ABSTRACT
The professional life of an intensive support worker working with young people is never dull. Every young person is unique and brings with them their own set of issues, demands and dramas, which we, as their workers, take on board and respond to as best we can. For a practitioner, this can be enormously exciting and rewarding when the hard work pays off and a young person makes some kind of personal breakthrough. The flipside, of course, is that the work can be challenging, demanding and often frustrating, causing personal stress for the worker and, in extreme cases, leading to burnout.
