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Unison Conference ’19 ‘Teaching assistants are wearing stab vests in schools,’ delegates hear

TEACHING assistants are requesting stab vests in schools, Unison has warned.

Delegates to the union’s annual conference heard from delegate Carole Garfield, a teaching assistant in a Birmingham school.

In an emotive speech she described how the behaviour of vulnerable children is becoming “increasingly difficult” for education workers to handle.

She said: “Teaching assistants are requesting stab vests in schools.

“There are no youth services, nothing for kids to do, nowhere for them to go.

“Unfortunately, they often get drawn into the violent, horrific world of gang culture. This is happening in our schools.”

Conference voted to campaign against Tory public-sector cuts that they say are responsible for the rise in violent crime, and to initiate a campaign exposing the “roots” behind “lawless Britain.”

London delegate Mandy Berger pointed out how authorities in Glasgow had considered knife crime with a public-health approach rather than merely as a criminal issue.

This led to the involvement of youth workers in efforts to alleviate the problem.

Health professionals hold the policy shift responsible for an 81 per cent reduction in weapons charges in 2006-7, the year after the approach was applied.

Moving the motion, Ms Berger said: “It’s not rocket science — we know how to stop people dying or to stop young people wasting their lives serving jail sentences.

“This levelling up in crime levels has coincided with the cuts that Jeremy Corbyn has rightly pointed out.”

“When it comes to solving the problem of violent crime, there is expertise developed over decades by people who know how to protect our young people.”

 

 

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