Conference Reflections 1

We welcome your critical  thoughts on the conference. To start the pram perambulating, here are some early contributions from those attending.

Lenny muses:

I think the new management culture (bureaucracy) has been developing and strengthening its own systems and structures to the point where it has taken control of society.  I felt this shortly after Thatcher kicked our arses in the miners strike.  Where bureaucracy used to support, it is now in command.  Where bureaucracy once supported capitalism, capitalism now supports bureaucracy.  I must admit I’m not the greatest fan of Marx and so I don’t believe capitalism will necessarily consume itself.  I think Marx underestimated the strength of technology and that technology has protected the structures and that… what the fuck am I raving on about?!!!    How do you deal with an aggressive management culture?  We can’t fight it toe-to-toe because it is far too big and we are far too small (at the moment).  My own strategy has been a self-destructive one.  I have told the system that I disagree with it and now I’m a marked man.  It doesn’t matter how much honesty and integrity I have, I’m still seen as an agitator, a trouble-causer and an irritant.  I was called a “loose cannon” a couple of months ago that really hurt.  I always see a loose cannon as being someone who is reckless and destructive whereas my focus has always been on “fixing” things which don’t work properly.  If I’m not allowed to fix something, which is pretty much the case here, then I expose it.  I’m also a very cautious worker and … I digress… again.  How do you deal with an aggressive management culture?  If you want to keep your job I suggest you create an anonymous channel for critical debate.  I suggest that you, me all of us make this debate as public as possible so that others who are disillusioned may seek some comfort and support and encouragement in knowing they are not alone.  If we can encourage everyone to talk by offering anonymity then we will have a situation where our voice is louder and we will also be able to look at our numbers.  At the moment we haven’t got a clue how many people out there are disheartened by this situation.  Maybe there is only a handful of us but maybe there are thousands of us.  I think this information is important so that we can build strategies around it.  It’s a bit of a vicious cycle isn’t it?  People won’t speak out because they feel exposed and vulnerable but people feel exposed and vulnerable because no one else is speaking out.

Trevor adds:

Thank you for the lead in organising the IDoYW; which incidently looks like txt speak for I do Youth Work. which can’t be bad!

For me it renewed my focus on reasons that I am a youth worker and the one thing I focused on was that there is an urgent need to ‘claim the name’ by which we need to ensure that to be called a ‘Youth Worker’ you have to be JNC qualified!  At present anyone can call themselves a ‘youth worker’ and I personally resent this as I couldn’t claim to be a ‘Lawyer’, ‘Social Worker’ or ’Doctor’ so why isn’t the name Youth Worker protected in the same way?  If we won this battle then many of the threats to Youth Work would stop and we would have our place at the IYSS table protected.

And Andrew argues;

During my attendence of the most recent conference In Defence of Youth Work and the days following I have been in conflict regarding the tone and premise of the campaign. I do not disagree with the arguments raised. However in all honesty I found many aspects reactionary. I feel in some situations we missed the point. Yet the point was elusive to me, until now. The whole campaign in my view should be ‘In Support of Youth Work.’ To defend is to define. To defend is to identify a moment in which we associate and identify as needing defending.

To promote is to explore to look forward to open up. It is to say ‘We as an organisation of professional Youth and Community Workers promote and encourage Youth Work as a recognised celebrated successful way to informally educate and be educated. In doing so we will explore & provide opportunities to develop youth work with guiding principles of voluntary participation, leading to social, economic, physical, spiritual and political emancipation and empowerment. This will allow young people to be informed, yet challenged, critical yet communitarians, contributers not consumers within their family, society, culture, country and the world in which they live.’

We do this with support of central government, voluntary aided organisations, charities, faith groups and community groups. Our agenda is Young People and the community in which they live. It is our intent to promote and support this agenda as our own and In Support Of Youth Work for today tomorrow and the future.

CYWU COMPOSITE IN SUPPORT OF OUR CAMPAIGN

COMPOSITE 1 – JNC PAY AND CONDITIONS AND THE DEFENCE OF YOUTH AND COMMUNITY WORK.

Conference believes that Joint Negotiating Committee for Youth and Community Workers (JNC) is the recognised national terms and conditions agreement for Professional Youth and Community workers in the Community Youth Workers and not for profit sector of Unite.

Conference therefore calls on the newly formed Regional Industrial Sector Committees to draw up a campaign to support and actively promote JNC within the public and voluntary sectors and in conjunction with the National Industrial Sector Committee to undertake research into any threats to JNC and inform members of progress in this work.

