Reminiscences of an out-of-hours social worker #3: Sean and the Travelers

 

As well as my full time job as a social worker, between 1983 and 1997 I also worked one or two shifts a week on the out-of-hours standby duty team. This team dealt exclusively with emergencies and crises that arose outside normal working hours. We covered nights, weekends, and Bank Holidays. We were entirely generic.

One evening I received a call from the Police to attend the police station as an Appropriate Adult under PACE (The Police & Criminal Evidence Act) while they interviewed a young boy who had been arrested for a distraction burglary.

Little was known about him, as he appeared unable or unwilling to provide much information. He was from a group of Irish travelers, who had settled on a piece of wasteland on the edge of a small market town. He had been arrested when he and an older boy had been reported for attempting to steal from a householder.

Distraction burglaries involve one person engaging someone in their garden in conversation, while an accomplice nips into the house and has a search for valuables. The older boy had made off, but the police had managed to catch Sean.