Chloe Cooke is a young people’s recovery worker at WithYou. We asked her about her career path and role.
WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO WORK IN THIS FIELD?
I’ve always worked with teenagers, and it’s always been something I’ve enjoyed doing. I left uni with a degree in criminology. I worked for a different organisation before, and when I saw this job come up, it just seemed perfect. Substance use was never a field I had thought about working in. I hadn’t even heard of WithYou before I saw the job advert. But getting to support vulnerable young people and make a difference, that was the big thing. I feel like I can make more of an impact on young people, and I just find them easy to get along with. I also really appreciate the flexibility and, of course, just getting paid to talk to people, it’s like a dream.
WHAT DOES A TYPICAL DAY LOOK LIKE?
There is no typical day – when they say no two days are the same, that’s definitely the truth. Every day is very different, and there’s a lot of flexibility in my role. I’m often based in schools and family hubs. We’re now in the youth centre building and often out in the community, seeing young people. So really I’m here, there and everywhere, which I absolutely love, it makes the day fly by. I don’t do well with being sat in an office for long periods of time, so that’s why I feel like this job is just absolutely perfect. It’s just going from young person to young person.
There are a lot of meetings to attend as well – for example child in need meetings, and other social and partner agency meetings.
‘Don’t touch my diary,’ is what I always say to my team lead. I plan everything for myself so I know where I’m going and the routes I’m taking.
WHAT DO YOU FIND MOST REWARDING?
When young people reach out to me in crisis – when they’re using substances. It shows that they trust me to talk them through it. With teenagers, it’s very rare that they do reach out for help. So when they do, it’s massive.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO CHANGE?
The stigma schools have around substances. We often find that schools won’t deliver any form of harm reduction or awareness of any substances because they’re afraid that they’re teaching the young people to use substances rather than how to keep safe. But I speak to so many young people who didn’t even know what harm reduction was, or how to keep themselves safe. So I feel if it was more widely spoken about within schools and in the sector, then it would help in the long run. If you can educate from a younger age, there would be a big change.
We find a lot of our clients are using cannabis when they’re in school, and they will say things like ‘Well, my mates have done it for so long and they’re fine’, so they’re learning from each other. There’s a lot of naivety there, and a lot of young people think it’s fine, and obviously they don’t realise the risks.
WHAT’S YOUR ADVICE FOR ANYONE CONSIDERING A SIMILAR CAREER?
I’d say it’s not for the faint of heart. It can get extremely heavy, but the rewards definitely outweigh that. I don’t think there are many jobs you’d find that are more rewarding than working with vulnerable young people, but it does take a lot of patience, a lot of resilience, and quick thinking.
I think young people are so unpredictable sometimes, you often need to think on your feet and change a strategy of delivering harm reduction to them, especially when working with young people with different complexities, such as neurodivergence. Our care is person-centred – it’s adapting so you can still teach them harm reduction and not just expect them to learn the way that you want to teach.
See opportunities like Chloe’s on DDN Jobs