Catch them while you can

Gloucester Primary School in Peckham stands in the shadow of the block where Damilola Taylor bled to death; its children are growing up in the bleak south-London teen culture highlighted in the trial of the two boys accused of his murder.

The level of deprivation among the pupils is hard for those who don't work in the area to comprehend. "I have children in my school who don't eat every day," says the head, John Mann. "I have children who are shiny with dirt." That's in addition to all the children who are distressed and damaged by their fragmented lives. Mann is so angry that the Government could even think about cutting off parents' benefit as a result of their children's behaviour, that he has written to Tony Blair to tell him so. This would do nothing but increase their problems, he believes.

As well as receiving through its doors an endless cycle of need, Gloucester Primary, like other schools in the area, is now starting to receive new strands of support – thanks to local efforts to address the issue of troubled children and dysfunctional families. It is getting increased help with individual children, and outreach workers are coming in to try and nip antisocial behaviour in the bud.

"It is all helpful," says Mann. "I'd say it's starting to go in the right direction, although the problem with all these things is that we always respond in such a piecemeal fashion."

A year ago, the London borough of Southwark handed over its education services to a private company, WS Atkins. Since then much has changed. New blood has been brought in, and closer relationships have started to be built with the police, social services, voluntary agencies and private companies, as the authority tries to catch wayward children at a younger age and give them the kind of joined-up support that has long been lacking and that it prays will keep them from trouble later.

"There were a lot of gaps," admits Graham Smith, head of Education Otherwise, which looks after children who are out of school because they have been excluded for bad behaviour, or for health or other reasons. "We've had to ask a lot of hard questions about where things were going wrong, but now there are a huge amount of positive things happening. We have links we just wouldn't have had a year ago."

The authority has added a new pupil primary referral unit for troubled younger children (see box) to its two existing referral units – one of fewer than 80 units dedicated to this age group throughout the country – and it is working to build a new culture within all three units.

Gone is the "sin bin" cul-de-sac of yesteryear. In has come a proactive service, with the heads of the units going out into mainstream schools to help them support difficult pupils, as well as working to ensure that pupils in the units don't stay there, but are returned as quickly as possible to ordinary schools. To achieve this, staff are, among other things, working much more closely with parents, offering informal support, drop-in sessions, and links to parenting organisations.

At the other end of the age scale, another of the units, the Education Support Centre, is pioneering an innovative programme for vulnerable Year 10 and 11 students – truants, young offenders, those monitored by social services – which aims to hang on to teenagers just at the crucial point when many drop out of school for good.

"And it has been a revelation!" says Jill Dyson, who was brought in to head the new centre. "It has been lovely to see students who were quite turned-off being reinvigorated by finding things that motivate them." The programme started last September, and has already seen attendance shoot up from 50 per cent to 78 per cent, thanks to a creative use of college and work placements alongside school work.

"In the past, we were just telling them they had to take so many GCSEs, or whatever, and they were voting with their feet," says Smith. "Now we are trying to find subjects that will excite and motivate them, and give them a stepping stone for a lifetime of learning."

Youngsters placed with the centre, which is based in an old house in Peckham, have individual learning packages stitched together, which might include a taster course in plastering or business administration, alongside college or school work.

And many of the 72 students say they like this more adult climate. "I'm happy to come here. I can work hard. It's new and different, and I'm treated with respect," says one.

Fundamental to its successful launch, Jill Dyson says, has been having good relationships in place, using a small building that doesn't feel like school, drawing up individual learning plans, and using resources available in the public, private and voluntary sectors. "There are loads of programmes around now for disaffected young people. You just have to tap into them."

She, along with the heads of the other two pupil referral units, is helping to revise the authority's behaviour support plan, while a behaviour support team, which addresses issues such as bullying and harassment, has expanded its work in schools.

Work is being done to improve children's emotional literacy, more in-school support is being offered for difficult children, new provision has been made for young offenders in public care, and the education service is starting to work more closely with voluntary and other agencies.

The ultimate aim of this flurry of activity is to provide the kind of wrap-around care that everyone who works with dysfunctional families knows is the only hope for addressing rising tides of violent and antisocial behaviour, and which many inner-city areas are now battling to put in place.

But the odds do not look good. At Gloucester Primary they are seeing more and more children who are more angry, more irritable and distracted, and more contemptuous of authority than children were in the past. "More families just don't have the resources they might have once had," says John Mann, who points out that situations are often complex and shifting, and that a single family can have problems of depression, addiction, unemployment, crime, violence and ill health, all of which need to be addressed simultaneously if progress is to be made.

He believes the only way forward is a radical and imaginative leap into full strategic co-operation between everyone who works in the community, supported by a new national structure, and with the focus kept firmly on early intervention.

With these elements, he says, there just might be some light at the end of the tunnel. Without them, we face a nightmare Clockwork Orange-type future, where no one will be able to run or hide from the social and economic consequences of not having done more sooner.

'I was always being bad...i was kicking and stuff'

At Summerhouse there is a sudden, violent flurry from inside one of the classrooms. Chairs bang, a tiny voice screams. "I don't wanna read to no one!" The head, Pauline Sacre, steps quickly into the room, using a door handle so high that only adults can reach it. There are sounds of a firm, calm intervention, then quiet settles again on the school.

Welcome to the world of Southwark's brand-new pupil referral unit for primary-age pupils, where children as young as five come if they have been permanently excluded from school, or need to spend part of the week there. The children have serious behavioural problems, and can reel off long histories of trouble.

"I was always being bad," says a nine-year-old. "I was kicking and stuff." Another volunteers: "I hit this boy on the head with a ruler." A third, a 10-year-old new to the unit, looks mystified as to why he is there. "I dunno," he says blankly.

The plan is that these children will soon be back in school, though possibly with continued monitoring and support. "These units used to be dumping grounds," says Sacre. "Once you got a child in, you could never get them out again. What we are doing here is preventative. No child should be here longer than three terms before going back to mainstream school."

The unit opened this year, and will soon have a full team of social worker, health worker, counsellor and learning mentor alongside teaching staff .

Working with families is seen as crucial. "Some parents are too busy with their own lives to care about their children, but there are very few who don't want help," says Sacre. "They want things to change, but they don't know how to make them. And it can also take time for them to accept that they have a role in that. It isn't said enough that a lot of the parents we're working with are as needy as their children. They've had a similar life themselves."

Because of this, she says, punishing parents and cutting off their benefits just won't work. Informal approaches are better. "A lot of them feel very negative about the education system. If you can build up trust, then they feel they can come in and start talking about things."

Sacre works closely with primary schools, going in to observe troubled children, and helping teachers to deal with them. At present Summerhouse supports about two dozen children in schools, in addition to the 20 who pass through the unit each week.

"Little details make such a difference. Sometimes it can be as simple as the way an adult talks to a child. Saying, 'Can you tell me what's happened here?' rather than marching up and saying 'And what have you done this time?'"

Offering children the chance to get things off their chest for five minutes at the start of the school day also works wonders, she says. "They're like bubbling pots, and sometimes one of the bubbles just has to come out. They need to tell someone, 'My Mum had a real go at me this morning.'"

Back in the unit, children are helped to identify which "bits" of behaviour get them into trouble, and how to change them. "We do a lot of thinking about feelings – particularly anger. We help them to believe in themselves again. And unpicking things at five is a lot easier than trying to do it later."

education@independent.co.uk