Services for young people

Memorandum submitted by In Defence of Youth Work Campaign

1.0 Background and Summary

1.1 The In Defence of Youth Work initiative sprang to life in March 2009, the outcome of growing unease about the future of open and pluralist youth work. Composed of part-time and full-time workers across the voluntary and state sectors, managers, lecturers and researchers, our grass-roots organisation has sought to challenge the imposition upon the informal and creative processes of youth work of its very antithesis: prescribed and predictable outcomes. Under New Labour a range of 'top-down' targeted interventions focused on young people's lifestyles and perceived inadequacies pushed youth work ever nearer to being no more than an agency of behavioural modification. Under the Coalition this trend seems destined to continue, greatly exacerbated by massive public expenditure cuts which are leading in one local authority after another to the often total disappearance of the Youth Service.

1.2 Our critical stance is grounded in the proud history of a tradition reaching back to the 19th century, which has put into practice the rhetoric of the 'Big Society' long before it became today's obligatory mantra. Youth work's origins are rooted in voluntary self-help, mutual aid and co-operation. Across succeeding decades a remarkable feature of informal work with young people has been its capacity to embrace with all its tensions a diversity of contesting ideologies from Right to Left, from the religious to the secular. Crucially the fixative holding together this multi-coloured alliance has been the commitment to young people's voluntary participation as its defining characteristic.

1.3 The definition of youth work adopted by our campaign is, we believe, a contemporary expression of this rich legacy. It stresses the voluntary principle; the necessity to start from young people's concerns; the importance of association and relationships; the need to see young people as subjects in their own right, not as inadequate adults; the centrality of democratic practice; the heterogeneous make-up of young people themselves, influenced deeply by their gender, race, sexuality, disability, class and religion; and finally the significance of the youth worker 'whose outlook, integrity and autonomy is at the heart of fashioning a serious, yet humorous, improvisatory yet rehearsed educational practice with young people.'

1.4 We are conscious that the Inquiry will be flooded with submissions. With this in mind we will concentrate on what we see as the fundamental failure of governmental policy in recent times – a failure to understand the relationship between universal and targeted provision, which brings us to the Inquiry's first point.

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

2.1 The universal and the targeted are inextricably interrelated. To tear them apart is to diminish the purpose and impact of both.

2.2 Universal or 'open' provision creates fertile conditions within which the specific needs of individuals and groups arise organically out of a continuity of association between young people and youth workers. Thus the need to develop particular provision to cater, for example, for young women or young disabled people or to highlight areas of concern, for example, drug abuse or sexuality, flows out of a critical dialogue with young people themselves. Given information and alternative opinion such a process is confident that young people will address themselves the personal and social issues facing them.

2.3 In contrast a whole raft of interventions in recent years have been imposed from above, the themes and indeed the outcomes already decided. In practice this has led to youth workers abandoning their informal roles and becoming yet another adult, who knows better than the young people themselves. As a consequence many of those young people perceived as most in need are likely to turn their backs on youth work.

3.0 How services for young people can meet the Government's priorities for volunteering, including the role of the National Citizens Service.

3.1 Youth work has been perhaps the exemplar for the involvement of volunteers, witness the very existence of the voluntary youth sector. Over half a million people are involved voluntarily with youth organisations across the country.

3.2 Certainly, in the last 50 years, the impetus to volunteer has been lent considerable sustenance through the partnership between voluntary and state provision, through the exchange of training opportunities and access to resources, through the contribution of local Councils for Voluntary Youth Service.

3.3 The National Citizens Service proposal illustrates an ignorance of the youth work tradition. A century ago Baden Powell was arguing that he sought to bring together young people from across the social classes, but his vision, despite its imperialism, was not based on one-off crash courses. He envisaged a deeper relationship between Leader and Scout. Across the last fifty years Youth Services have as part of their staple diet organised residentials, utilising outdoor education as a medium for both challenge and conversation. However such events have been understood as no more than a catalyst, requiring continuity of contact between young people and workers, if the full fruits of the experience were to be harvested. The irony for advocates of the Citizens Service is that of course a Young People's Service is needed, but for 365 days a year, staffed not by entrepreneurial opportunists, but by dedicated, trained volunteers and professional workers.

