Introduction

In this chapter our colleague and co-researcher Graeme Tiffany seeks to bring together a number of our key research findings to produce some recommendations for policymakers as to how to promote ‘good’ practice. This includes how policy aimed at reducing youth violence should be produced. He argues for that be a more participatory, inclusive and dialogical process. He reiterates our call for research (ethnopraxis) to be seen as part of a multi-dimensional practice and examines the pros and cons of partnership work such as excessive demands for monitoring and association with services focused on enforcement or punitive measures. He illustrates how target setting and pressure for outcomes from policymakers can disrupt the delicate balance of practice on the ground. Finally, Graeme develops his core argument: that policy needs to enable a broadening of youth work practice from approaches that focus too exclusively on time-limited and personal responses to those that include-long term, community-and structural-level responses too. He ends with a rallying call for policymakers to develop more pro-social responses to youth violence, drawing on the experiences and insights of street-based youth workers in particular.

Can policy be co-produced?

Our research shows that work with young people who are involved in or otherwise affected by violence needs to be holistic and multi-dimensional. We recognise this is complex because a range of issues often intersect. We recognise that this is complex process because of the range of intersecting issues involved. Workers can, however, use their understanding of that very complexity to make effective and multi-dimensional interventions. For interventions to have effect at the personal level they need to be complemented by interventions at the community, structural and existential levels. While workers are confident in their own work with individuals, they often feel frustrated by structural pressures. Typically, these include demands made of them by policy, and mediated by management, to help young people into employment (Pohl and Walther, 2007). As one worker put it: “I feel like a detached careers worker.” While those who participated in the research recognised the importance of offering support for employability, they almost all saw it as problematic when a focus on it led to the exclusion of other interventions.