Volunteers help clear drunk kids off streets | Bay of Plenty News | Local News in Bay of Plenty

Dedicated teams of volunteers are grappling to deal with the  increasing problem of inebriated kids  descending on The Strand every Friday and Saturday night.

Street Help - the name says it all - comprises 40 or so volunteers who quietly get on with a job at the coalface of Tauranga's nightlife.

Parents and caregivers  don't appreciate Street Help's efforts until they are woken by a knock  at the door in the early hours of the morning and handed a son or daughter plucked from a potentially dangerous situation.

It's the age of the kids who end up crashed out on The Strand that upsets Stuart Caldwell, the manager of alcohol and drug service Get Smart (formerly Drug Arm) who works closely with Street Help.

Set up to help  young people aged between 12 and 18, Street Help's teams are also dealing with 9, 10 and 11-year-olds - and have even taken an 8-year-old home.

"Where is the mum, where is the caregiver? Even 12 and 13 is a stupidly young age to be out on the street in the early hours of the morning," Mr Caldwell said.

He said they were grappling to deal with a huge problem, and he had no hesitation at pointing a finger of blame at the many parents who supply their  teenage children with alcohol to drink at home, but then allow them to go out.
 

 He said their children ended up drunk, and daughters woke up in the morning knowing they had experienced an unwanted sexual contact.

Under-age kids who headed for  downtown were from a cross-section of backgrounds and could not be defined by the socio-economic position of their parents, he said.

Mr Caldwell said Street Help volunteers had seen it all, including parents genuinely shocked when their inebriated children were brought home at 3am after being picked up in the downtown area. The children may have climbed out their bedroom window after texting friends.

Other parents were angry at seeing their children brought home by Street Help, such as when mums were interrupted during a night of having their boyfriends over to stay.

They thought their kids were at a friend's place.

"There are all sorts of scenarios," Mr Caldwell said.

"The bottom line is that their children were getting into trouble on the street when they should not have been there."

Mr Caldwell estimated that a third to a half of college pupils know of Street Help - either from being taken home themselves or through friends who had been helped.

Street Help was non-judgmental and was happy to engage with kids and provide them with food.

"Sometimes they have had not much to eat that night," Mr Caldwell said.

A typical experience on The Strand occurred recently when volunteers were trying to help an inebriated 15-year-old girl who was so incoherent that they had trouble understanding where she lived.

While all this was going on, four people came along and offered to "help" and take her home, even  though clearly none of them knew her, Mr Caldwell said.

He  said Street Help was there to help young people stay out of the types of trouble that excess alcohol made them vulnerable to.

People were getting away with unwanted sexual contacts because girls did not want to go through all the drama and trauma of reporting something they barely remembered.

While Tauranga's downtown was Street Help's primary area, volunteers got  around other areas  such as Memorial Park, Merivale, Greerton and parts of Mount Maunganui.

Sometimes they even provided a presence on the street outside big private parties.

The teams sometimes took young people to hospital because they  had passed out from drinking.

"I can't say it happens every Saturday night, but it happens too often," Mr Caldwell said.

Seventy per cent of people who arrived at  Tauranga Hospital's emergency department on Friday and Saturday nights between 8pm and 3am were there for alcohol related reasons, Mr Caldwell said.