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

4.1 Open youth work has succeeded in attracting a diversity of young people from across differing social backgrounds. However, given the other educational avenues available into Further and Higher Education, it has engaged significantly with those young people who have been labelled over the years as 'disadvantaged' and 'disaffected'. Particular forms of intervention, such as detached youth work, have reached out to young people on the streets and 'on the margins'.

4.2 Young people themselves (as illustrated in Davies & Docking 2004, Merton et al 2004 and Davies and Merton 2009) want to trust the workers in the services provided; want to have their views respected; want to have fun; want to be stretched and challenged; want to be seen and treated as individuals; want space to develop their own peer groups and networks; want to negotiate agendas; and don't want to be coerced and manipulated.

4.3 Youth work has aspired always to a high level of young people's involvement in the shaping of provision. It must be admitted that we have too often fallen short in this regard. This failure reflects wider democratic disillusionment. In the last decade efforts have been made to develop participative structures, for example, the UK Youth Parliament and to devolve some pockets of funding to committees of young people's representatives. The problem is that these initiatives mirror time-worn ways of doing things that do not speak always to the concerns of young people at a local level or their preferred ways of doing things. The Inquiry would be right to prioritise the issue of young people's influence and indeed control over youth provision. After all this is at the heart of nurturing democracy. However the creation of democratically inclined citizens does not happen by itself, especially when passivity towards and disinterest in politics has become the norm. Animated, knowledgeable and skilled youth work practitioners are essential to moving matters forward.

5.0 The relative roles of the voluntary, community, statutory and private sectors in providing services for young people.

5.1 It is impossible to unravel these relationships outside of the State's obsession with introducing into youth work the inappropriate discourse of the market. Historically the local voluntary and community groups concerned with young people treasured their independence. The grant aid they received came without impinging on their autonomy. Today these vital local groups are squeezed, struggling to meet bureaucratic demands, whilst still displaying praiseworthy creativity. Meanwhile the major, corporate voluntary organisations and many regional and local ‘middle tier’ ones are in danger of becoming no more than a Third Arm of government policy in return for financial reward. In the event, where this has not already happened, they are at serious risk of losing their identity as innovators and ‘critical friends’ to the statutory sector. This shift has done the statutory sector no favours either. The manufactured emphasis on targets and outcomes has led to a tick box mentality, an insistence on quantitative data, which stifles understanding the qualitative heart of the youth work process. As for the private sector it remains uncertain whether there is sufficient profit in the proceedings. Meanwhile it camouflages its interest by wearing the clothes of the Third Sector.

6.0 The training and workforce development needs of the sector.

6.1 Youth work requires imaginative, innovative and effective informal educators, intellectually rigorous, skilled in improvisation and conversation. There is more than a single route to becoming such a rounded practitioner, but high quality training is necessary at all levels, from part-time worker to chief officer.

6.2 Unfortunately the marketisation of education has harmed considerably the best of youth work training, which intertwined critical theory with group work and tutorials, supported by relevant placements in the field. Such an approach was in harmony with the needs of practice. However the impact of modularisation in Higher Education and the fixation upon competencies in Further Education has devalued both theory and its application to practice. Delivery and outcomes dominate the agenda [Jeffs and Spence, 2008]. Such a perspective has also percolated down into in-service training, where unaccountable external trainers parachute in with their latest instrumental gimmicks, such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

6.3 The irony, therefore is that as youth work moves to being an all-graduate profession the quality and appropriateness of the degree itself is open to question. This scenario is clouded further by the widespread development of sub-graduate and, a gain, modular-based foundation degrees leading initially to the qualification of 'youth support worker' which lack opportunities for critical educational debate.

6.4 In our opinion this contradictory and confused situation needs to be reviewed through a resuscitated and independent Education & Trading Standards Committee, properly staffed and resourced. Supported thus the Committee could pursue seriously its monitoring and endorsement brief.

7.0 The impact of public spending cuts on funding and commissioning of services, including how available resources can best be maximised, and whether payment by results is desirable and achievable.

7.1 The public spending cuts proposed will be the final nail in the coffin of an open and pluralist youth work, balancing general and specific need. As far as we can see this demise is taking on different forms. In West Sussex, for example, the statutory sector is collapsing, whilst some voluntary organisations are queuing to deliver its targeted initiatives. Whereas in Tameside, the Youth Service is all but disappearing with its depleted resources and staff being deployed into a newly formed Children & Families Early Intervention Team. In this situation the generic youth worker is turned into a youth social worker with an identified case-load of 'potentially difficult' young people.

