I guess the main thing to consider is that a young person is much less experienced in all aspects of life and will require a higher level of supervision than some of his more experienced colleagues.That is not to say that he must be constantly watched but appointing a mentor look after the welfare of the young person, with regular reviews to monitor his progress, iron out any problems etc would be a good idea.

Provided you manage properly young people are great employees as are work experience people so take the good advice already given and get on with it

All I can saw is that ctd167 has been very lucky. The claim files of my employer contain numerous examples of young people injured at work. There seem to be many causes ranging from simple lack of appreciation of the hazard/risk through failure to use PPE or the safety equipement provided to other situations where it is impossible to predict "why what was done was done". YPs can be unpredictable, they can possess a "I can't be harmed" view of life - I'm all for employing them but make sure everything possible is done to keep them safe. Fatal: 18 - fall from roof 19: Arm injury: Crushed by grab 17: Loss of sight, splash when mixing plaster 16: Leg injuries - attempted to start dumper truck whilst standing beside it 17: Loss of sight - mortar splash 17: Hand injury on WWM - fellow employee removed guard 20: Perm hand injury - trapped thumb between lifting chains and skip 16: Loss of thumb from using chop saw And then one only has to carry out an on-line search to find the tragic cases of YPs injured in butcher's shops whilst working on a Saturday. There's a lot of it about Phil

When I say mentor.................I REALLY mean mentor! The apprentice spends ALL his working day with his mentor, except for the obvious ;-) The mentor is as a minimum requirement usually someone over 40, highly qualified with a minimum of 15 years experience. Until he is 18, the apprentice is not allowed to undertake any task without supervision. On a weekly basis, both the apprentice and his mentor are interviewed by a representative of the H&S dept to discuss 'lessons learnt' during the previous week. The apprentice also attends a weekly study group which discusses not only H&S in general, but specific subjects pertaining to the ongoing activities of the past week and the one to come. All apprentices before they reach 18 will also have gained the British Safety Council level 1 certificate in H&S Awareness and if there are any who show an aptitude, we'll even put them through there NEBOSH.