What can or should be done?

[Poppystone]

Travellers are visiting our town. Staying on the recreation ground, which would usually be busy with local children during the school holidays.

I am a bleeding heart lefty inclined to say they're doing no harm, live and let live etc.

However, unfortunately the experience of local people is that every time travellers are in town, there is an increase in crime, especially shop lifting, aggressive anti social behaviour and damage to property, and they leave the open spaces in a terrible state.

Reasonable people know it's not all travellers etc, but it does happen every time they are here, so that is people's real experience.

What can be done to improve the experience of both groups?

Nothing can be done, it's up to the authorities to provide them with things that they might need and ensure they use them. The council should clean up after them as well. Ordinary people don't need to get involved.

Same happens here and we have travellers' sites. No idea what is to be done other than extra vigilance on the part of local householders.

Yes, I was thinking about what the authorities need to do rather than the public.

After a dreadful time with travellers taking over the local open space and children’s play area for weeks, the council dug a ha-ha around the park to prevent it happening again. I don’t think there’s much you can do about it as it’s happening, that’s up to the local police liaison officers, but I do feel for you and your community. Our local area was trashed. Children’s play area smeared in excrement. The grass churned up by people doing wheelies… it took weeks and ££s to clean up. Since the ha-ha we’ve had no repeat.

We used to live in an area where, once or twice a year, a Traveller community would temporarily settle on the recreation fields. Each time, similar issues arose, including an increase in antisocial behaviour, damage to community property, and theft.

One positive initiative was when the local CofE primary school, the governors and the vicar, worked hard to integrate the Traveller children into the school. It had a noticeable impact on behaviour and also highlighted how much of the disruption had been coming from children who had previously lacked structure and routine.

From my experience, one of the most effective ways to help Traveller families integrate, even temporarily, is to ensure their children have access to education.

I believe that the Traveller community like to portray their children as obedient, respectful to elders & religious, however anyone who spent any time near a Travellers community has to acknowledge that the children are left on their own for long periods of time, and as you can imagine without adult supervision their behaviour can become disruptive.

We have had them settle in our play park several times over the years. The last time they smashed a wooden double gate that had only been put in the previous year. They left so much rubbish, and like previously mentioned, crime did increase.
If they were genuinely wanting a place to stay for a few nights and were respectful of the area, then I would have no issue, but the damage and mess doesn't make anyone want them to stay.

I don't have an answer for you OP but I've come across similar stories, not so much where I live now but in my childhood town. I've always told my kids to be open minded and not make judgements, it's only one element within an ethnic group etc etc. My DS and his peers have had so many issues with random violent attacks on young men and nothing done about it to the point that he absolutely despises them and while I don't like to hear him speaking like this about a group of people I find I'm running out of defences. He says they should be policing themselves as a community if they want to be treated with respect, and until the happens he will continue to assume the worst.

I worked for a while in a school where the pupils were 100% settled traveller children. Seriously. No one else would send their DC there and there seemed to be an unwritten rule that the LA wouldn't force those places on other families. Even when all the other schools applied for were full, they'd be given one not on their list but further from home than our school.

We couldn't keep office staff because of the behaviour of some parents, and recruiting teachers was difficult, despite small class sizes.

But we only seem to have them visiting here over the summer holidays.

What!
Why should the council aka taxpayers pay to shift their dirty rubbish that is strewn around why they don’t pay council tax .

That’s even without all the stealing they do. I volunteer in a charity shop and they are even happy to steal from there.

It depends.

Some travellers stay for a few nights - some visit older family members who are based on permanent traveller sites so may stay hor extended periods.

You have freedom of choice - they do too.

The only help I have witnessed travellers being offered is childcare at nursery/pre-school level. Few accept this though.

Other than that, it's your local authorities responsibility.

Carry on with your usual routine x

You can't make people do things though. All you can do is fix the mess after they've gone. The mess can't be left as it's dangerous. Council tax will have to be used because what's the alternative? People won't like the alternative so......?