to children’s outcomes.

“Schools have told us that they want specialist help to prevent future consequences of crime in their communities and empower children to make safer choices.

“My dedicated ASB early intervention team are now firmly on the ground supporting students to reflect on the impact of their behaviour while giving them real-life advice to choose better paths.”

Students are identified by their heads of year or safeguarding leaders for specialist support in a bid to reduce the risk of permanent exclusion further down the line.

Lynda King, deputy safeguarding lead at Rushden Academy, said: “Some forms of anti-social behaviour can be quite vague so it’s important for students to be informed when they’ve done something wrong and understand the harm they’ve caused so they don’t repeat their actions.

“This type of swift intervention with Danielle’s team gives a personal approach for our young people and allows a small number of students to unpack what they’ve done, with a specialist, and speak up if they need more wraparound support at home.

“We hope this new approach really helps to put students on a path toward safer futures.”