The Youth Work Heist

Encouraging critical thoughts from our supporters is high on the list of the Campaign’s concerns. Thus we are really pleased to post two challenging responses from workers still immersed in the ‘muck and bullets’ of practice.

Lenny’s piece begins:

So… I attended the Federation for Detached Youth Work Conference at Wigan in November last year and I must declare that I became increasingly charged throughout the weekend with a delightful positivity and felt an unusual level of intense inspiration from the radiant enthusiasm and passion of the guest speakers and other attendees. And then Tom Wylie spoke. He charged youth work purists with being hopeless romantics and scoffed at the thought that there was any value in the convivial relationship between youth worker and young person. My positivity plummeted and my hope wilted with every word that fell from his lips. There seemed to be a cruel irony in that a conference with the theme “Positive About The Street” should end with such a negative tone.

I get the feeling that I’ve been climbing a mountain for fifteen years only to find that the architects of social policy have built another mountain on top, twice as big and twice as steep. Metaphorically the mountain represents the daily grind of wading, chest-high through the formalised social control that is currently trading under the title of youth work^©. I’ve got my own vision of the summit and the clarity is startling. But that’s just a vision. The reality is a jumbled mess of strategic clichés.

Read the whole and Lenny’s suggestions for the future: The Great YW Heist

Meanwhile Steve in two pieces, Thatcher,_Blair_and_all_that_jazz and YOUTH_WORK – to be or not to be blurts out, to use his own phrase, his thoughts on the individualising imperative of the last 30 years and the state of Youth Work today.

Meanwhile, youth workers, and many others, dare to do youth work because they are working with young people. Recent figures say approx. 2800 of approx. 8500 full-time youth workers are JNC qualified. I was trained to work with young people informally to encourage their participation in the practices necessary for everyday living as part of a community.

I wasn`t trained to label young people so as to prescribe a set course of action to remove their mistakes and make them a model citizen. Whilst this has alluring tentacles its premise is faulty except for some young people(human beings) who may respond to this approach.

Both Lenny and Steve would love to get responses, to have you join in the debate. All of us need one another’s help in  escaping the trap of passivity, in refusing to keep our gobs shut.

Unleashing Aspirations: Shackling Youth Work

George Hope in the comments section has posed the following pertinent question:

In light of the now released Unleashing Aspirations Report and its damning indictment of careers advice nationally and its recommendation that “the current Connexions service be broken up, leaving a residual specialist service free to focus on young people not in education, employment or training” I was wondering what, if any impact, you feel this will have for youth services who are now part of IYSS alongside Connexions.

I must confess to a wave of nausea on being told by Alan Milburn that ‘socio-economic inequality’ impedes social mobility. It’s all the more head-spinning when the author of this stunningly obvious statement is another of those former Marxists, who have matured – in their own words – into unashamed advocates of free-market capitalism and who have all signed up to the official New Labour declaration that class politics is dead. Yet, perhaps, I should put aside my bile. This report, although in essence a classic set of neo-liberal managerial recommendations, allows us perhaps to revive the debate about the underlying structural causes of socio-economic inequality or more accurately the economic exploitation of the majority by a minority.

As for the impact of this report upon Youth Work it would be illuminating to hear the views of those of you closest to the turmoil of Connexions and Integrated Youth Support Services. From a distance it’s difficult to know whether this is but the latest in the long line of  ‘suggestive’ reports beloved of New Labour. The paper exercise’s completion is its raison d’etre.  It’s arguable, given the dire proclamations that public services face decade of pain , that the report will be shelved. On the other hand many of its proposals could be pressed into the service of  restructuring and cost-cutting.

Chatting about future scenarios in our house led us back to the situation in 1977 when I was a District Youth Worker with the Wigan Youth Service and Marilyn worked for the Careers Service as a Special Measures Assistant. The NEETs of the day were called YOPs. In both cases the complexity of a young person’s life is reduced to a patronising acronym. As it was the Special Measures Unit in its early days tried to negotiate individual packages for its young clients and liaised with youth workers if appropriate. All this soon collapsed as the numbers of young people needing support escalated. And, whilst as a Youth Service we maintained that our job was not about preparing young people for employment, a new workforce of YOP and later YTS instructors grew apace.

I’m uncertain whether this little cameo has anything to say about the present situation. But if a  generalist Careers Service is to be revived with the underclass of those not in Employment or Training assigned to a specialist Service, who will be the workers employed in this ‘residual ‘ Taskforce? Are they likely to be the very youth workers, who have been shifted out of universal provision into integrated and targeted services; who are familiar with the prescribed discourse of employment-oriented, accredited outcomes? Certainly the task of defending an open emancipatory and democratic youth work practice – in the service of young people rather than the market – is not going to get any easier.

