Wantage and Grove churches to launch county's first Street Pastors scheme to help vulnerable weekend revellers (From The Oxford Times)

Wantage and Grove churches to launch county's first Street Pastors scheme to help vulnerable weekend revellers

9:47am Tuesday 16th June 2009 in

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CHURCH leaders are to act as guardian angels for young people on the streets of Wantage and Grove as part of a new late-night initiative.

Ten churches will be sending street pastors out on to the streets on Friday and Saturday nights to offer help and advice to revellers, some of whom will be worse the wear for drink.

The street pastors, working in pairs, will patrol the two centres and other areas that attract the vulnerable, young and drunk.

Their role will include ensuring people who have had too much to drink get home safely by ringing a friend for them or walking them home, if it is deemed safe for them to do so. They will also stand with those waiting for transport home.

The street pastors will also provide free flip-flops to revellers who can no longer walk in their high heels.

Neil Townsend, pastor of Wantage Community Church, said: “Street pastors provide help where help is constructive, like having flip-flops available to those who can’t walk in their heels.

“It’s the small practical things we can do. If people say they don’t want or need help then we will go away.”

He said: “I don’t think we have a particularly horrendous crime rate here, but if this scheme helps to lower it further, all the better.” This is the first Street Pastor scheme to be launched in Oxfordshire and the Thames Valley Region. The initiative was launched in Brixton, London, in 2003.

Six years on, the project has spread to Manchester and Birmingham. If the scheme proves successful in Wantage and Grove, it could be rolled out across Oxfordshire.

Mr Townsend said: “I am extremely optimistic that with these ten churches working together with care and compassion, we will see Wantage and Grove’s atmosphere at those times of the night improve.”

Mr Townsend said the street pastors would not take to the streets until October after they had been through a 12-week training programme.

The ten churches taking part are Wantage Community Church, Wantage Methodist Church, Wantage Christian Fellowship, Vale Elim, Wantage Baptist, Grove Free Evangelical Church, Grove Methodist Church, St John Vianney, Wantage, St John’s, Grove, and SS Peter and Paul, Wantage.

Chief Supt Andy Boyd, police commander in the Vale of White Horse, said: “It’s an excellent way for members of the community to work in partnership with the police in making the town centres safer environments and helping those who are vulnerable on a Friday and Saturday night.”

Wantage mayor Patrick O’Leary said: “It’s very positive for Wantage. I feel it has to be recognised that during the early hours of the morning there are vulnerable people out there. The Street Pastors scheme brings a sense of reassurance.”

Frank Mahon, landlord of the Kings Arms, in Wallingford Street, said: “I think it’s a great idea. Wantage and Grove certainly needs something at that time of night.”

Wantage MP Ed Vaizey said it was “all about the local community taking action”.