It’s 2pm on a Friday at a south London police station and a 15-year-old girl is sitting across a table from two youth workers. Beneath the harsh white strip lights, she looks exhausted. Since being arrested for assault at 1.30am, she has barely slept and refused to eat anything but a few biscuits. She has been handcuffed and searched and interviewed by police officers and talked to by professionals. She is done with all the questions. She just wants to go home.
It looks like Amani El-Aziz and Kat Taylor have a tricky job on their hands. They don’t show it. Aziz, dressed in a grey tracksuit and Nikes, her hands dripping with rings and her hair gelled in curls, speaks calmly to the 15-year-old, her voice devoid of judgment. Later, she explains she got into youth work because in her circles, growing up, it was “very normal to be bored and pick a lock on a shop”. Having something else to focus on – in her case, dancing – kept her from “being on the streets”.
