Salvation Army

Metro and the Salvos have a project going on where bands of youth workers rove the trains and stations, talking to young people and heading off potential graffiti etc.  I know this because they’ve started to come to the station when out Flexible Learners come in from their school. They hand out lollipops and chat to kids and try to entice them into their Employment and drug counselling programs.  Things have been pretty toxic with the FL’s these last few months.  There’s been verbal abuse, racial vilification and one incident of breaking into a car and fighting with police that lead to kids being arrested. Individually they seem like nice enough kids, but it’s hard to take the long view that these are troubled kids for who need to be patiently enticed away from behavior that will lead to jail in later life when you’ve had them telling you that you’re a F***ing M*** and I know where you live. But having the Salvos there does seem to help keep a lid on things. And they had out lollipops to the rest of us too.