Obscenities

Part of the joy of working with young people in general, but especially young people with behavioural issues and young offenders, is the colourful language (including sign) and use of everything obscene in as much of what they do as possible. That might seem a little exaggerated but sex and swearing were among the top obsessions of the Learners and cropped up often and everywhere.

Unfortunately, not all of the Artists were prepared for this kind of behaviour. Stacey, who was relatively well experienced, was particularly upset by an incident. A young person (who had been one of the best Learners) suddenly snapped, tried to destroy all his work and threatened to "cut her up". This wasn't reported to the other members of staff and, due to this and other communication oversights, the young person received a bag of rewards for his work an hour later.

There was a good deal of turmoil caused across the second three weeks by the two couples who got together in the Animation group. One trouble working with an age range between 13 and 18 is that relationships are inevitable. Even without the issues of working with young offenders, teen love is always trouble. Being such a complicated issue, normal policies don't really cover it, so it's one thing (among many) that really relies on the experience of the Workers to deal with it successfully.