In
our youth club the rules, as in most places, included no smoking,
drinking or doing drugs on the premises - our rules also included
the car park. Our car park is large and can have security staff
at times but on these nights no one would be around except the volunteer
staff members and the youth - most of who lived locally and walked
in.
As
with many clubs we had a core membership and then others who would
come in now and again. Some - often those perceived as the ‘toughest’
ones - wouldn’t actually come into the building but hover
at the edge of the car park and because of the hard-line on smoking
there was also a corner where the smokers would gather just off
the main road. Sometimes staff members would be based there, working
with those who hung around outside.
On
several occasions a couple of cars full of young people would drive
on and the guys would just sit listening to music etc. They wouldn’t
want to come in except for the occasional cuppa - but nor did they
want to go. Although the car park was private, once we’d asked
folks to join in the club or leave -(which they didn’t) -
there was little we could do unless they did anything really bad
(which they didn’t). We didn’t want to get the police
in and alienate them further but the cars were a real draw for younger
girls from the club, particularly - because they were often full
of older lads.
It's
difficult being a church-based open youth club worker because you
always have to hold in tension the views of church, the youth team,
parents and local community not to mention the youth themselves.
In one sense there was no issue here…and you could say we
were being paranoid - but any mention of out-of-order-behavior on
our car park and I’m sure that some church members would be
questioning the abilities of the youth clubs' staff.
It
was very difficult to stop the girls going out to the car, but at
14 they were not young children! So we were left with dilemmas really.
Once in the cars…it was impossible to control behavior like
who was 'getting off' with whom and there were rumors of bottles
of spirits, colorful reputations and drugs. The sometimes naïve
young girls might leave with a bunch of older guys who'd been drinking
and driving and then what about safe, what if they did not arrive
back before the end of club - then whose responsibility were they?
We
couldn’t 'lock' people into the club (!) and some parents
wouldn’t have known that their kids were even at the club
anyway. They certainly wouldn't expect us to force them to stay
away from anyone else, but then in many other peoples' eyes the
youth-staff were 'in loco parentis' once the young people were in
our hands and some of the church parents would have though us very
irresponsible for not 'protecting' their young people. Perhaps they
would blame us when 'interesting' relationships were formed which
might lead their kids off the straight and narrow, too.
For
us every occasion had to be dealt with as an individual case and
we tended to think of young people as our responsibility once they
had signed in and seen a copy of the club-rules. If they were leaving
the club activities we would try and get them to sign out too. Obviously
we'd always try and encourage new people inside which stopped them
being ‘demonized’ as the ones who'd be blamed for all
sorts and of course it was essential to make it a great place once
they were in too.
Without
security on the car-park entrance, you can't stop people driving
in…it's also very difficult to force people to leave who don't
want to go - so what would you have done?
Do
you have enough staff to post people outside as well as in? Are
you aware of how far your legal obligations to young people go?
In a youth-club you can't search a person or car for drugs - but
how do you minimise the potential risk of drugs being brought in?
How do you use physical space in your youth work and how does it
affect your relationships?
A Frontier Youth Trust Networker
