Why Jean just can't stop laughing

JEAN Oliver laughs wryly as she remembers the first time she came across the drugs that were to become the scourge of the community she loves. "It had been going on all the time and I didn't even know," she admits. "I was a barmaid, which I always say is the best job in the world, you meet so many people. Anyway, someone pointed out that they were rolling up these funny cigarettes. I didn't even believe it. I kept seeing it more and more. It was nothing really. The hard stuff came later."

From such an innocent start began a predictable decline and a drugs blight which began to unfold before Jean. Some of the happy, cheeky children she once knew on her Mill House estate in Stockton were transformed, as she says, "into virtual zombies" by hard drugs.

Words such as "heroin" and, later, "crack" became part of her everyday language. The crime rate on the estate shot up. Dozens of homes were burgled, the elderly were beaten up and robbed in broad daylight. A silent misery pervaded as many people became too scared to leave their own homes.

Like many of the other law abiding people of the Mill House and neighbouring Parkfield estates, Jean shrugged her shoulders, kept herself to herself, and got on with life.

Even in the worst days, with the streets she had known for 30 years strewn with rubbish and the houses which were once homes to happy families now boarded up drug dens, Jean found humour. Laughing, something she does easily and often, she recalled the time she was scared to cross an area of green space where a man seemed to be lying in wait. "Someone had come up to me and said, 'Watch for that bloke, he's a druggie,'" she says. "Well, I waited until these young lads came. I said, 'Hey, can you walk me across the way, that fella's a druggie.' They were really kind and walked with me till I was safe. The next thing I heard was all this laughing. All the young ones had gone off with the very same man they were protecting me from. He probably wasn't any older than they were. He was obviously their mate and they were having a right good laugh about it - at my expense!"

At 60, Jean, who had worked all her life, retired. She did not become involved in improving her local community until, nearly ten years later, a friend asked for her help having road humps installed on the street.

"She wanted me to speak up for her," explains Jean. "So I went to this residents' meeting and the next thing I know, I mean a few weeks later, I'm chair of the Town Centre Residents' Forum. My life has never been the same."

Not long afterwards, Parkfield and Mill House were selected for a new Government Neighbourhood Pathfinder scheme as one of the UK's 20 most deprived districts. Along with Stanley, Middlesbrough and North Benwell, in Newcastle, the people who lived in the community were to decide where money should be spent, instead of the faceless men from Whitehall or the local council. Mill House and Parkfield received £3.58m to spend over seven years.

It took more than five years, but slowly changes were made. The rubbish was cleared from the streets, the boards on the houses were removed and new families moved in. The police took action against the drugs menace and the estate became a safer place to be.

"The place has changed beyond belief - and it's all down to the small things," says Jean. "The place is clean. There's no rubbish here now and it just looks a sight better. We have community wardens and two really smashing community policemen who are just fantastic. There's a youth forum being set up and we're in the schools. There's better street lighting and we go on walkabouts meeting the residents just having a chat. We produce community letters."

To hear Jean speak, all this improvement work sounds easy. A look at her diary tells a different story. At 74, Jean attends at least one meeting just about every day and is out and about daily working at various council and community centres. She travels the region to find out about other ideas and makes follow-up calls to make sure work promised is actually done. There's the arranging to do, the phone calls to make, reports to read, people to meet.

Luckily Jean, whose work has led to her having meetings with Prime Minister Tony Blair and Middlesbrough mayor Ray Mallon, doesn't work alone. She mentions the chairman of the Neighbourhood Association, Alex Bain, and another redoubtable community campaigner, Janet Tonge, of Stockton Council. And her face lights up when she points to the picture of community PCs Les Gray and Alan Fish. "They are like our own private policemen," she says proudly.

But her greatest pride comes when she talks about the results. Crime is down, with the number of house burglaries having dropped by more than 30 per cent, and £14,000 worth of drugs have been seized by police. There is still work to do, but the difference is vast.

"I got a taxi the other day and the lad said, 'I just can't believe the difference here.' He was right," she smiles.

"House prices are up and we've people actually wanting to move here. It's lovely."

Jean stops for a moment and looks at the photographs on her wall. There's a picture of some of the children on her street, and one of the smiling PCs Gray and Fish. She picks up the Neighbourhood Management Award for personal achievement she has just been given by deputy prime minister John Prescott - one of three the Mill House and Parkfield team received out of 12 awarded nationally.

True to form, she laughs.