Active Bystander
Gravesham, Maidstone & Medway Councils are working in collaboration to provide Active Bystander Training.
All three councils have been successful in their bid through the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner to obtain Safer Streets 4 funding. This has enabled the three Community Safety Partnerships to offer a variety of different people and groups bespoke training to support them in their role to ultimately improve safety for everyone.
Gravesham, Maidstone & Medway will be collaborating to offer active bystander training to four distinct groups:
Staff working within councils, particularly those whose role takes them into public places.
- Those who work within the night-time economy, such as, businesses, security, transport – busses, trains and taxis and includes those business participating in ‘shop watch’ or ‘safe spaces’ schemes.
- Those who work with young people, such as, youth services, charities & community interest companies.
Those who work with young people, specifically boys and young men.
In addition to this work, the Kent and Medway Violence Reduction Unit is funding Active Bystander training to the statutory and voluntary sector professionals who work with young people. The VRU funding will deliver:
- A Train the Trainer course for 24 professionals. The course will equip professionals with skills and resources to train others in the Active Bystander approach. The course will run in December 2022.
- Ten community workshops on being an Active Bystander. The workshops will be co-delivered by Graham Goulden and those trained by him as trainers.
This training will be delivered by Graham Goulden who has a wealth of experience in training different groups both nationally and internationally.
"The bystander approach used by Graham does not simply aim to teach others how to intervene it also encourages conversations around behaviour and social norms. He identifies individuals, more as the solution than as the problem. The result is dynamic and powerful conversations that reassure groups that healthy individual attitudes are in fact the norm and more often than not shared by the group".
Creating positive behaviour
Be an active bystander
Being an Active Bystander involves raising confidence in young people to understand how they might intervene by reporting concerns.
To break down the barriers and negative perceptions, the following has been created with Crimestoppers to help young people identify the differences between ‘snitching’ and reporting.
It highlights how reporting crime has positive outcome and is done for positive reasons.
There are 5 ways to be an active bystander known as the 5 D’s:
- DIRECT ACTION - If it is safe to do so
- DISTRACT - Start or interrupt a conversation
- DELEGATE - Establish best-placed person to step in
- DELAY - Aim to slow/calm things down
- DOCUMENT - Note down or record concerns
Snitching
- To get someone else into trouble
- To stop yourself getting into trouble
- To gain something from it
- To hurt or upset someone you don’t like
Reporting
- To keep yourself safe
- To keep someone else safe
- The problem might be urgent
- You may need an adult’s help
- Speaking out because you know something is wrong