KEY POINTS:
Ask Casey Colenso, 16, why he attends a youth choices course at Mangere's Tamaki Ki Raro Trust and he gestures to his classmates and says, "Because of the family."
Manager Dee-Ann Wolferstan says Casey was kicked out of his last school in June 2005.
Casey himself says a family group conference was held after he was caught tagging, but he has stopped tagging since he started the youth choices course at the start of this year. He has kept attending the course even though he is now old enough to leave school.
"I like it, eh, because of the family," he says.
The course, which has fewer than a dozen students, gives the youngsters a sense of identity that draws them away from identifying with youth gangs.
It is part of a four-year, $10 million "action plan" for youth gangs in Counties-Manukau which has won the supreme award in the inaugural Institute of Public Administration awards for public sector excellence, presented by Prime Minister Helen Clark in Wellington last night.
The action plan now funds 23 youth workers, six social workers working with families, six parenting programmes, three short-term houses for young people picked up by the police, and extra subsidies for 13 high schools and other local services.
Inspector Jason Hewett of Counties-Manukau said there were eight young gang-related deaths in the district in the 13 months up to November 2006, when the action plan started.
"We haven't had one since," he said.
Two fatal stabbings in Manurewa in January, involving a young man killed at a dairy and a 15-year-old tagger killed outside a house at night, were not youth gang-related, he said.
Counties-Manukau had the third-highest percentage rise in violent crime last year, up 19 per cent to 8876 incidents, the country's highest rate in relation to the population.
But Mr Hewett said the increase was almost entirely because of more reporting of family violence.
"Complete stranger violence, or street violence, has reduced by more than 400 offences in the last year," he said. "So you might argue that the streets are safer."
Kris Ormsby, one of the six funded social workers and based at the Maori Women's Welfare League in Manurewa, said many of the 18 families on her caseload had been referred because their children had been out of school, like Casey Colenso, for more than a year.
"They are truant or just don't want to go to school. Some have been excluded."
She gets some back into school and others into alternative education, but she said the local alternative education courses were all full.
So she gets some young people exemptions from school so she can refer them to courses like the one at Tamaki Ki Raro which are geared towards preparing them for work.
"Some of the young ones want to go to work, but it's illegal so you are stuck between a rock and a hard place," she said.
Tamaki Ki Raro tutor Arcadia Talagi said her students, aged 15 to 17, did classwork such as English and maths in the mornings and practical activities in the afternoon such as cooking, cleaning, sports and "krumping" (dancing).
Casey Colenso said he hoped to get a job as a panelbeater at the end of the course through a person who attended his family group conference.
Pipaora Paraha, also 16, said he was also keen on "anything to do with cars" and hoped to study engineering in the Army.
GANGS DWINDLING?
* Youth gang-related deaths in Counties-Manukau have dropped from eight in the 13 months to November 2006 to zero.
* Street violence offences in the district dropped by more than 400 last year.
ON THE WEB
www.ipanzawards.org.nz
www.tamakikiraro.co.nz
