Two years ago, teenage truant André Fino faced the prospect of an 18-month stretch in a young offender institution after ordering a schoolboy to hand over his mobile phone. It was the latest in a series of crimes committed by the young man, who had previously found himself on the wrong side of the law for offences such as theft and handling stolen goods.
Today, the 19-year-old from Epsom, Surrey, has put his past behind him. He is a sports coach employed by the Fulham Football Club Foundation, teaching in PE lessons and helping youngsters in after-school clubs in inner London. The transformation in his fortunes is huge – and is thanks to support from Surrey Youth Support Service, which provides an integrated, targeted and preventive approach to vulnerable young people, aimed at reducing offending and anti-social behaviour.
Set up three years ago, Surrey’s is a rare example of a “young-person friendly” service designed to turn round the lives of the most challenging and troubled adolescents. Fino is one of the lucky ones. Others at risk of being sucked into a life of crime are not so fortunate, as hard-pressed local councils prioritise the needs of younger children within existing child protection systems. But now the Association of Directors of Children’s Services is urging councils to redesign support for adolescents, as new research highlights the success of services like Surrey’s in reducing the unique risks faced by adolescents.
For Fino, who had come to England from Portugal with his mother when he was eight, and who was out of work after dropping out of a college course, the Surrey service has been a life-saver. Originally charged with robbery for taking the mobile phone, he was convicted of theft and given a youth referral order, which placed him under the supervision of a youth worker from the service.
Told about a coaching and employability course run by the Fulham Football Club Foundation and Barclays Spaces for Sport, Fino applied and went on to get a coaching job. Ultimately he hopes to become a professional football coach and last month he became a dad. “Life is amazing,” he says.
His success story is testimony to the reorganisation behind the Surrey service, which brings together workers previously employed by the local Connexions advice agency, youth justice and youth development and which supports 2,000 young people a year. Kathryn Brooks, an area manager with the service, says that while financial constraints drove the reorganisation, the resulting whole has proved greater than the sum of its parts.
“In the past, the youth offending programme knew that the system labelled people and could make it more likely for them to reoffend. We have tried to create a non-stigmatising service,” says Brooks. “Young people have someone working alongside them to work through a range of issues. Their needs often overlap. Since the service was set up, it has grown and we now work with children in need and young people who are homeless.”
Surrey is providing a targeted response to the risks of adolescence. According to a study by research consultancy Research in Practice, these risks differ from those faced by younger children and older groups.
In the study report, That Difficult Age, Elly Hanson and Dez Holmes argue that the current child protection system fails to recognise the unique risks faced by adolescents, but also their strengths and opportunities. Traditional definitions of risk and approaches to protection do not match young people’s experiences and, all too often, young people are not central to service design. While the authors acknowledge that a number of outstanding counter-examples do exist, despite the system, they conclude the “overarching response of the system to adolescents facing serious risks is flawed”.
The report sets out seven principles for a different approach. These include the need to work with young people; the recognition of special features of adolescent development; the promotion of supportive relationships between young people and their families and peers; and the priority of supportive relationships between young people and key practitioners within the system. Services should be holistic and accessible, the report says, and staff should be adequately supported and given learning opportunities.
Several local authorities are already looking at redesigning services along these lines with the help of grants from the Department for Education’s innovation fund. In Gloucestershire, a multi-disciplinary team being set up to work with young people aged 11 and over will start taking referrals next April. However, Holmes argues that the challenge of reducing adolescent risk cannot be left to local authorities alone. Public perceptions of adolescents have to change and their needs must be recognised at national level.
“Contemporary adolescent risk may not be best served by traditional child protection paradigms,” she says, suggesting there may need to be a fresh approach to inspection of services for adolescents. “There needs to be recognition that the system we apply shouldn’t be at odds with adolescent development – and that includes the need for more independence and risk-taking.”
The Surrey model has worked for Fino, who admits his life has been turned around. “If I had not had the support from youth workers, I think I would still be involved in crime,” he says. “My mother has been very ill and we have very little money at home, so crime would have been the easy way to make money. The youth workers have made me see there are alternatives. It has been life-changing and I realise I can make my own way.”
