I used to go out in the morning like a demented woman screaming trying to get him up

I used to go out in the morning like a demented woman, screaming, trying to get him up. He was in a downward spiral.”Tony says: ” I didn’t want a life like that, getting up and going to school I couldn’t work in a school where my friends were I don’t want to see them any more. I’m much calmer now.” Sue says that Tony has to want to do something for himself It’s no good telling him. She says a nightmare is over.”He used to stay up until 5am reading and then not get up until three in the afternoon. Tony, now 15, was taken out of primary school and sent to a special school because he was thought to be emotionally disturbed.

He flourished there and eventually, at his own request, was transferred to a mainstream secondary school.That proved a disaster. He got into bad company, was disruptive and ended up back at the special school, where he started a fire. Now he is receiving individual tuition at home, preparing to take exams in May, hoping to go to college in September and become a car mechanic When we arrive, Dave asks Sue, his mother, how things are. “It could be the ice-breaker we need,” Dave says, matter-of-factly, as we head out on to the streets again.Dave is one of 12 Tower Hamlets education social workers who cover a school population of 29,000 with a truancy rate of 2 per cent.

He has been doing the job since 1983, though he didn’t acquire his qualification (an MSc from the London School of Economics, which includes a social work certificate) until five years ago. He now has responsibility for emotionally and behaviourally disturbed children. His enthusiasm is undiminished and he particularly enjoys what he is doing today – visiting families.He also enjoys walking. As we battle against the wind past bleak flats, he explains that his next call is to Tony Mansfield, one of his success stories. Before we leave, Dave phones his father, who promises to try to get Mike to the exam, if he can find him. Or, if he has sold the stolen goods, that he gets a buzz out of that which outweighs the “downer” he gets from his father’s anger.Dave says he will have to go and see his father to calm him down and to change his mind about Mike and care Mike is due to take an exam the following day He is quite bright and is expected to do well. Now his father is threatening to turn him over to social services and have him put into care.

“He has very caring parents who just don’t know what to do,” says Dave.Chris, head of reintegration at the unit, and Dave discuss what went wrong Is it drugs? No evidence of that, says Chris It may be, says Dave, that he’s angry with his family. Until the previous week, he seemed to be progressing well at the unit, which he attends for four half days a week. “He’s attended more in the three months he’s been here than in the whole of the previous twelve.”Then, for reasons nobody really understands, he started stealing from home and ran away He is already under a criminal supervision order. He is 14 and has truanted ever since he started secondary school.