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What Is The Respect Agenda?

Introduction

The Government's Respect Agenda was officially launched on the 10th January 2006 with the publication of the Respect Action Plan. It's aim was to build on previous legislation and initiatives such as the Together campaign which was introduced in 2003 to tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB) and it's causes.

The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 defines ASB as acting in,

"a manner that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as the complainant?"

The Respect Task Force

Coordination of the Respect Agenda including the production and delivery of the Respect Action Plan is the responsibilty of a special cross governmental Task Force set up in September 2005. It is headed by Louise Casey, the former National Director of the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit who answers directly to the Home Secretary.

The Respect Agenda recognises a number of factors which it associates with ASB by individuals. These include

• Parenting - poor parenting skills, weak parent/child relationships and sometimes parental involvement in crime or anti-social behaviour.
• School - truancy and exclusion and schools where poor behaviour is not challenged enough.
• Community factors - living in deprived areas where there is disorder and neglect, peer involvement in anti-social behaviour.
• Individual factors - drug and alcohol misuse and early involvement in anti-social behaviour.

It aims to go 'Broader', 'Deeper' and 'Further to tackle anti-social behaviour by addressing it in every walk of life, tackling it's causes through early intervention, providing support for parents and introducing new powers to ensure a robust response where necessary.

A key goal, stated in the Action Plan is 'to empower individuals and communities, enabling them not just to feel secure but to be more able to act together to make their neighbourhoods safer and better'.

There are six key themes featured in the Action Plan, their key points are:

Supporting families

• Parents have a critical role in helping their children develop good values and behaviour.
• Conversely, poor parenting increases the risks of involvement in anti-social behaviour.
• We will develop parenting services nationally and focus help on those parents who need it most.
• We will expand national parenting provision and establish a new National Parenting Academy for front line staff.
• We will legislate to increase the circumstances, and organisations that can apply for a parenting order, where a child's behaviour requires it.

A new approach to the most challenging families

• We will take a new approach to tackle the behaviour of 'problem families' by challenging them to accept support to change their behaviour, backed up by enforcement measures.
• In 2006, a network of intensive family support schemes will be launched that target these challenging families.
• We will make additional investment available for parenting programmes as part of a coordinated approach across children's and adult services in these areas.
• We will, across government, improve the way public services respond to problem families' in the longer term.

Improving behaviour and attendance in schools

• The values and behaviour that support respect foster a positive environment where teachers can teach and children can learn.
• We will legislate to ensure parents take responsibility for their child's behaviour in the classroom and when they are excluded from school. We will also improve provision for suspended and excluded pupils.
• Tackling poor attendance and behaviour in schools is particularly important since truancy and exclusion have been proven to lead to anti-social behaviour.
• We will extend targeted action against truancy and place a new duty on local authorities to identify children missing school and support them back into education.

Activities for children and young people

• We know that about seven out of ten parents and young people think that young people commit crimes because there is not enough for them to do.
• That's why we want to expand the role of sport, constructive activities and volunteering as positive routes to nurture a culture of respect amongst young people, particularly those from deprived backgrounds.
• Specifically, we will develop Britain's first national youth volunteering service, establish a sports champion mentoring programme and continue to support existing mentoring projects.
• We will also expand the Youth Opportunity Fund and pilot Youth Opportunity Cards in a number of areas.

Strengthening communities

• Respect cannot be delivered by government or local agencies alone. We want to empower people to stand up and challenge unacceptable behaviour in their communities and make public services more accountable to local people and local priorities.
• We know that change is needed most in our disadvantaged communities so we will ensure that government-funded physical regeneration schemes are accompanied by measures to manage behaviour.

Effective enforcement and community justice

• We will continue our drive to ensure effective, swift and proportionate responses and sanctions by further extending the menu of powers available to local communities to deal rapidly and effectively with 'low level' anti-social behaviour. We will also broaden the range of people able to use existing powers.
• We will strengthen the powers available for frontline agencies as well as streamlining the case management of Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) within the courts.
• We plan to roll out a national 'community payback' scheme of visible and constructive punishment for offenders.

The aims of the Respect Agenda are designed to be delivered by a combination of central government, local authorities, local agencies and partnerships such as the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRP's), community groups and individuals.

Respect Squads

In places where communities are experiencing high anti-social behaviour and where there may not be strong coordination of agencies to drive an effective response the government has created a Respect Squad who can be called upon to intervene.

The squad is made up experienced frontline staff from police and local authorities who have a successful track record of tackling anti-social behaviour. After assessing a case they will make recommendations to the Chair of the local CDRP and the case will be publicised on the Respect website to share their findings.

Respect Academies

Since June 2006 a series of Respect Academies run by the Respect Task Force have been held around the country to promote the Respect Agenda. These have been aimed at practitioners who work in ASB, children's and youth services, housing, social services, police, community safety, regeneration and youth offending teams.

Glossary

Anti-social Behaviour
A variety of different types of behaviour are associated with ASB, these include:
graffiti, abusive and intimidating language (including race or faith hate, or homophobia), excessive noise, particularly late at night, fouling the street with litter, drunken behaviour in the streets and the mess it creates, dealing drugs with all the associated problems to which it gives rise, harassment of residents or passers-by, verbal abuse, criminal damage, vandalism, noise nuisance, writing graffiti, engaging in threatening behaviour in large groups, racial abuse, underage smoking or drinking, substance misuse, joyriding, begging, prostitution, kerb-crawling, throwing missiles, assault, vehicle crime, domestic violence.

A number of measures have been introduced to deal with ASB, these include Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBO's), Individual Support Orders (which specifically deal with juveniles aged between 10 and 17), Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (mostly used against juveniles), Parenting Contracts and Orders, Fines, Curfews and Dispersal Orders. (A glossary explaining these terms is available here.

Further Information

• Respect
  The government website dedicated to Respect
  www.respect.gov.uk
  
•  The Respect Action Plan
  The governments plans for tackling anti-social behavoiur
  www.respect.gov.uk/
  
• Number 10
  News on the Respect from the Prime Ministers office.
  www.number10.gov.uk/
  
• Together
  This campaign supports local agencies and residents to tackle anti-social behaviour. This website provides information, advice, and resources to help practitioners.
  www.together.gov.uk/
  
• Home Office
  Information and resources on anti-social behaviour
  www.homeoffice.gov.uk/anti-social-behaviour/

Download a copy of  What Is The Respect Agenda?

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