Community Team

01 Feb Community Team

Once a term the Community Action Team organise the YPSG Conference and discuss interesting topics that affect us as young people. This term’s agenda was about young people who go missing who are similar to our ages.  We sat in Boothroyd Hall with four other school groups and talked about runaway children in Barking and Dagenham.

The YPSG has been running for over ten years talking about various issues, for example: runaway children, sexting, railway safety and child exploitation. We were given the task of trying to figure out ways to reduce the number of children missing and looked at ways to keep young people safe.  We found out that a child is reported missing every 3 minutes and the police have received 25,000 missing children reports this year alone in the UK.  We gathered information about a case that happened in 2013 to 2014, about a boy named Breck Bednar who was killed on the 14^th of February 2014, by a boy he met online and gained his trust.  After reading this case we found out the dangers of online predators.

The day was so useful and helped us understand and try to be part of the solution in our Borough. It was good talking to other schools and meeting new people.  At the end of the conference, we were given a leaflet with helpful numbers to call if we are ever in danger, for example Child Line.  We will hopefully do an assembly after half-term to share the information with everyone in the school.

Callie Caxton 8J