7.2 The strategy of outsourcing provision or of commissioning will lead inexorably to an attack on JNC pay and conditions for youth workers.

7.3 The introduction of payment by results will result in a lowering of standards, a crude emphasis on measurable outcomes (numbers attending, badges awarded) and a withdrawal from the longer-term commitment to forging authentic and meaningful relationships.

8.0 How local government structures and statutory frameworks impact on service provision.

8.1 At its best local authority support in terms of sensitive and intelligent management has been vital to the delivery of quality, young-person centred provision. Such an approach has respected the professional judgement of those working with young people 'in their spaces'. However increasingly an authoritarian, outcomes-driven new managerialism, obsessed with the accumulation of data, disinterested in process, has come to dominate. Workers have been coerced into prioritising paperwork over young people.

8.2 This tendency has been worsened by the Safeguarding and Risk frameworks imposed on the work. In this oppressive atmosphere the caution felt by workers is conveyed to young people. Gradually trust is undermined as workers hide behind rules rather than make ethical judgements.

8.3 The shift to Integrated Youth Services teams has been erratic in its effectiveness. All too often youth workers have either been reduced to activities workers, pushed towards being additional social workers or alarmingly community safety officers. Detached youth workers, classically those most trusted and nearest to young people on the streets, have been pressured into the surveillance and policing of Friday and Saturday evenings.

9.0 How the value and effectiveness of services should be assessed.

9.1 These considerations can only be understood in the light of an agreement on youth work's purpose. Throughout it history youth work has been clear that its overarching ambition is to make a telling contribution to the making of informed, active and critical citizens, capable of both governing and being governed. Broken down a little this aspiration proposes that individuals will become more personally, socially and politically aware as a result of their engagement with youth work. It proposes that groups of young people will develop a greater sense of collective purpose and empathy. The test of progress on this life-long journey is qualitative rather than quantitative.

9.2 In recent times there has been a massive management-led effort to sidestep the dilemma of how to measure changes in personal and collective consciousness. Rather than grappling with the question it has been easier to concentrate on numbers attending or contacts made, reassuring to insist that youth work experience be shoehorned into forms of engagement that can be accredited. In this way a mass of data has been compiled. But these statistics tell us little about the quality of the process and fail to put us in touch with the ups and downs of working with awkward, life-enhancing real human beings.

9.3 Of course data should be collected. This is but the ABC of accountability. Where appropriate some moments in the youth work encounter might be accredited. After all the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme has been a significant weapon in the arsenal of all Youth Services since 1956 – not for everybody, but brilliant for some.

9.4 However the key to getting a real feel for the spirit and quality can only come through becoming familiar with and knowledgeable about the profusion of stories, small and large, that make up the youth work saga. In this light we need to resuscitate – using all the developments in modern technology – the obligation to report regularly to funders. managers, politicians and the community. This reporting using the written word, video, music and art with young people themselves at its very centre must take place at every level – from within the the local project itself to meetings with Trustees and councillors alike. It is a process of accountability that demands that all participants are active and involved. Getting to know whether youth work is proving to be effective or adding value will not come about by its funders or its managers sitting in their offices waiting for the monthly figures of inputs and outcomes. It will come about only if decision-makers, youth workers and young people enter into consistent, critical conversations with one another. It will come about if youth work is democratic.

9.5 As part of our commitment to putting our proposals into practice we have initiated what we are calling the 'Stories' project. Across the country in our local and regional groupings youth workers and young people are meeting to consider 'what makes Youth Work work?'. As part of this process we are collecting together on paper and through video a variety of accounts of how youth work has made a difference, sometimes a big difference, to how young people perceive themselves and thus their potential contribution to a more just and equal society. We hope to bring these stories together in a forthcoming publication. In the meantime we would be pleased to supply the Inquiry with examples of this work in progress.

References

Davies, B. and Docking, J. [2004] Transforming Lives : re-engaging with young people through community-based projects, London: DfES

Davies, B. and Merton, B.[2009] Squaring the Circle, DMU: Leicester

Jeffs, T. and Spence, J. [2008] 'The uncertain future of youth and community work education', Youth & Policy, 97/98

Merton, B. et al. [2004] An evaluation of the impact of Youth Work in England, London: DfES

December 2010