THE PANDEMIC REMOVED safe spaces for disadvantaged young people and bridging the gap left between supports and communities remains a challenge.
That is according to Dublin’s youth workers, who say lockdowns and reduced services had a profound effect on many children in the area.
The fear is that years of hard work in the community has been ‘wiped out’ by the pandemic.
In the past month, the north inner city has been in the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons, but those living in greener pastures know little about the reality for some of the most underprivileged people in the area, youth workers say.
Declan Keenan of JustAsk after-school programmes, told The Journal that during the pandemic, support for disadvantaged young people was “virtually nil” and those struggling were “left to their own devices”.
“The result of that is definitely a huge sea change,” he said.
“I’ve been 32 years working in the inner city and pre- and post- pandemic city Dublin is a different place, definitely with young people.”
Some cohorts were hit harder than others, such as boys who were “just the wrong age at the wrong time” – in sixth class when the pandemic hit, meaning they didn’t have a normal transition into secondary school.
These children, Keenan said, were sent into first year, where they were “stuck in one room, not allowed move around, masked up”.
Of the young people Kennan works with, he says one in five are “very at risk on lots of different levels, not just of being involved in crime”.
Dropping out of school, experiencing mental illness and engaging in antisocial behaviour are common challenges faced by the cohort.
“You put the pandemic on top of that … They’re not going into services, they’re not going to places that they would’ve relied on, that their families would’ve relied on, to help them through difficult times,” Keenan said.
‘Anger and rage’
Patrick Gates, a coordinater with Young People at Risk, said that people working in the sector are seeing children, particularly between the ages of nine and 14, harbouring “anger and rage” unlike anything seen before the pandemic.
However, intergenerational trauma, poverty, violence and addiction have long been problems in the inner city and efforts to change things have been largely unsuccessful.
In recent years, the number of young people from the north inner city living in State care has been up to three times more than the national average, even before the pandemic.
According to Gates, increasing access to mental health services has never been more important.
“Our kids are experiencing huge complex issues as a result of adverse childhood experience,” he said.
“Our kids are no different than any other kid in the country.
“If they are competing on a level playing field, they can do it. The difficulty is that they have to climb a mountain to get to a level playing field.”
Many children are making an effort to stay out of trouble, despite the challenges they face.
Lucy Masterson, Chief Executive Officer of the Irish Youth Foundation, told The Journal: “The headlines are really disturbing in a way. There is a stubborn cohort of kids [whose] behaviour is completely unacceptable.
“It’s good to remember all of the other young people who are trying to do their best, who are still muddling through.
She says, while the impact of lockdowns is seen in many cohorts, young people in underprivileged areas perhaps suffered the most long-term consequences.
“It was the same storm but very different boats,” she said, as some children lost the only safe spaces and reliable adults that they had in their lives.
“They’ve got gangland violence on their doorstep.”
For many young people, their local youth worker is the only adult they trust, and every hour spent at the youth club “is an hour they’re not being groomed for gangland violence”.
“We’re talking about young people who have a constant battle with life, from the moment they’re born, from the moment they wake up every morning … they’ve got gangland violence on their doorstep and yet they’re still expected to get proper sleep every night, get up the next morning, have their homework ready, find their own uniforms, go to school on an empty stomach, and try and get on with their day,” Masterson said.
“There is a huge number of young people who are just getting on with it and they’re tiptoeing their way through this chaos that’s happening in the city centre, but it’s really sad because that’s tarnishing a whole cohort of young people living in this city Dublin and in communities that would experience social disadvantage.
“It’s really really sad to see it playing out.”
‘The worst place to be’
The Irish Youth Foundation receives no government funding, but is supported by philanthropic and corporate sponsors.
In the Generation Pandemic Report published by the Youth Foundation in 2021, just months into the pandemic, four in five youth workers said they expected lockdown to cause serious long-term damage to young people.
In the survey of more than 300 youth workers, 48% predicted a rise in anti-social behaviour.
“There would be a generation lacking in social skills and resilience to be able to succeed in life, and that their education and employment prospects were going to be shattered,” said Masterson.
“These kids were just left and they fell so far behind in their education.
“They were locked up in small, cramped conditions, chaotic circumstances, family life going on around them.
“These kids were doing their homework, if they could, on their mobile phones. There was no wifi. They couldn’t access the teams calls or whatever it was.”
“For many of these children, young people, the only place they could be was actually possibly the worst place to be or the most unsafe place for them to be.”
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