If anyone wanted a story about youth work that pulls at the heartstrings, it is that of Katie. I have to be careful not to reveal the whole depth and range of challenges in her life, for fear of breaching anonymity, but the general story will suffice.
Katie is now in her early 30s. That means I have known her for well over 20 years. She first appeared in my youth centre to attend the junior youth club and I had little contact with her at the start. But when she started coming to the senior youth club, for those around 13 and above, I realised that she would need a lot of support.
She was a big girl who always wore trousers and a nylon football shirt - hardly conducive to fitting in with the crowd. She went to a special school and was evidently "simple", although that made her very sweet at times. At school, she struck up a friendship with two other girls and eventually she managed to persuade them to come to the club with her.
But I certainly didn't want Katie, Connie and Lucy to remain together. I gave them responsibilities behind the coffee bar. When they were there, the money rarely balanced but the social impact was immense, as they established contact and relationships with other members of the club.
Katie had always wanted to come away on a residential weekend, but her parents didn't let her. There were personal reasons for this. As I gradually discovered the family background (brother Mark and mother also had mild learning disabilities; father was just an ordinary man working in a factory), I pressed for Katie to come away with us and eventually she did.
I taught her, over five years, to play pool well and she started to beat others and eventually beat me. Eventually, she became confident in tackling many things that she had always thought were beyond her.
By the time she was 20, Katie had enrolled at college and had achieved NVQs in both catering and horticulture. She helped out at the youth club, which had always been her safe haven and source of support, encouragement and praise. Her parents, knowing what the place had done for both Katie and Mark, thought all of the youth workers were wonderful.
But Katie couldn't get a job and descended into considerable despondency. One day, I asked her where she thought she might be had it not been for the youth club. She wrote a telling and poignant note, part of which registered that she might well be trapped between home and an adult training centre, occupied with packing boxes or some other mind-numbing activity, which had been the destination of some of those who had been at school with her. She expressed her appreciation of what the club had done for her.
And then I lost touch with her. But Facebook can be a wonderful thing and among the myriad of "Friends" requests, mainly from people I had never heard of, I spotted her name and accepted the invitation. Within minutes, I got a short note. Katie said hello, long time no see, and said that she now had had a job for five years, working with adults with learning disabilities. I wrote back and, by reply, received a much longer account of her personal and professional life. She now lives independently, with a partner. I was astounded to learn that her job entails educating about safe sex and ensuring that those she works with keep themselves safe from harm. She said she was setting up a support group to achieve those ends "as we speak".
"My work is fantastic," she said, and she is certainly right, in an almost literal sense.
The expression "turning lives around" is often over-used. But in Katie's case, someone who - without youth work interventions - was probably destined for a lifetime of considerable dependency on other people has instead become an autonomous individual making her own, important, contribution to the lives of others.
Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of South Wales.
