ANNUAL REPORT
March 2011

Now into 2011 we at ‘The Clubs’ are very optimistic for the future. Albeit the financial climate, in keeping with all organisations is becoming more challenging, given the numbers of our supporters that feel able to support our work, this alone fires our optimism.

As we will place this report on ‘The Club’s’ web site we include some additional details in order that our activities can be seen by the broadest audience.

Sponsors

For those who know ‘The Clubs’ they will be aware that in the past we have never sought any overall sponsor. This will no doubt change in the future as we build upon our undoubted reputation of being the primary organisation that captures the vast majority of volunteers within the British Police Service, both officers and staff who give up so much of their free time to help our most disadvantaged children and young people.

It is difficult to highlight individual sponsors, in the fear that we offend those not mentioned however, it would be right that we highlight the Metropolitan Police Service and the Home Office, the former of which has provided substantial manpower at no cost in order that we can deliver our various programmes across the Metropolis and the latter who have felt able not only to support ‘The Clubs’ but to provide funding for our work regarding Gun, Knife and Gang crime and other citizenship programmes across the UK.

From the private sector we feel compelled to mention the tremendous support we have received from the company ‘i2’ and Labrokes, with whose support during 2010 and 2011 we have and will continue to deliver our Contender Am-box programme across the country. The funding allows us to engage up to 100 serving Police and Community Support Officers on this delivery in the greater London area alone.

New arrivals

2010 saw the arrival into ‘The Clubs’ of John Yates QPM, who was an Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan Police. He has kindly offered to join the Police Clubs and our charitable trust as a Patron alongside Lord John Stevens. We are extremely honoured to welcome John aboard.

September 2010 saw the appointment of Shauna Palmer as Office Manager at our office in Devon. Shauna comes from a solicitors practice and has settled in well learning all the various strands of our business on a day to day basis.

The Business

As alluded to in the introduction, the years 2009 – 2010 have been difficult in terms of business for ‘The Clubs’. Our primary business partner remains Community Initiative Associates [CIA] of Chester.

CIA is engaged in multiple projects with us, these include the production of our quarterly magazine ‘Community Aware’ which we distribute throughout UK Police Force areas. Full of up to the minute stories about police initiatives and topical features, it has become a ‘must read’ publication by all who enjoy reading about the Police Service and their voluntary work nationwide.

Following on from our launch of child friendly books addressing vital citizenship issues, we have now moved to direct selling to schools. This has proved far more efficient when compared with the identification of commercial funders ‘for schools’ who would fund the costs of the books.

The fact that schools now tend to purchase from their own budgets goes some way to confirm their faith in the quality of our products and supporting materials.

The following are our current Key Stage 1 & 2 publications based on our exclusive woodland characters ‘Barney & Echo’:

The Magic Mirror

The Magic Mirror addresses drugs, tobacco and alcohol.

Echo’s New Watch

Echo’s New Watch addresses weapons, in particular Knives and Knife Crime.

The Bad Apples

The bad apples addresses anti-social behaviour and bullying.

Caught In The Web

This publication was compiled in collaboration with the government’s Child Exploitation and On-line Protection Centre [CEOP] and addresses online safety.

For more information regarding supply and purchase– please go to the CIA web site at: http://www.communityinitiatives.co.uk/about.html

Stolen Lives Project

Stolen Lives is a peer education programme addressing Gun, Knife and Gang crime. The objective is to identify risk factors that increase the vulnerability of young people to being drawn into these crimes and then develop an educational resource that addresses those risk factors through media and messages that young people think are likely to have the greatest impact upon their peers. During 2009-2010 eleven London Boroughs participated in the project including Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets, Ealing, Southwark, Hackney, Lewisham, Lambeth, Dagenham, Havering, and Newham.

