PARENTS of troublesome teenagers are to be offered help from an advisor in an attempt to curb difficult behaviour.

Clare Glass will work with families of young people who have been involved in crime or anti-social behaviour, or who are judged to be at risk of becoming involved.

She will start work later this month and be on hand to provide a range of support for parents, including one-to-one meetings, workshops and parenting programmes.

Her post is part of the Parent Link Project, which is managed by the North Yorkshire Youth Offending Team and has been funded by Safer Ryedale.

She said: "I will be building on the existing skills of parents, helping them to develop better communication with their children and to deal with challenging behaviour.

"If we see young people talking to their parents more instead of arguing and see a decrease in anti-social activities, we will know we are succeeding."

Julie Hardiment, practice developer of the Youth Offending Team covering Ryedale, said that having a dedicated parenting co-ordinator available would make a difference.

She said: "Adolescence is a time of rapid change for which parents are often unprepared and this can mean parenting can become more of a challenge.

"With no one to ask for advice, situations can easily go from bad to worse.

"With Clare's back-up we believe families will be able to stop a young person's behaviour getting worse and, hopefully, check their difficult behaviour before they come into contact with the police."