The staff at Steve’s school, called ‘Last Chance’ in the book, are like islands in the stream, standing in a tumultuous torrent of pain and anger trying stop it tearing the young men in their care away downstream, towards disaster. Steve and his colleagues know they have to do all they can to hold them, emotionally, heartfully, courageously (heartfulness and courage are really the same thing) to offer them a place of physical and emotional safety in what may be the only place where they are accepted as they are, for whom they are, despite their behaviour.
In youth work and schools we kept saying that ‘if there is something wrong with a child or young person’s behaviour there is almost certainty something wrong with their situation.’ Their behaviour is symptomatic, not causal. We needed to look beyond the behaviour and explore what was behind it. Why, for instance, is the bully bullying? The liar lying? And we learnt that those who have been abused, in whatever way, are not likely to present themselves in ways that arouse our sympathy.
That is why we needed to set aside our expectations of ‘good behaviour’, of politeness, even decency, and to reach out across the void and offer a hand, even when we expected it to be bitten. Even when it had been bitten. Being bitten hurts and these young people knew exactly how to hurt. Their emotional (and too often physical) scars told their own story.
But even this is not enough. Such children and youths also need firm boundaries consistently maintained by those who care for them. This is the same discipline all children need of course, but for them it is in spades. The young boys in Steve need to know that this really is their last chance, that outside the boundaries is a void. Both Steve the character and Steve the movie are clear about this.
But how can the Staff doing work like this be so strong, so consistent, so alert and responsive when they are also standing on rocky ground, also in danger of being swept away by the torrent? The film is set in 1996, after 18 years of Tory Government, but now Britain has emerged from another 15 years of their rule, another 15 years of underinvestment in education and youth work.
I remember attending a national conference called by the Tories in the mid 1990’s, when they wanted youth work to be ‘contracted out’ from Local Government to charities such as the uniformed organisations, the denominational Churches and the YMCA and YWCA. But they needed us to tell them what measurable ‘outcomes’ we would produce to justify the work – and the expense. These needed it to be quantifiable, so we could be accountable.
Many of us did not know whether to laugh or cry, or both. For most of us the only justification for our work was the potential benefit it might bring to those we worked with, and these benefits could not be measured, predicted, tracked or tested. Many of them might not emerge for years, long after they had left our clubs or organisations. Some young people might not benefit at all from our efforts. Some would certainly have been damaged, but none-the-less we were there to ‘cast our bread on the waters’ in hope. We did the work simply for the sake of the young people.
The situation we see in Steve shows what happens when work with children and young people is shaped by a governmental ethic of profit and loss. Not by ‘what can we give?’ but by ‘what shall we gain?’ In our case the Minister suggested that our efforts might mean more young staying on in education, or going into work. These things, they were sure, would improve the Nation’s economy. Now, of course, most English schools are run by Academies, by businesses. The work done in places like Steve’s school is not really economically viable.