The Stolen Lives programme is targeted mainly at year groups 8-11 that is 12 yrs through to 16. The consultation element leading through to the film with supporting lesson plans was targeted at this group. Delivery went very well with feedback from teachers extremely encouraging. One Citizenship teacher described it as “the best resource I have ever seen on this subject.”

The methodology of using a film grounded in the locality and designed by the young people which is then supported by modular lesson plans works very well at secondary school level.

The project set up costs together with design, promotion, community interaction, filming and delivery cost over £500k which was entirely funded by the Home Office and Police Service.

Further programmes have been requested from other Police Service areas. Provision of these further programmes are substantially lower in cost as all the infrastructure is now in place. We will seek to identify funders / sponsors for the next tranche of deliveries in due course.

In order to interact with younger persons, and whilst addressing the Stolen Lives theme, we have children’s activity books that address ‘weapons’ issues in a much more gentle way aimed at year groups 3-4 that is 6 years through to -8 yrs. We have two books for this group, one uses “real people” cartoons
[ titled ‘Dim Witts’] while another uses animal characters [titled ‘Echo’s New Watch’].
Both books provide support to teachers and parents in addressing personal safety issues and risk factors associated with weapon carrying at a young age.

The Respect Project ‘No Respect – Cause and Effect’

This bespoke ‘Police Clubs’ product addresses anti-social behaviour with supporting links to key stage 3 English curriculum and GCSE English coursework.

Anti-social behaviour is a complex subject with issues of tolerance and understanding mixed with extremes of behaviour and a breakdown of respect and civility. Education is key to addressing anti-social behaviour. While enforcement, support and diversion all play a part, education has arguably the biggest role of all to play in changing behaviour and attitudes. Delivering this education is not easy.

For schools there are already huge demands in delivering the core curriculum and the scope of the subject requires a range of resources to effectively address the cause and effect issues.

No Respect: Cause and Effect has been designed as a stimulating multi-media resource to help teachers and other professionals address the subject of anti-social behaviour with explicit links to the English and citizenship curricula.

The Respect resource contains the following:

• No Respect: Cause and Effect film
• CD-ROM
• Lesson plans
• Worksheets (one complete colour set)
• Additional worksheets (colour and black and white copies of the worksheets can be copied from the CD-ROM worksheet folder: Insert the disc and access through Explorer (PC) or, if using a Mac, a CD icon will appear on your desktop).

How does the resource work:

There are 15 English lesson plans that culminate in students performing a monologue. Five citizenship plans focus on cause and effect issues surrounding anti-social behaviour and how its impact
affects the quality of life of whole communities.

The two sets of lesson plans can be delivered separately or as complementary programmes of work.

Each lesson plan is set out as follows:

• Resources • Curriculum objectives • Lesson objectives • Starter activity • Introduction • Development
• Plenary

No Respect: Cause and Effect film

Created by young people, the film follows the story of Marcus as he persistently engages in
anti-social behaviour. Marcus describes the events himself, identifying personal consequences
that result from his actions and the impact that his behaviour has on the wider community.
But do not expect a predictable ending ! This film is designed to spark debate and make the
students question Marcus’s attitudes for themselves.

This project is being taken forward together with our partners Community Initiative Associates and our long standing community cohesion advisor Steve Arkley.

In its formative weeks of distribution, a more comprehensive overview of its success will be better given in next year’s Annual Report

Sports Based Projects

‘The Clubs’ make no apologies for using all legitimate means when seeking to engage with hard to reach communities, groups and individuals. To this end we tried a number of sports, whilst many were greeted with enthusiasm, amateur boxing appeared to cross all boundaries particularly the youngsters engaged or on the periphery of crime. Universally it was felt by them to have ‘street cred’.

We discovered that entering into clubs run or organised by police officers presented no barriers to these youngsters, from this, our involvement with boxing began.

Since formation, ‘The Clubs’ have engaged with literally thousands of children and young people. Many have entered into lifelong involvement in sport, many have gone on to further education and the vast majority have become contributing members of their communities. We are very proud of our contribution to the Citizenship agenda.