Tony

Gathering Momentum: The London Regional

Over 50 people from a range of voluntary, statutory and higher education organisations from across London, Sussex and Kent turned up to Goldsmiths University of London on 19^th May 2009 in support of the ‘In Defence of Youth Work’ statement penned by Tony Taylor. After hearing from Kalbir Shukra (Goldsmiths University of London) and Sue Robertson (University of Chichester) why a movement ‘in defence of youth work’ is so important and timely, the workshop participants discussed why they support the statement, drawing on their own experiences in youth work practice, management and training. The workshop participants called for a second meeting to take place on June 22^nd to develop the campaign in the region and also to build support for the call to meet with people from other areas at a national conference. Workshop participants undertook to go back to workplaces and localities to discuss ‘in defence of youth work’ principles with colleagues.

Action points emerging from the workshop included:

1. Identify how academic institutions that deliver training can be supported to deliver ‘in defence of youth work’ principles

2. Clarify and articulate core values and any blocks to practice

3. Challenge the application of terminology and language like NEETS and challenge the pathologisation that underlies the concepts/terms

4. Find ways to evaluate our own practice

5. Engage funders and other bodies in the campaign around ‘in defence of youth work’.

6. Make alliances with other networks and people who work with young people in community settings

7. Set up regular forums for critical debate, ensuring that the voluntary/statutory sectors and local/regional as well as those engaging with NVQs are included and any differences are acknowledged

8. Ensure we are aware of upcoming policy changes and participate in policy development

9. Make ‘in defence of youth work’ principles part of any new local inspection frameworks

10. Identify the specific qualities of different types of youth work

11. Join with other regions to organise a national conference

12. Involve young people in our debates

13. Consider a ‘no paperwork’ action day

Thanks to Kalbir for this report and Tania for the photos. More news to follow on what was a positive beginning to our programme of regional gatherings.

Youth Work Values Under Threat

Youth work’s values under threat is the title of a new piece in Children and Young People Now focused on Squaring the Circle , the ‘modest’ inquiry into the state of youth work practice led by Brian Merton and Bernard Davies.

The report says: “This inquiry has strengthened our view that these dilemmas are being rendered more acute as the state’s interventions become increasingly prescriptive, intrusive and insistent.” It also fears the distinctive style of youth work is being threatened by the use of accredited outcomes.

Davies said: “Anyone who has their ear to the ground picks up lots of anecdotes about what is happening in youth work. There is a lot of anxiety and anger that the core principles of youth work are under pressure and under threat by some policies, including Aiming High and Youth Matters.

“It is important to get beyond the anecdotes and establish more clearly what is going on,” he added.

More from Janaki Mahadevan’s report here.

The close timing of the appearance of our In Defence campaign and the DMU Inquiry is perhaps fortuitous. But as both Thomas Hardy and Karl Marx agreed, twists of fate or plain accidents play an important part in history. Indeed Janika is pursuing a further article for CPYN, exploring this resurgence of questioning about what’s going on within the arena of Youth Work.  This can only be good for the opening of critical debate.

As part of the research Janika posed the following questions:

I would like to ask you about some of the concerns/ questions that have been raised in both the inquiry and the letter. I would be most grateful if you would answer the following questions for me.

1) Do you think that current policy frameworks are tipping the balance of youth work from open access to targeted provision? If so do you think this is something that is compromising the nature of voluntary engagement and why?

2) Is the relationship between youth worker and young person and the notion of confidentiality being threatened by the requirement to pass information to others and what impact is this having on the nature of youth work?

3) Is the process and intent of youth work being compromised by the pursuit of targets and accredited outcomes? Is it making youth work too prescriptive and why?

As is my failing my reply was less than straightforward, but went as follows:

Before answering your questions directly a few words on principles and ideologies. In arguing for the Defence of Youth Work the Open Letter is at pains to define a form of youth work that is democratic and emancipatory. The core principles of such a liberatory practice are set out in points 1-6 in the fourth paragraph. However there are other competing forms of youth work, notably an approach to young people that is hierarchical and conformist. Indeed there has been a long-running tension between the two, hence the classic essay title, ‘Is Youth Work an agency of social change or social control?’ In the three decades after the Second World War the model of social change was increasingly favoured at least at the level of policy and rhetoric, caught in the sentiments of the Albemarle Report [1959] and in its last gasps the Milson-Fairbairn Report [1974]. Youth Work desired to be involved in the creation of critical citizens concerned with the common good. Of course how far this commitment was carried out in practice is a matter of continuing debate. However with all its warts this optimistic view of young people’s individual and collective potential has been eroded gradually and insidiously since the late 1970′s. It has been replaced by the hierarchical and conformist in its neo-liberal guise, determined to thrust the values of the market into every nook and cranny of our existence. Dominated by a managerial outlook, obsessed with the technical and behavioural, it seeks to mould young people into being individualistic, compliant and never-satiated workers and consumers. This is the ideology behind the social policy proposals of the New Labour era. However this way of viewing the world is in crisis, hence the beginnings of debate across all corners of society – in our case within Youth Work.

