Heres an idea

My background is in youth work and I’m a trained angler.

When I started at Bournville Village Trust four years ago, I started a fishing club for tenants from eight to 17 years old. We aim to divert young people from antisocial behaviour by providing fishing equipment and coaching.

Two years ago, we linked our project to the national Get Hooked on Fishing network and opened it up to more young people.

As well as a fortnightly club for children on the estate, we organise monthly trips for 12 children at a time. They come to us through word of mouth or may be referred by police youth offending schemes or school mentors for underachieving children.

We work closely with schools: we’ve sent information packs to all the schools in Birmingham and we go into lessons for 10 and 11-year-olds. Many children having problems in these years just don’t get to secondary school. We want to catch them and get them back on track.

We have a pool of adult professional fishing coaches. They are all accredited and we make sure they’re police-checked and get health and safety training.

We get a small grant each year from the Environment Agency and apply to Birmingham wards for neighbourhood renewal funding. Bournville provides offices and phones and buys the tackle. We also raise money by running children’s summer camps and corporate fishing days.

It has been very successful at preventing antisocial behaviour. We did a survey last April of known offenders. Since they’ve been with us, 98.5% have not reoffended.

Schools whose pupils take part have also reported improvements in attendance and achievement.