We are now able to provide all our citizenship programmes in a format which supports all sports. The programmes are all aimed at providing meaningful and bespoke citizenship deliveries to any sport who engage in deliveries to schools, clubs and other groups. Whilst we started and continue to be the primary deliverer of ‘Non-contact Olympic style Amateur Boxing’ we are now being identified as a meaningful resource which is being adopted by many other sports.

An outline of our work with Amateur Boxing will provide a flavour of our deliveries to sports organisations.

Sport – Education Partnerships

‘The Clubs’ have entered into partnership with Bradford College of Further Education.

As our centre of excellence for sport, we have partnered with the college and the Advanced Apprentiship in Sporting Excellence [AASE]. This offers the opportunity for selected young athletes to combine continued or return to education with a tailored individual sport development programme.

Many of the students have been identified within our various programmes and the two year course sees them achieving Technical Certificates at Level 3 [BTEC in sport], NVQ Level 3 in Achieving Sports Excellence, securing qualification in a number of sports in coaching, all whilst learning trades or securing educational qualifications. In short, this is widely acknowledged as ‘giving second chances’ to previously unqualified young people.

Sport – National Governing Body – partnership programmes

‘The Police Clubs’ have, since its inception, recognised that amateur boxing plays a role in engagement with hard to reach communities. It is for this reason alone that we have always supported the concept of Police Community Boxing Clubs throughout the United Kingdom – see further report below.

From our involvement in the sport, ‘the Clubs’ have proactively engaged with the national governing body of amateur boxing, the ABA of England. In doing so, over the years we have played a substantial role in its business including the introduction of female boxing, its rules and championship. Similarly, we introduced the concept of a national novice championship, production of its rules and championship allowing a novice athlete to participate at a national level.

After noting the potential of engaging in schools in the areas of non-contact Olympic style boxing, we formulated two programmes which have now been adopted by the ABA of England whilst being administered by ‘the Clubs’.

Both the programmes were written, developed, risk assessed and trialed by ‘the Clubs’. We must acknowledge the help and industry of both Mick Gannon BEM and Constable Cliff Perkins whom together produced the programme for us and Paul Porter our erstwhile Development Officer at Bradford College who trialed the programmes.

Both programmes have had a collective attendance of well over 2000 young people over the last year.

The programmes are:

Contender Am-box

Contender Am-box is a non-contact Olympic-style boxing programme – its over-riding attractions are
value for money and the flexibility to be delivered in numerous exciting formats.

The three main formats are:

• Fun and Fitness – non-contact lessons in the basic drills, skills and techniques of Olympic-style
boxing;

• Fun and Fitness and Citizenship – Non-contact lessons in the basic drills, skills and techniques of
Olympic-style boxing together with elements of citizenship;

• Fun and Fitness, Citizenship and Credits towards Educational Achievement – This is the learning of
drills, skills and techniques as above together with a programme which provides opportunities to
gain approved qualifications from ASDAN. Through a series of up to 8 accredited Diplomas,
participants can acquire Wider Key Skills qualifications in Improving Own Learning and Performance,
Working with Others and Problem Solving – these qualifications can equate to multiple GCSE passes.

The aforementioned sponsorship from ‘i2’ and Ladbrokes will be directed at the Contender Am-box projects throughout London during 2010 -2011 for which we are most grateful.

The Leader Award

The ‘Police Clubs’ Boxing Leader Award is accredited by the ABA of England and is the only recognised pathway into boxing coaching for those with no previous experience as an athlete within the sport.

Delivered by the sport’s most experienced coaches, the Boxing Leader Award has again been designed by Mick Gannon BEM and Constable Cliff Perkins and is the preferred choice for an introduction into a lifetime of coaching in the sport of Amateur Boxing for those with no previous experience in the sport.

