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As I struggle to get services for young people in need, I see how the system has numbed professionals’ capacity for compassion. How has it come to this?
I fell into youth work by accident more than five years ago and supporting young people has become my vocation. However, in spite of my dad’s calls to find myself a secure position at the council, or my mum asking whether I should get my social work qualification, I have made a conscious decision not to work in the public sector.
Instead, I work for a charity that provides advocacy services for young people in care, as well as homeless young people who may be entitled to retrospective care status.
I’ve chosen to work for a charity because I’ve seen the public sector fail the young people it is supposed to be safeguarding and supporting – and I’ve come to realise that youth advocates like me are needed to make up for that growing shortfall.
I don’t want to be bound by bureaucracy for the sake of a secure salary and a pension, or forced to adhere to an endless list of policies and procedures that, from my perspective, numb professionals’ capacity for compassion.
An advocate makes sure a young person’s voice is heard and their thoughts, wishes and feelings are communicated to professionals, usually social workers.
Young people’s wishes are frequently sidelined as statutory budgets are squeezed and rising caseloads result in social workers “forgetting” how to care. All too often, a young person tells me I am are the first person to listen to them, and it is hard not to feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility to them.
I work on cases where something is not going well, which usually involves some challenging encounters with social workers, who have increasingly less influence in the decisions being made about the futures of these young people. Instead, decisions are dictated by budgets and led by management, leaving social workers too often to be the bearers of bad news.
My cases involve many young people in the most desperate of situations: homeless, without money and with no one or nowhere to turn. What has struck me most is the number of homeless children and young people.
I’m working with a young woman who is 21, a mother of two, who has just completed her GCSEs. Having been in care for years, she was led to believe that she would be considered a priority for social housing. However, her local authority has decided that she needs to find private rented accommodation. It has recommended that she moves out of London, leaving behind her support network and opportunities to continue her education. She is devastated.
With an increasingly scarce social housing stock, promises to care leavers like this young woman are not being honoured. I have got a solicitor involved but the outcome is yet unknown, as her local authority is delaying its response.
I am also working with a 19-year-old who has spent the past seven months sofa surfing. Following six months on remand, during which his social worker did not visit him or provide financial support, he was found not guilty at trial and was released from custody with nowhere to go. The following day, social services placed him in an area well-known for gangs, where he simply did not feel safe. He was told this was not a good enough reason to request a move. As he did not stay there, his placement was closed. Social services failed to provide an alternative and only now, with an advocate involved, is he being offered temporary accommodation.
For young people who have already faced various setbacks and endured trauma, social services are not providing environments where young people have the best life chances – in fact, these young people are often put more at risk.
I sometimes find myself trying to appeal to a professional’s humanity when the legal jargon fails, but I still face the response that it is out of their hands, and that their manager has said no.
But when a professional says no to housing a child, it means letting a 17-year-old girl leave the building not knowing where she will sleep that night. How has it come to this?
Every day feels like the same struggle, on behalf of a different young person. We seem to be up against a system that is discriminatory, oppressive and failing the very people it is set up to protect and support.
Anonymous
29 July 2017
