Wardens ‘08: Connecting Communities Awards
The Broad Street Wardens have been nominated for the national Savant Warden Team of the Year Award. You can vote for them at http://www.wardens08.co.uk/awards,
The team has been described as:
The Birmingham City Centre Warden Service established an Evening Street Warden Team in February 2006 in the Broad Street Improvement District. The Service has been hugely successful and has been greatly received on Broad Street by the community, businesses and agencies. The Wardens presence has had a major impact on the area. The first year of their introduction contributed to an amazing 59.6% reduction in general crime in the area, beating all targets and expectations by a large margin. The reductions in crime in the Broad Street area have continued to fall year on year, the stats for 2007/2008 show the following significant reductions:
Total Recorded Crime = 12.9% Reduction
Serious Harm Crime = 25.2% Reduction
Theft Other = 16.8% Reduction
The Team’s passion and commitment has made an outstanding contribution in order to make the city centre safer and secure. They also pride themselves in always putting the customer first with a commitment to go the extra mile to resolve problems.
One example of this was to help improve communication with all visitors to the City, the Wardens recently received the nationally recognised “Welcome Host Plus” and “Welcome International” training course to equip them for an increased focus on their ambassadorial role. As a result of the training members of the team can:
- Communicate effectively with international visitors by using a range of basic words and phrases in a language of an oversees visitor.
- Speak key words and phrases in a variety of languages including: Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, French, German, Spanish and Italian.
- Recognise and use appropriate body language.
- Identify basic cultural differences between visitors from a range of regions of the world.
- More advanced communication and customer services skills.
- The Wardens presence allows the Police to take care of serious emergency situations, whilst the Wardens address other areas that had previously received little or no attention.
Inspector Sean Russell from West Midlands Police says:
“The tasks undertaken, providing reassurance and local knowledge have allowed my policing staff to concentrate on the anti-social and violent crime issues”.
A typical patrol of Broad Street on a busy Friday/Saturday evening could include a diverse number of tasks such as: mediation, administering first aid, caring and assisting vulnerable young people, reducing street begging, address low level anti-social behaviour, safely remove drug related material, graffiti removal to mention but a few.
A simple yet extremely effective idea which has been used positively by the team during the last 12 months. Sweets with the wording “Broad Street” written across them are handed out to visitors, they work in two ways; by acting as ice breakers and diffusing difficult situations. In the Wardens experience, a number of situations that may have escalated have been calmed by using these sweets. It is difficult to become angry with someone who has offered you a sweet!
During the last twelve months the Team has dealt with a staggering 17,693 occurrences.
Please vote for them at http://www.wardens08.co.uk/awards