By far the most cost effective Award within the ABAE programme the Boxing Leader Award provides:

• A comprehensive one day package with instruction in all the recognised boxing stances, punches, defences and counters and guidance in how to instruct in these skills;
• Unlike other awards the Boxing Leader Award is the pre-curser for entry into ABAE coaching and the Level 1 Coaches course;
• Delivery only by the country’s top coaches;
• A network of deliveries throughout the UK to suit your region;
• Full registration is provided as a Boxing Leader within the National Governing Body [ABA of England];
• Full Enhanced CRB Disclosure.

Both the Contender Am-box and the Leader Award have proved extremely popular. In order to meet demand, we have enlisted the assistance of a national sports development company Sport Structures who work with ‘the Clubs’ to secure deliveries throughout the country whilst at the same time ensuring revenue for the regions within which the delivery is made.

We are always seeking sponsors for these programmes as they provide pathways into sports clubs with the opportunity for all to enter a lifetime of engagement in sport. In so doing, regardless of their socioeconomic background, they become valuable contributing members of our communities.

As previously mentioned, all our citizenship programmes are ideal for all sports.
Sport – Engagement in Mosques

This project has now been running for a little under two years. Initially commissioned by the Metropolitan Police and funded under the ‘Prevent’ programme, the ‘Police Clubs’ have been working to deliver Amateur Boxing programmes within and in the vicinity of Mosques.

The aim has been to establish new clubs in or within the vicinity of Mosques where the membership is to be non-exclusive with each club providing ‘outreach’ coaches and leaders who deliver our citizenship programmes to other hard to reach groups, clubs and schools. In doing so it directly engages the Muslim community with differing cultures and backgrounds through sport.

Two of the centres established have become flagship clubs whereby the Feltham Police Club [Hounslow] has been recognized as a centre of excellence and as such has been asked and successfully staged National Governing Body [NGB] tournaments and the other Sands End Police [Fulham] have been awarded the ‘Club of the Year award by the NGB and has been featured on a number of television programmes.

Clearly, this has been a resounding success and we are seeking to introduce similar programmes within the West Midland Police and the Thames Valley Police districts.

Police Community Boxing Clubs

This year has seen a reduction in the number of Police Community Boxing Clubs. This has been done after very careful consideration. The is no doubting that the demand to join our organisation by both new and established clubs continues undiminished however, we are not an organisation with unlimited funding.

As stated, we put a great deal of effort into providing our programmes from our restricted budget and therefore seek to make a difference to the lives of as many children and young people as possible. For this reason, funding a club is not entirely cost affective and we are always seeking more innovative ways of helping those most in need.

For this reason we, as an organisation dedicated to improving the lives of all children and young people particularly disadvantaged groups, have decided that we cannot sustain such large numbers of clubs without severely diluting what support we are able to give.

We have therefore reluctantly decided that supporting boxing clubs who do not engage in citizenship programmes shall discontinue.

It should be noted that membership of all our clubs is also dependant on the inclusion of a serving or retired police officer on the club committee, an adoption of Police Club’s policies including Child Protection and Equity and a willingness to engage with and support all other affiliated ‘Police Clubs’.

Criminal Records Bureau

‘The Clubs’ are a Registered Body under the Criminal Records Bureau and as such conduct the business provision of Criminal Records Bureau Disclosures for all who are eligible for such disclosures.

Having been a ‘Registered Body’ for a number of years, we have built up a client base of many companies both large and small. These vary from single applicants from many walks of life to large prominent companies and organisations including Missing People etc.

We intend to expand this client base during the coming year subject to any new legislation which the new coalition government may introduce

Further Police Clubs activities in brief:

We have been pleased to attend the following exhibitions and seminars throughout the year:

• Government briefing on the delivery of Anti Gun, Knife and Gang Crime programmes
[Venue: City Hall, Westminster]
• Presentation to Members of Parliament
[Venue: The House of Commons]
• School Sport Partnership Seminar
[Venue: The International Centre, Telford, Shropshire]

August 2010 saw our first venture into Women’s Football when in partnership with Devon and Cornwall Police, we commenced sponsorship of Bideford Ladies Police Football Club which currently plays in a Devon Female league.

