8 - Youth workers in defence of youth work
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2023
Summary
What makes up youth work? It is not an abstract idea, or a set of methods linked to a vocation. It has a real presence, with real structures and organisations to promote and defend it. The battles to create and defend youth work over the years have been many, and key to their success have been organised workers campaigning in conjunction with progressive educationalists and the voluntary sector. There is a long legacy, as old as youth work itself, to this tradition, and the history of changes caused by the collective action of youth workers has only just started to be written. In this chapter I look at some of the important pieces of work that have developed in the struggle for youth work since the Education and Inspections Act of 2006 began the demise of youth work.
To cement youth work into place, youth workersâ predecessors said that there must be a clear set of professional values and methods of working, that these must be transparent and recognised and should form the basis of all training for youth workers. They said that youth work should be located within a publicly funded youth service working in partnership with the voluntary sector. They believed that the voluntary sector should be politically independent and able to promote the needs of young people. And, if there was a recognised qualification and professional values, they naturally thought there must be national terms and conditions.
Youth work cannot be properly valued if every employer pays identically committed, skilled and trained youth workers differently and is not required to employ people with the right value base. This puts the market in charge of the value of the work and not the other way around. The Youth Service must be fully funded. It must be recognised that youth work provides space for young people and seeks to enlighten, educate, develop and emancipate. All activities are tools to this end. Therefore workers must be professionally autonomous; their relationship building must be measured by the quality of their work experienced by young people. Professionally autonomous workers, publicly accountable, must also account for each other and support each other. Anything that defends these positions contributes to the defence of youth work. We must look at recent events with this in mind.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- For Youth Workers and Youth WorkSpeaking out for a Better Future, pp. 147 - 156Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2012