1 - What youth workers do
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2023
Summary
Changing things through professional practice alone is insufficient; significant changes for youth work have arisen from youth workersâ own self-organisation. In Ireland, Scotland and Wales, youth work has been recognised as an important aspect of education, but it is recognised less so in England, particularly since the creation of the new Integrated Youth Support Services (IYSS), where the social care, or even worse, reactionary, social pedagogy models have dominated. Paradoxically, however, in 2011 some improved recognition, in rhetorical terms at least, of youth workâs educational value in England was asserted. In this chapter I look at some official governmental definitions and legal underpinnings of youth work in the UK and Ireland, and reflect on their origin and resonance and relevance. These government definitions and legal underpinnings represent another aspect of what youth workers have achieved: they have defined, campaigned for and managed to get governments to recognise their work.
Youth workers educate and support young people and amplify their voice. It is the combination of these three intended impacts that makes their work unique. The three threads cannot be unwoven; if they are, it is not youth work. Youth workers are on young peopleâs side for the purpose of emancipating their minds and altering the social constraints on them.
There is a fourth element strongly implied by the notion of gaining a voice for young people, âspeaking truth to powerâ and debating power relationships, and that is, of course, that no educator can give someone a voice, they can only facilitate, encourage and nurture it in a freely chosen relationship. Youth workers are therefore informal educators in the traditions of social and cultural education outlined particularly at an international level by Paulo Freire and Antonio Gramsci, and domestically by a range of authors, from Josephine Macalister Brew to Janet Batsleer, Bernard Davis, Kate Sapin and Mark Smith.
You can educate in order to create acceptance of the status quo and the world as it is, or you can educate for change. Change is a neutral concept. Much can appear to happen, but not much may go on, or actually change. It is an automatic consequence of any educative process, but educational change is not necessarily structural change to the conditions that create ignorance and poverty in the first place.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- For Youth Workers and Youth WorkSpeaking out for a Better Future, pp. 11 - 44Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2012