Being very enthusiastic, this club of dedicated amateur athletes has provided some degree of encouragement for the ‘Clubs’ to seek further partnerships in this minority sport.

2011 will see the launch of ‘The Clubs’ new AWARDS programme. Our first gala awards night is to be held at the prestigious Chigwell Police Sports Club, Chigwell Hall, Essex in July 2011. Hosted by Esther Rantzen OBE we will be presenting numerous awards to various schools and students across the UK who have engaged in many and various citizenship projects.

In conclusion, may I acknowledge and thank all those who have been able to support our work either financially or in time given over the year. Special thanks go to the hundreds of serving and retired police officers and staff who have ensured that we move into 2011 with some degree of hope and confidence.

Barry Jones MBE
Founder & Secretary

Police Clubs contact details:

National Headquarters & Projects Office

Telephone: 01237 471 615
Secretary: 0777 63 93 53 8
Address: Police Clubs GB, PO Box 160 [Devon Waters], Northam, Devon. EX39 2RL
headquarters@policecommunityclubs.org
www.policecommunityclubs.org

Finance

Gordon Valentine
MB: 07500 118 488
e-mail: gordonvalentine@policecommunityclubs.org

Criminal Records Bureau [CRB]

Telephone: 01237 471 615
e-mail: admin@policecommunityclubs.org

Date: Friday 18th May

Time: 0830 – 1700

Cost: £75

Venue: Cedars Upper School, Leighton Buzzard, LU7 2AE

Date: Sunday 28th October 2012

Time: 9.30-4.30pm

Cost: £90

Venue: NewVic 6th Form College, Prince Regents Lane, Newham, London, E13 8SD

Date: Sunday 2nd December 2012

Time: 9-4pm

Cost: £90

Venue: Gedling Community Sports Centre, Gedling School, Wollaton Avenue, Gedling, Nottingham, NG4 4HX

Date: Sunday 24th March 2013

Time: 9-4pm

Cost: £90

All candidate enquiries should be made to the National Police Clubs Office on 01237 471615 or at barryjones@policecommunityclubs.org or to Becky McGrath of Sport Structures on 07917 388 154 or at Becky.McGrath@sportstructures.com

This exciting amateur boxing programme is a partnership initiative between the Police Community Clubs of Great Britain and the Amateur Boxing Association of England (ABAE), and in preparation for its nationwide launch Contender Am-Box was successfully piloted by the Metropolitan Police in sixty schools across London.

The aim of the programme is to provide students with a clear pathway to fitness, good health, awareness of vital citizenship issues and access to their local boxing clubs. This programme of non-contact boxing instruction introduces fitness and self-defence techniques, dietary advice, and education around issues such as bullying and anti-social behaviour, with additional health and citizenship inputs. But best of all, it’s fun!

The programme provides qualified and experienced coaches, safe venues with excellent facilities and a direct interface between local qualified coaches, clubs and police staff.

To deliver Contender Am-Box you need to be a qualified ABAE Coach (Level 2 – Full Coach or above). You may, however, deliver as a Level 1 Coach or Boxing Leader provided you are supervised by a Level 2 Coach or school teacher. Contender Am-Box is a flexible programme which can be delivered over one, two, three or four full days, or in one hour chunks, typically as an after-school club or as a school holiday scheme.

Many Contender Am-Box programmes are delivered by local police staff, including schools officers and PCSO’s. Schools are urged to speak to these officers or local boxing clubs regarding the delivery, or alternatively the Police Clubs’ office on 01237 471615 or email admin@policecommunityclubs.org

It is also endorsed by the ASDAN qualification awarding body. If you are interested in the ASDAN programme please contact us on the above number and email address.