Interview by Nick Manning
Nick interviewed Steve, a street worker in western Sydney, about what he thought a youth worker might do to build up trust with young people.
Steve: I think the initial things we do to build up trust, if you're going in cold, is do something with them at their level. So we initiate contact through playing pool games with them, once we're known in the pool room as youth workers, we can organise pool competitions. Last month we had a barbecue down on the grass outside St. Paul's and we invited all the people from the pool room down there. We got quite a number of young guys and then as a result of that, they can see us in the pool room, they can see us outside the pool room, they can see us in their cultural setting and they can see us outside being a worker as well. And as a result of that, the next time I went down the pool room, one of the guys who came down for a sausage sandwich came up and asked me: "How do I get in touch with legal help". That's how we start building a trusting relationship, once it goes beyond that, we can tap them into things, like if they're homeless we can tap them into youth health centres to give them a place to have a shower.
So we can tap them into place like the youth health centre and out of the youth health centre we run our food parcels which we can tap them into as well. So once we get to know them at the pool room, we might get to see them at the youth health centre and then they might need a lift home, we'll give them a lift home and drop them off. And so we build a relationship with them on a slow and ongoing level and then we organise some recreational activities. We took a bus load of kids into the Sydney Aquarium a few weeks ago. And doing those sorts of things with them helps them to relate to us on a social level because we are doing a recreation thing but then they also know that they can come to us and get a food voucher from Woolworths because they're hungry.
Nick: So that they're learning that you're on their side.
Steve: Yeah, they're learning that organisations aren't to be feared and a lot of young people, particularly if they've been in the juvenile justice system, are fearful of youth workers because most of the youth workers they've ever known are DoCS workers who've taken them away from their families or people in the juvenile detention centres who have locked them up, the youth workers.
So now, we come in as youth workers and the immediate reaction when we first started going into the pool room was that they were unsure about what we were there for. We were either undercover police checking up on drugs or we were drug dealers trying to sell. But then after we got to know them when we built some relationships and we actually went to court with some of them and met some of their friends at court then they could say "I've seen you down the pool room, are you a youth worker, are you there for that reason?".
So now we've had some ongoing relationships over the years and like this girl who we helped get back into high school, we've known her for about two years. She originally came on the drug and alcohol camp that the council and the youth services in this region ran a couple of years ago. From then, we've kept in touch with her and we've followed her up when she's needed counselling, whether she's needed food or whatever. Whether she's needed moving we have access to a trailer and a van to put stuff in to help move houses for them when they need it. Because they've got no other way of doing it and they've got no money to pay for it. So we offer all that sort of service free of charge and basically doing those things for them has let them know we're on their side so that if they have a problem and they're out of their depth, they'll come to us for help because they know that we're there to support them.
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Notes
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