- What was your first contact with youth work?
Having left school for Swan Hunter shipyard, I'd been out of work for three years in the 80s recession. I started volunteering for a community project in Middlesbrough. It was a life-changing experience. A worker there saw something in me and encouraged me.
- Did it lead to a job?
I did a year with social services through the community programme. All this time I was becoming quite politicised, I realised that young people often get a raw deal, and that there was more for me than life behind a welder's mask. I signed up to do the certificate in youth and community work at Sunderland Polytechnic.
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