As to your specific questions:

1. Voluntary engagement is thoroughly compromised by New Labour’s emphasis on the compulsory targeting of ‘problematic and demonised’ youth. An authentic voluntary encounter is uncertain on both sides of what might come out of the relationship. This does not mean that the democratic youth worker should be not be prepared for all sorts of tangents. Being able to improvise on the spot requires great skill and preparation. But the managerial demand that the youth worker goes out with a predetermined agenda is utterly at odds with the uncertainty of voluntary contact. As for the issue of open access and targeted provision I don’t want to dodge the reality that the form of youth work I advocate has prioritised sometimes work with particular groups e.g young women, black youth. However this ‘targeting’ has been premised on the  negotiated identification of needs and rights by young people discriminated against within the system. It would be dishonest, given scarce resources, to deny that this commitment has sat uneasily besides a desire to be ‘open’ and inclusive. This said, a democratic youth work rejects the present hierarchical view that those targeted are somehow deficient, dysfunctional and anti-social. To borrow from Jeffs and Smith, a democratic youth work works with young people, whereas hierarchical youth work works on them.

2. The delicate issue of confidentiality is abused by the managerial imperative to collect and circulate information. There is growing anxiety generally about the growth of a surveillance society. In this context, to my mind, a principle of democratic youth work is that you don’t grass on a young person, who has trusted you enough to chat about the mess they’re in. This commitment should only be set aside in exceptional circumstances. The push to integrate services uniformly undermines the distinctive character of differing agencies and undermines worker autonomy. I have been in situations, where working closely with a teacher, social worker about a particular young person’s situation has been enormously helpful. I have been in situations where to do so would have been disastrous. A profound problem with social policy is that it fails to recognise the intimate and complex picture of professional relationships on the ground. To put it crudely I’m not going to share information about a young person with someone I don’t trust personally or politically!

3. Obviously I think a target-led and outcome-driven model of youth work undermines a creative and improvisatory, democratic youth work. This is rendered all the more so when these prescriptions for practice are imposed from above with no democratic debate between politicians and the workforce doing the job. As for accreditation there’s always been a section of the work that gave certificates and badges, symbolised by D.of E. It was/is a choice for some young people. But this is very different than the pursuit of accredited outcomes becoming the driving force of practice. And this emphasis again changes profoundly the direction of the work. It does so because [and its advocates stress this point] it makes Youth Work the servant of the Market and the Employer. Now Youth Work with its inferiority complex has dabbled in the past with ‘preparing young people for work’. I remember school-leaver courses in the mid-70′s, but until the last decade we have tried to fend off becoming social and life skills instructors in obedience and conformity. It is a measure of New Labour’s success in transforming Youth Work that we are now forced to make the case afresh for youth workers as social educators striving through a critical dialogue to educate both themselves and young people in the struggle for democracy and equality. It is a measure of New Labour’s failure to fashion a more just society that we are able to raise anew the purpose and the principles of Youth Work.

As always your critical thoughts welcomed.  As for live debate, all the best for tomorrow’s South-East gathering at Goldsmith’s.

The Open Letter : In Defence of Youth Work

The Open Letter, ‘In Defence of Youth Work’, which has sparked this campaign, begins:

Thirty years ago Youth Work aspired to a special relationship with young people. It wanted to meet young women and men on their terms. It claimed to be ‘on their side’. Three decades later Youth Work is close to abandoning this distinctive commitment. Today it accepts the State’s terms. It sides with the State’s agenda. Perhaps we exaggerate, but a profound change has taken place.

This shift has not happened overnight. Back in the 1980′s the Thatcherite effort via the Manpower Services Commission to shift the focus of Youth Work from social education to social and life skills was resisted. In the early 90′s attempts to impose a national curriculum on the diverse elements of the Youth Service ground to a halt. However with the accession of New Labour the drive to impose an instrumental framework on Youth Work gathered increasing momentum. With Blair and Brown at the helm youth workers and managers have been coerced and cajoled into embracing the very antithesis of the Youth Work process: predictable and prescribed outcomes. Possessing no vision of a world beyond the present New Labour has been obsessed with the micro-management of problematic, often demonised youth. Yearning for a generation stamped with the State’s seal of approval the government has transformed Youth Work into an agency of behavioural modification. It wishes to confine to the scrapbook of history the idea that Youth Work is volatile and voluntary, creative and collective – an association and conversation without guarantees.

To read more go here and in addition to the separate page identified at the top of the sidebar, which contains the whole text at a glance. Evidently having this discrete page makes it easier to circulate around social networking sites such as Facebook.

We wish to encourage the circulation of  this call to arms, so find below two versions, one in Word, the other in PDF, which we hope you might use in spreading the debate.

in-defence-of-youth-work-launch-homogeneous-version-22

in-defence-of-youth-work-pdf-version2