SET up to bridge the gap between youth work and the police, the creation of Birmingham East’s Safe Haven Team has led to a “massive fall” in anti-social behaviour.

And its success lies partly in the beautiful game of football.

The team is made of up Pc Dave Steadman and PCSO Tom Bradbury, who cover the whole of Birmingham East, including Sparkhill and Sparkbrook.

In just over two years since the team was founded, it has seen

730 youngsters get involved in the project – and of those, only ten have gone on to reoffend.

Pc Steadman, who runs weekly activity sessions for seven to 19-year-olds on Tuesdays and Thursdays, said: “When I first started on the Safe Haven project we had an issue in Sparkhill where a group of youths had effectively decided to take over the park.

“It ended up not being safe to send in single officers and we ended up having to call in operational support officers.

“So we organised a football match in the park, on their territory, and after two hours the young people were policing their own match and asking their friends to be more respectful.”

He added: “Then we took football to our Thursday Safe Haven session in Sparkhill and the park became safe again for people to use and

we didn’t need to call on support officers.

“These young people were some of the first to attend the Thursday session and we offered football because that’s what got them involved in the first place.

“Since then, individual officers have made arrests and been in a

situation where a young person has said, ‘I was going to fill you in, but my mate says you played football with him and you are safe’.

“The feedback we get is that the project has helped the young people gain confidence and see the person behind the uniform. Now they tell us things that we didn’t know were going on in their communities.

“Anti-social behaviour has massively reduced in Birmingham East – in fact, it’s one of the most improved.”

The Safe Haven project is reaping rewards from running two weekly support sessions where activities are provided for young people.

Up to 90 youngsters attend the Tuesday sessions at Montgomery Primary School, Sparkbrook, and up to 60 on Thursdays at Moseley High School in Sparkhill. Both sessions were set up with the support of Montgomery headteacher Tony Flynn and Moseley School’s director of wider learning, Asad Kayani.

After three months of researching what 50 young offenders who had been referred to the project – mostly for anti-social behaviour issues – wanted from the sessions, funding was secured for a number of items.

They included a pool table, laptops, a games console and smart boards for educational work as well as running two-hour football sessions.