I met with JLO!

I'm still dragging a bit but I'm making things happen. I came into placement excited from my conversation with Anna (the Juvenile Liaison Officer). First I worked on finishing my power point slides for the conference. Once that was done I had a bit of time to go over my questions for Anna before she showed up.

My time with Anna was great. Just like I had hoped, she was able to fill me in on so much missing information about how youth first would get referred to a Garda Diversion Project in the first place. She told me about what happens when a youth first gets in trouble and the steps that need to be taken for them to end up in a program like this one. A youth first needs to admit guilt or they are not even eligible for other measures and go straight to court to face a judge. If they are then found guilty this type of program is no longer an option. A youth on only a first or second time offence can be issued a caution which will lead to this program as well. If they are involved in a Garda Diversion program and are found guilty of other offences, the involvement in the program can help decide a lesser course of action if they have been having positive feed back coming from the project. I really learned so much, this just being a bit of it. I was so glad I was able to get to talk with a JLO worker. Anna explain a great deal about different options for youth and how probation would work as well. I think my understanding of the juvenile system in Ireland was improved a great deal after our conversation.

After I was done with Anna I had another opportunity to do a home visit with one of the other girls from the girls group on Monday. This visit was super interesting and very different from the first. This mother had very little understanding of the program and had not had other children involved before which showed up very clearly in the first contact. Building the relationship with the parents is as important as building it with the youth even though the face time is very minimal. When you have the parents on your side the process becomes that much easier, but its a fine line because at the same time you need to balance the line of truth with the youth, letting them know that the group is a safe place for them to be open and share and that the obligation is not to inform the parents, but keep them involved unless of course it falls under threat to self or others.

After we were done with this home visit we headed back to the centre. The last part of the day was running the young boys group. They like always were cute and starting to warm up to me even more. We had worked on some art together and I was starting to get to know them more and make connections to their older siblings. The boys were cute when they were saying goodbye and did really well during the programming piece where we had started to talk to them a bit about anger and different ways to express it. So fun to see them do the counting game, they had become quite good at it and really seemed to enjoy it. I then headed home for an early night as I was not feeling that good still.