Services for young people

Memorandum submitted by Jane Melvin

1. The relationship between universal and targeted services for young people

1.1 As a youth work practitioner with 25 years experience in the field who has also been involved the professional training of youth workers, both full and part-time, for a similar amount of time, I would like the Select Committee to take in to account my comments . It is recognised that many voluntary, community and uniformed organisations offer services to young people, but for the purposes of this response, I wish to focus on youth work as defined by the National Youth Agency ,

" The main purpose of youth work is the personal and social development of young people and their social inclusion. Youth work helps young people learn about themselves, others and society through non-formal educational activities that combine enjoyment, challenge, learning and achievement. We believe youth work methods can be applied in a range of settings by a wide range of professionals, support staff and volunteers, and we are committed to helping people understand and use these approaches."

1.2 One of the core principles of youth work is that of unconditional positive regard (Rogers, 1961), meaning that youth workers work with young people no matter what issues, challenges or experiences they bring. This is a voluntary relationship where a young person can choose to engage or not, and it is a relationship where the young person is not judged, but facilitated to grow, learn and develop in a positive and developmental way. As an informal educator, the youth worker uses this relationship to focus on the needs each young person or group of young people, often getting results that other professionals may be unable to get.

1.3 Often youth workers will work with those young people for whom compulsory education has not been effective or a good experience, and this can be through a specific project or referrals, or through contact with youth workers in a more generic sense, for example through a youth centre or in a local park.

1.4 Whilst there is an acknowledgement that some groups of young people find it more difficult to access youth services, due to reasons of ethnicity, gender or social exclusion for example, recent years have seen the youth work agenda ‘pushed’ down a ‘targeted’ route, where funding and reporting requirements have urged youth services to concentrate on those who are identified as ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘problematic’. I personally believe that youth workers have always worked with these young people, but the strength of the universal services running alongside targeted or needs-based work means that they are welcomed equally into existing projects, can experience ‘mainstream’ activities and opportunities, and can develop relationships with other young people who can provide positive role models and support.

1.5 A negative outcome of a pure focus on targeted youth work to the exclusion of universal work is that young people do not get to associate with their peers or positive role models, resulting in a downward spiral of disillusion and lack of aspiration. Tom Wylie (ex Chief Executive of the National Youth Agency) has been quoted as saying that a "youth service that focuses on disadvantage, becomes a disadvantaged youth service". This rings true for me, not least because targeted projects might find it difficult to evidence positive outcomes because the whole process is about problematising, segregating and continuing to exclude young people in some way. We have also seen this in relation to the erosion of community buildings for youth work. Once a resource such as a building is gone, it is almost certainly never replaced.

1.6 When I entered the profession, I was a Youth and Community Worker, which embodied the coalition government’s current vision of the Big Society. That is, communities, which included young people, working together to find local solutions and to provide local services. The youth and community worker was there as the professional facilitator, the conduit between young people and the community, if necessary.

1.7 The profile of young people in today’s society has never been so negative, and young people are seemingly demonised by the press at every turn. The ‘failure’ of targeted work to meet outcomes that are non-negotiable as is the case of some national programmes, might lead us to conclude that a return to a community and inclusive approach might be what is needed, and is indeed what the government seems to be proposing in the Big Society. However, without trained professionals in place, young people will continue to get a raw deal in their communities, because their opinions will not be sought, their needs will not be met, and they will not have the necessary skills to get their voices heard. The result is a generation who will know nothing but bad press for doing nothing more than just being young people.

1.8 This is not just about the provision of leisure activities: this is about the relationships that young people build within their own peer groups, with adults, and with other groups in the community. It is also about the personal, social, emotional and democratic skills that they can learn by being involved in youth work opportunities and with trained youth workers.

1.9 It is often difficult for people outside the profession of youth work to understand what it is that youth workers do. It is about building trusting relationships with young people in safe spaces, so that those young people can do what they do best, experiment, take risks and learn new skills. This can be as simple as a discussion about something contentious on TV to a more formalised session educating young people about substance misuse to a sports leadership programme where participants end up with a Junior Sports Leader Award. All has value, but some is more difficult to measure quantitatively in terms of the growth and development of the young people involved.

1.10 The relationship between universal and targeted work is something that should be determined by local contexts rather than a national ‘one size fits all’ model. Whatever the focus, voluntary participation has to remain a core principle, giving young people the choice to engage with local projects. Young person-centred services will encompass the whole span of universal v targeted services, focusing on needs rather than problems. This in turn will satisfy the interests of young people, and the interests of the wider community.

2. How services for young people can meet the Government’s priorities for volunteering, including the role of National Citizen Service

2.1 Youth services have many years experience of running volunteering schemes and programmes, both national and home grown, that replicate what the National Citizenship Service is trying to do. Young people participate in youth work on a voluntary basis: they choose to take part. They also often choose to take on responsibility within those projects: running coffee bars, organising activities, working with young children, organising trips etc. Many youth workers will have anecdotes about young people who are deemed to be ‘challenging’, ‘difficult’, or ‘aggressive’ by teachers, who successfully take on responsibilities within youth work settings because the approach is different. The nature of their engagement is voluntary: they do it because they want to, because they are valued for their input and treated positively. A demise in local services will mean that these ongoing developmental opportunities will become rare or non-existent. Are we really expected to believe that all young people need to do to become a ‘well-rounded citizen’ is to attend a fixed-term scheme run by an unknown and untried provider in order to gain these skills?

2.2 The ‘U’ Project is a recent example of how services across the country worked with young people through a planned programme which consisted of all the elements that the National Citizenship Service is embracing. The difference here is that the young people were working with practitioners that they already knew and with whom they already had a relationship. There are huge strengths on this as a model, rather than a contracted-out process where the timescale involved will never have the capacity to develop the relationships and trust needed to really make a difference.

