Over November, four young people from New Bury Youth Voice were invited to spend the day with Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester for Safer and Stronger Communities, Kate Green. They were split into pairs for a day each.

The first day started with the young people attending Greater Manchester’s Safe Drive Stay Alive event in Middleton. The event had lots of different colleges in attendance from Greater Manchester along with Mayors from across Greater Manchester, emergency services staff and many more professionals.

Before the event, the young people got to meet Bolton’s Mayor, Councillor Andy Morgan and received a goody bag for attending. The event showcased real life stories from multiple emergency services and also had the family members of Frankie Jules-Hough, who tragically passed away in 2023 due to a dangerous driver on the motorway. This was an eye-opening event and the young people found it educational and informative. Afterwards they got to hear a few words from Deputy Mayor Kate Green.

After this event the young people were taken to the GMCA offices in Manchester. They got to meet one of the team’s Senior Policy and Partnership Officers, Emma Stonier, to learn about the Standing Together: Police and Crime Plan. They were asked to share their opinions on the plan, along with ideas on how to best share the plan with young people. Their ideas included a GMCA TikTok account with short videos on the plan and have young people included in the creation.

The final meeting of the day was with the Counsel of Mosques, which they found insightful. The unrest over summer was spoken about along with Greater Manchester’s response to tacking hate crime. This helped the young people understand hate crime through the people in the room who had experienced it and they then learnt about the support Greater Manchester Police (GMP), for instance the work planned for during Ramadan to help make life safer for the Muslim community. This led the youth voice group to start talking about hate crime and what they could do to help educate other young people around them.

The second day of shadowing started by joining a meeting of the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) Deputy Mayor’s Executive Board. The young people got to meet Chief Fire Officer, Dave Russel and GMP’s Chief Resource Officer, Lee Rawlinson. This meeting had lots of information and the young people learnt about budgets and how money is spent within the fire service. They also received an in-depth look at the Prevention in Prisons Programme. The latest campaign GMFRS has delivered is to help drive equality, diversity and inclusion within the fire service. After the meeting, they were able to have a longer than planned lunch at pizza express due to some confidential meetings.

They were also included in a meeting with the GMP Federation which was really informative for them with lots of different topics discussed. This meeting went really well with all involved helping the young people understand by explaining in detail what certain things were.

Afterward, they got the opportunity to have a debrief with the Deputy Mayor to discuss how their time with her was.

Young people involved in the shadowing placement said:

“I found the Safe Drive, Stay Alive event really interesting. I struggle to stay focused, but it interested me as I want to be a paramedic when I’m older.”
“It has helped me think about what else we can do with our youth voice group and hopefully we can work on a hate crime project.”

Article posted on: 10/01/2025 12:01pm