There is an old proverb warning us never to step too hard on anybody's toes, for they might just belong to the body of the hands that feed us.

Unfortunately, if we are honest with ourselves, at least some of the young people with whom we work do just that. We are often reluctant to admit this, for it is also an admission that we may have crossed the boundaries of professionalism in extending generosity or hospitality to those young people in their time of need. Yet my guess is that there are few youth workers who have not gone that extra mile at some point: and some will have had their toes crushed and fingers bitten.

I once wrote an article about lending money to young people that invited considerable controversy. But sometimes kids are desperately short of relatively small amounts of money and we give them a helping hand. When I wrote the article in the early 1990s, I was quite truthful in saying that every penny had eventually been repaid. I cannot say that any more, for there have been one or two who have reneged on their commitment. More pertinent are the much more frequent moments when young people let you down, fail to honour their commitments, cause damage or create difficulty - against the very people and places that are meant to be there to help them.

Why do they act like this? Frantz Fanon noted in his study of colonisation, The Wretched of the Earth, that the dispossessed invariably turn against those acting most closely in their interests: more legitimate targets of their frustration and anger are too distant to be reached with any effect. In the early 1980s and early 1990s, it was often the local youth centre that was the first casualty of wanton arson attacks by young people.

I sometimes wonder whether young people pick on us, and the resources we provide for them, because they believe we are more likely to be forgiving.

There is certainly a debate to be had about the number of times opportunities should be renewed for those who recurrently throw them back in our face.

But my experience is that eventually such forgiveness pays off.

Only the other day I got an email from a former youth club member who must now be in his early thirties. He recorded his thanks to me for my undying patience with him when he was a "youth" and said that I could now be proud of him. "Life has taken a very pleasant U-turn for me," he said. "I have turned from the disruptive 'pain in the backside' teenager that you knew into quite a successful father with a bright future in the building industry." He had definitely been a pain in the proverbial, but I had never given up on him, a decision that, from the tenor of his email, has belatedly been fully vindicated.