I love this work because I like meeting people. I enjoy learning about them. I like finding out what matters to them, what they spend their time doing, what makes them laugh, what makes them angry, what they know a great deal about and what they are trying to work out.
This is where the work begins.
Young people have widened my world considerably. Over the years, I have learned about horror make-up, trains, K-pop, different Asian cuisines, Bollywood films, grime, cricket, BMX, skateboarding, nail art and poetry. I have learned some Pashto, Dari, Arabic and Blin too.
I want to thank the young people who have let me into their interests, opinions, languages and ways of seeing. It’s a privilege to be a part of their lives. The learning has never moved in only one direction, far from it.
Working with young people effectively requires sustained interest; to keep paying attention after the first conversation, after the initial crisis, after you think you have understood what the issue is. It means being prepared to find out that your first impression was wrong. It means allowing somebody to be more complicated than the information in their referral, their risk assessment, their diagnosis or the story that has travelled ahead of them.
Young people who have spent time in care, support services or other institutions often know professionals very well. They know the difference between somebody who is genuinely interested and somebody who is completing a task. They know when they are being quietly judged. They know when a question has been asked because it belongs on a form, rather than because the answer matters to the person asking it.
This does not mean that every worker who struggles to build a relationship is insincere. Many roles are tightly boundaried. Caseloads are too high, staff change, appointments are brief and people are required to move quickly between one urgent situation and the next. Relationship is shaped by those conditions as much as it is by individual character.
Still, there is a difference between being responsible for a young person and being interested in them.
I have moved into work where I can spend more ordinary time alongside young people. That has strengthened my view that real connection makes a difference. Not a friendship, and not a blurred boundary. The boundary is part of what makes a relationship safe. It also offers an important lesson in what a respectful relationship and professionalism looks like.
A genuine, consistent interest within a clear professional relationship: enough continuity for trust to develop, enough time for conversation to go somewhere, and enough shared experience for support to become relevant to an actual life.
A lot of this happens in the swing of everyday life.
It happens while somebody is making food, putting off a phone call, planning the week, trying to get up after a bad night’s sleep, arguing with a sibling, running out of money, showing you a new song, worrying about college, or sitting in a bad mood because something has gone wrong. A conversation about emotional regulation may begin there, methods to manage it explored. So may a conversation about what somebody values, how they see themselves, what patterns keep repeating, or what they want their life to be.
Expecting a young person to arrive in a reflective mood at a scheduled session is a tall order; everyday life offers many valuable opportunities. Sometimes you are talking while walking to the shop. Sometimes you are making tea. Sometimes you are watching somebody carefully avoid a subject before they are ready to talk about it. You learn the pace of communication together.
That shared rhythm matters. It allows support to be responsive rather than imposed.
It also changes how practical support is understood. Sleep, hygiene, food, cooking and money management are often presented as a list of independent-living skills. They are necessary, but the list can become flat and punitive very quickly. A young person can be asked to budget, clean their room and attend appointments without anybody taking much interest in why those things are difficult at that point in their life.
Routine can be a framework for life. A steadier sleep pattern can change somebody’s capacity to cope with a difficult day. Eating properly can make moods feel more manageable. Having some idea of what money is for, and where it goes, can create a little room to breathe. Cooking can become confidence, fun, culture, memory and generosity, as well as a meal. It is useful to introduce these tasks in this frame, a way in which they may never have been presented.
People need fun, rest, friendship and things to look forward to because those are part of life. ‘The work’ the ‘life skills’, is to help make more of that life possible. I often say to youth that life is a case of learning how to play the game within the given frame; to get the life you want out of it.
A young persons interests matter, perhaps more than anything. It is their chosen identity, something they have claimed as their own, A young person’s interest in anime, football, make-up, a particular artist, cars, fashion, a game or a type of music may become a route into a course, a club, a book, a film, a friendship group or a wider community. Sometimes it is simply something worth talking about because it matters to them. Both are significant.
When somebody takes a real interest, a young person is not only positioned as somebody with needs. They are also somebody with knowledge, taste, humour, expertise and influence. They can teach. They can disagree. They can introduce another person to a world they did not know existed.
There is a useful idea in mentalization here: staying curious about another person’s inner world, rather than assuming you already know what they mean or why they have acted as they have. In practice, that may be as simple as asking a better question, accepting that you do not understand yet, or allowing somebody to correct you.
It is not a technique to perform. Young people can tell the difference.
Good relational work does not make the worker the centre of a young person’s world. It should help widen their world: towards other people, places, interests, confidence, possibility and a life that is not organised around services. But it starts with somebody noticing what is already there, and caring enough to stay interested.
Sources
- D. W. Winnicott, “The Capacity to Be Alone”, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1958.
- Anthony Bateman and Peter Fonagy, “What is mentalization-based treatment?”, The Cambridge Guide to Mentalization-Based Treatment, Cambridge University Press.
- Department for Education, Guide to the Supported Accommodation Regulations, including Quality Standards, 2023.
Reflection informing YAW · relational practice, everyday life and the conditions for connection.
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