# Transcript

DENISE GODFREY: Paul, can you just kind of remind me what the purpose of reparation is, as I understand that that's why the young people come here?

PAUL HOWARD: Reparation is where we look for young people to repair the harm done by their crimes within the community.

DENISE GODFREY: I thought this afternoon we'd spend a little bit of time evaluating the work that's been going on at the Resource Centre that's been delivered by the Offending Team and the work that we've done together. Maybe if we start with the poster project.

PAUL HOWARD: Yeah, we came down here to use the poster project, because the TRC was a good resource that had all the equipment we needed to produce the work we wanted with our young people within the poster project, where we get young people to consider their offence and then produce a visible idea of why they've committed the offence or the impact that that offence has had on themselves, maybe their family, and the community as a large.

DENISE GODFREY: We've stopped that particular project, or it's come to an end, so if we think about whether it was successful or unsuccessful, what the issues were that impacted on it.

PAUL HOWARD: I believe that the idea to bring it here was a good idea. Part of the problems we face by bringing young people involved in the youth justice system, the problem we might have had would be that there would be other young people surrounding them doing their own thing, which is really good, but our young people needed to be focused on what they wanted to achieve and that could be really distracting, and therefore, impacted on the work we really wanted to do. So the idea to pull the project after discussions with yourself was really valid.

DENISE GODFREY: Possibly we'd have to consider doing that outside of our normal opening hours.

PAUL HOWARD: I would think so, yeah. I would feel more comfortable with our young people being actually focused on the work they need to achieve.

DENISE GODFREY: Now if we move on then to think about the bike project. Now that does go on during the same time that the centre's open, so what's, what's making that different?

PAUL HOWARD: We work in another part of the building where we do the work which involves refurbishing bikes given to us by the community and by the police.

DENISE GODFREY: But is there any time maybe that actually the young people come into contact with the project other than when they're in there doing the bikes?

PAUL HOWARD: One of the things, again, one of the bonuses I feel about working with the TRC with yourselves is the young people who are involved in the youth justice system are quite often disengaged from the community and can often feel quite isolated. So by having the project here, we have that natural crossover where people can arrive early and are able to access other provision that you provide, such as the computers. They get information about drama projects, music workshops, so they're able to access. So therefore, there is that crossover and by working with your staff, they can also build up positive relationships with youth workers and other agencies. So I know that young people who are involved with me have certainly come on and come on to summer scheme programmes, have certainly take part in the music workshops and the computers.

DENISE GODFREY: Right, is there any other projects you might like to think about running from here?

PAUL HOWARD: We've run one other one if you remember, which is the cooking programme, where we have got young people to do cooking here where we've taken the goods on to disabled project within the community, so a real good positive link again where there...

DENISE GODFREY: ... Certainly, there was a spin off from there, because the young woman brings herself here independently now.

PAUL HOWARD: Excellent. That's one of our goals.

DENISE GODFREY: I feel overall the meeting went really well. It was a, it was a good chance just to reflect and think about the work that we've done together.

Initially early on in the project, there had been some conflict between myself and Paul around the issue of the poster project and of the young people using the room. And, you know, Paul was quite certain that he didn't want to have the young people in the room as much as I was certain that I did want to have the young people in the room, because I've got to look at resources and the use of resources. And should I open that room just for his young people during an evening session, it would be an awful draw on my resources at the Resource Centre in terms of hours of, of workers and also my returns at the end of the month that said there was only x number of young people in the Resource Centre. I was also dead keen, very, very keen, that the young people that came in who were on orders had an opportunity to get a real feel for what was happening in youth work, and in particular, what was going on in this centre.

So actually spending some time now some way down the line, it was quite good to be able to reflect on it, think about the project, and for me to recognise, well, actually that bit of the project didn't work, however, the rest of the project did and, and it was quite nice. So it brought to a closure in a way some of the issues that we'd had in the past, some of the confrontation between myself and that particular worker.