Conference notes the pressure and recognition that central Government has placed upon Youth Workers over the past year in reducing anti social behaviour, gang crime, crime in general, and reducing the numbers of those young people not in education, employment or training, using drugs and lowering teenage pregnancy rates. Conference recognises that this success is due to youth workers’ unique relationship with young people which is one of voluntary engagement with young people.

Conference further recognises that Central Government funding has not been passed down to Local Authority Youth Services but commissioned out, and in addition Local Authority and voluntary sector Services have been pressurised to provide extra services for young people on Fridays and weekends.

Conference therefore calls upon the Union to put pressure on Central Government and Local Authorities to direct funding to enable Local Authority and voluntary sector Youth Services to employ more staff and resources where they have the experience and expertise to provide cost effective services to young people.

Linked to this, this conference also notes with concern the way that Youth and Community Education and Training is moving away from being informed by progressive values, social justice and inclusive processes towards a depoliticised, narrower, competency based framework.

Conference therefore calls on the National Industrial Sector Committee to put pressure on all institutions involved in the education and training of community and youth workers in order to reverse this trend through fully supporting and promoting the “In Defence of Youth Work” campaign”.

As I have underlined in my Summary piece this is a powerful statement, bedevilled by the fact that many IN DEFENCE supporters are not on JNC pay and conditions. We need to wrestle with this dilemma in the coming months. And, whilst I may be alone, I have never been convinced by the tactic of embracing the government’s line that youth workers are significantly in the business of reducing anti-social behaviour, crime etc….. In my opinion, conceding to this agenda back in the early 90′s has played a part in the insidious undermining of our distinctive identity as informal educators. The claim in the third paragraph of the Composite that our supposed success in reducing ‘bad behaviour’ is based on our voluntary engagement with young people is to muddy the waters deeply. A dimension within the IN Defence campaign is to argue precisely that the State’s strategy of insisting upon a behavioural approach to young people has pushed youth workers more and more into prescribed, imposed relationships, the very antithesis of voluntary engagement.

TT

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

The Ball Keeps Rolling in Newcastle

Developing and Defending Youth Work: Report of a Workshop

Monday,15^th June, 10.00-13.30, St John’s Church Hall, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Over 90 people from statutory and voluntary sector youth organisations and services attended this event in Newcastle.

Sarah Banks chaired the event, welcoming participants and explaining the purpose of the workshop: to discuss, debate and reflect on the current state of youth work practice, and to consider what further actions might be taken following the event.

Bernard Davies spoke about the dangers of putting economic values before moral values, and gave a brief overview of some of the key findings of a study recently published by De Montfort University, Leicester, ‘Squaring the Circle’, that examines the current state of youth work in several English local authorities.

Keeks McGarry and Don McDonald then gave an overview of policy and practice changes in the last decade, from their perspectives as local authority training officer and voluntary sector youth worker.

Discussion groups were convened to consider the following questions:

1. What are the distinctive features of youth work?

2. You have attended an event with ‘defending youth work’ in the title. What is it that you are trying to defend?

3. What are the main threats and opportunities in the current climate?

4. What strategies as individuals and collectively should we adopt to defend and develop what’s good about youth work?

5. Do we endorse the In Defence of Youth Work open letter?

For more and to see the group feedback  and ideas for action, go to the Regional Reports page. Evidently 25 pages of flip chart notes plus Power Point presentation are yet to be sorted, a summary of which is to follow!

In common with London there was a passionate desire to meet up nationally and forge a united campaign.

Thanks to Sarah Banks for the notes and Jean Spence for the photos.

Practice Revealed: The Great Moral Impasse

At the Preston meeting on Friday we touched briefly on the need for workers to tell their own stories of practice. We mourned the lack of material. However God’s Lonely Youth Worker has come to our rescue on the Children and Young People site.  Their piece begins:

I’d worked hard with the “ASBO” group. They’d been identified by the Anti-Social Behaviour Team as being at risk of becoming entangled within the criminal justice system. I liked them. They were quite an elusive little group but they had an interesting collective character.

God, did they think they were hard. Proper little tough-nuts who were afraid of no one or no thing but terrified of showing any trace of vulnerability. I had to use a lot of reverse psychology to get them to believe they wanted me more than I wanted them. I would dangle carrots but never directly in their direction. I would never, ever outstay my welcome when I met them on the streets and would always leave them wanting more.

It goes on to recount the Youth Service’s response to the development of the relationship. Already it has provoked a cracking discussion. Basically I think we should muck in and contribute our pennyworth. Excellent stuff.