Outreach Worker

Stewart Dakers

Stewart Dakers spent 7 years in industrial relations at Ford Motor Company and British European Airways, stopping strikes. In his own words “OK so they had a few, can’t win ‘em all”. 

Stewart moved into nature conservation (before environmental issues became fashionable), working as an estate worker on a nature reserve for Nature Conservancy. He graduated to being a Countryside Ranger for a local authority and then swopped roles with his wife and house-parented a son for 15 years. 

In that period he worked for 10 years as worker-in-charge of a detached youth projected dedicated to the next door estate. “It’s called street work; it’s cold and uncomfortable but it's where the hard yards with ‘yoof’ are made. Great fun, very exhausting”. Stewart also works as an advisor to parents of children with special educational needs on a weekly helpline, also providing home visits

His first encounter with the Crime Diversion Scheme was “as a result of taking some of ‘our’ young people to an event”. He became a Trustee and now work part time as outreach worker. His core tasks are to develop dialogue between the Coldingley team and the Crime Diversion Scheme clients, through meetings, telephone, e-mails and bulletins; to explore and develop opportunities for offenders from the Crime Diversion Scheme to find appropriate work, and, perhaps, to emerge as the future mainstay of diversion policy; to establish ways and means of enabling young people to access offender-led workshops on home ground.