New horizon
“When I first met with Daniel it was during a group remand meeting in prison. It was clearly quite intense for him, due to his young age and also the number of people in attendance. He was pretty agitated.
I arranged my first one-to-one visit with Daniel soon after this. He was quite closed, defensive and suspicious of me. He wasn’t sure what my job was and said he was fed up of being asked the same questions by different people. I explained my role, but didn’t overload him with the detail, as I knew that would come in time.
The first thing I did was establish regular meetings, on a weekly basis, with an initial focus on trust-building. I formulated these meetings as a safe, open space where Daniel could talk about anything of his choice. At first this was just casual, everyday things. I also tried to take the formality out of our meetings by creating a relaxed environment where he could feel comfortable outside of his cell – so we never sat at formal meeting desks across from each other; instead we used more casual spaces.
“For me, it’s not just the plan that is child-led, I try to make every interaction child-led too.”
The consistency of me visiting at regular intervals really built trust and made Daniel much more comfortable and able to open up. As time went on, he began to share his thoughts and feelings with me and he started to talk about things that had happened in his past to do with his family structure.
I began to gain a much clearer sense of who he was and what was important to him. He was very charismatic and being social meant a lot to him. He was also extremely mature in many situations. For example, he described a time when he intervened in a domestic violence incident within his friendship group and subsequently mediated to diffuse the incident.
Over time however, it became clear that despite his apparent social confidence, Daniel was actually presenting with very low self-esteem. It was extremely important to him to be liked, to be known and remembered by people.
What was interesting about this need to be liked and known, was that it seemed to bring out a more immature, easily-influenced side to him. It seemed to be enabling a pro-offending identity.
His offending was quite serious and had been in the newspaper. When we discussed it, he was visibly excited by the notoriety that came with the article and the crime. It was a means to be remembered. It gave him a sense of identity and value. When he talked about the offence he became more child-like and didn’t consider the seriousness of it.
The more I talked to him, the more it became clear that he craved validation from all walks of life. It wasn’t just offending life. We talked about teachers and other people in his life that had praised him. He was as equally excited about being liked and remembered by them, as he was by his immediate social circle.
He enjoyed telling me about things he was good at, such as performing arts and writing. He described how he was writing a lot in his free time and talked about big ambitions he had around working in a creative field. He even described what kind of work environment would suit him best in the future and we explored the reasons behind this.
“You only get relationships with young people if you treat them as humans, if you get to know and like them, and if you enjoy your meetings with them. With Daniel, I was able to establish an openness to chat about a range of subjects, even with humour at times, while still discussing important boundaries and maintaining that focus on the elements of a pro-social life.”
After I’d gotten to know Daniel, we were able to start co-creating a structural plan together that was based around his interests and where he wanted to be in the future. For example, he indicated that after release he’d prefer to live in a different area that created more distance between him and the community he’d been offending in, so I was able to explore alternative housing options.
Daniel had previously talked about a close cousin of his who was studying at university. We were able to use that cousin as a role model in our conversations to explore what kind of education or training Daniel might want to pursue around his passion for performing arts.
I’ve also been arranging creative activities for Daniel to take part in and he’s engaged with some of these really well. He does seem to go through phases of which element of the arts he’s most interested in. But I’ve learned that it’s rarely going to be a linear journey with most children. Daniel is so young, it’s okay that he hasn’t pinned down an exact area that speaks to him the most. What’s been engaging him is the fact that he’s been shown the different options that are available to him. Options that are positive and pro-social. Also, having someone take a real interest in what he might be interested in has really helped him engage with his practical plan for release. Daniel’s actually said to me that up to this point he thought the only options for someone like him were the crime-based opportunities he gets approached for within the community.
“In my experience, it’s not the conversations about offending that have the long-term impact. It’s the conversations about who they are as a person and what they’re interested in that give the best chance of not reoffending. The conversations that make them feel that they can bring value to an interaction, that they can make a positive contribution to the world, and quite simply that they are liked.”
While Daniel continues to serve the remainder of his custodial sentence my focus is currently on maintaining the consistency that we’ve established over the last 12 months so that we can continue to build his resettlement plan constructively and collaboratively. He’s due to be transferred to a new section of the prison soon, which means a new set of rules, faces and processes for him to adjust to. This is where consistency, coordination and transparency in all of my contact with Daniel will be extremely important to maintain trust and focus on a more positive future.”
Daniel: “Weekly visits and regular letters from ******* when I first went into prison helped me settle in. She made things happen, helped sort out my housing and got me a solicitor. I like working with New Horizon because they make things happen ‘pattern things’ and they care. They get to know you and build a relationship; we can talk about everyday things as well as serious things. Without them I wouldn’t of known how to sort out my house and get all of these things.”