2.3 Youth work practitioners are experts in residential work, team-building, and developmental group work: all methodologies based on a sound pedagogy and which are known to work in relation to personal, social and emotional education. Residential work has taken a back-seat in recent years and this is due directly to the targeted agenda and the specified outcomes not reflecting what residential youth work can offer. It is also due to increasingly tight regulations around off-site activities with young people.

3. Which young people access services, what they want from those services and their role in shaping provision

3.1 The profile of young people who youth services is diverse, depending on the demographics of the local area and the type of provision on offer. The targeted agenda has meant that many young people may now chose not to access services because they do not meet their needs, are not of interest to them, may make them feel stigmatised or because they are not considered to be a ‘problem’ and are therefore not invited. Critics of today’s youth work who say that services are not meeting the needs of young people need to look carefully at the mismatch between what services are being asked to do and what they are able, over and above that agenda, to provide.

3.2 Critics will refer to things like the lack of weekend and holiday provision, but will conveniently overlook funding considerations and running costs. A centre or project could operate all weekend, but then be criticised for not being open during the week. A centre or project could charge more for its activities, but then it becomes exclusive and not open to all, particularly not those young people who it is told to target. A centre or project might wish to open more but cannot because it has become a Children’s Centre during the day or needs to rent out its space in order to fund the work with young people. Some decisions are pragmatic: youth workers are not there to fire-fight community order issues, for example, turning out to the local shopping parade to work with young people who are drunk or under the influence. They are informal educators and can only work effectively with sober young people, so opening on a Friday night when young people have a habit of presenting intoxicated, may not be appropriate or safe for either staff or other young people. Staffing and local recruitment may also be an issue: where is the incentive for staff to work Friday and Saturday evenings in terms of pay, conditions and recognition?

4. The relative roles in providing services for young people

4.1 The provision of services for young people has always been a partnership between the voluntary, community, ‘statutory’ and private sectors, and it is this partnership that has enabled young people to have choice, although for some that might choice might be limited by socio-economic status. Local authority youth services have always taken the position of catering for young people who would not otherwise engage, and a cutback of these services will have serious consequences for many. Youth Matters (DfES 2005), with its mantra of ‘things to do, place to go’, whilst not appearing to fully embody the informal education principles of the youth worker, at least acknowledged the need for young people to have somewhere where they can meet their friends, socialise, gain new skills and experiences, and access advice and support.

4.2 My first youth work role was based in a community settlement in Inner London, where our youth work mingled with a wide variety of community, sporting and charitable groups based both within the building and the local community.

4.3 As a young youth worker in Crawley, West Sussex, my brand new youth centre in the late 1980’s was connected to a local leisure centre, meaning that we could enable young people to access sporting opportunities that would not have otherwise been available because of cost. We also provided space for local voluntary sector youth organisations (faith-based groups, PHAB and Gateway groups catering for young people with special needs) to meet when the building was not open.

4.4 Local authority cutbacks will inevitably have an impact on those young people who cannot access other services due to cost or geographical location. The ‘have’s’ will continue to have access, and the ‘have not’s’ will become further excluded.

5. The training and workforce development needs of the sector

5.1 The withdrawal of HEFCE Band C funds is potentially disastrous for the future of youth and community work qualifications at Honours Degree level, and for other professionals working with young people who might be studying at Foundation Degree level. Here at the University of Brighton, we specialise in work-based learning, where many who study with us are mature students doing part-time or voluntary hours in a whole variety of organisations that work with young people. Our courses are validated (JNC Terms & Conditions) by appropriate professional bodies (National Youth Agency - NYA, CWDC) and draw learning outcomes from the recognised occupational standards.

5.2 Already at a disadvantage against initial teacher training where bursaries are received to ‘pay’ towards teaching practice for students, youth work courses are reliant on the ‘goodwill’ of their local services to fund and support placements, or require students to source and fund their own placements, as happens here in Brighton. In this context, it is difficult to see how Vince Cable can place such courses alongside purely academic courses in relation to the proposal to withdraw this funding. Local authority cuts will mean finding high quality work placements for students will be challenging and third sector organisations facing cuts to their funding may not have the capacity to support students either, so overall, the future looks dismal.

5.4 The majority of full-time youth and community work students are less likely to be able to undertake paid work to support their studies due to the demands of almost 900 hours of work placement, so are more likely to graduate with higher levels of debt than standard humanities graduates. The part-time students at the University of Brighton, are often in the position of balancing a full-time job, their youth work hours, their families and their studies all at once. This is all because they are passionate about working with young people and is often their only opportunity to achieve an HE qualification. Across the board, these courses are often populated by ‘non-traditional’ students who are the first in their families to go to university, but the government’s focus seems to have moved away from supporting this group, raising further questions about their commitment to the agenda of widening participation.

5.5 Those of us teaching on youth and community work courses would be keen to see the National Youth Agency take a lead on exploring ways to ensure continued HEFCE support for foundation degrees, honours degrees and postgraduate programmes which include work-based learning and professional validation.

 Recommendations

1. That the government develop and support an clear infrastructure necessary for effective delivery of both universal and targeted services to young people, regardless of the organisational context or funding model for that delivery, and that this reflect the centrality of community of professionally qualified youth workers.

2. That the government make suitable provision for the continued training of professionally qualified workers and their continuing professional development by: (a) ensuring that such education is economically viable for higher education institutions, (b) supporting practice organisations to deliver high quality placements, and (c) maintaining support for a validation process involving all stakeholders.

3. That the government align research council and other funding to the grand challenge of delivering effective services to young people; with the aim to develop systematic, long term, trans-disciplinary research focused on understanding, modelling and informing youth work practice.

December 2010