SENIOR MANAGERS DELIVER JUDGEMENT ON OUR CAMPAIGN!
We’ve got it all wrong!
The Children and Young People Daily Bulletin is running a piece on our campaign under the title, ‘Youth Workers launch campaign for a return to core principles’.
Within it Susie Roberts, chief executive of the Confederation of Heads of Young People’s Services (formerly Apyco) says our Open Letter does not recognise the positive impact youth work has had in recent years.
She goes on: “The argument needs to focus on promoting youth work, and be more explicit about the outcomes of youth work intervention. We don’t need to be defensive because most people now recognise the contribution youth workers make in young people’s lives.
“For years youth services have appointed young people in senior positions,” adds Roberts. “This model is now being implemented across the public sector. We have impacted hugely on institutions across the country. This is something we should be proud to promote.”
I must confess to being bemused by the statement about young people being appointed to senior positions, but no matter. I’ve posted the following comment on the site.
I’ll begin by thanking Janaki for drawing attention to our ‘In Defence of Youth Work’ campaign. If readers want to know more we have created a website to keep folk abreast of developments at https://indefenceofyouthwork.wordpress.com.
As for Susie Robert’s criticisms we are very much open to a serious debate. Indeed we would welcome a thoughtful and even self-critical response from the Confederation to the contradictions and dilemmas of being a Senior Manager in the New Labour decade. I may be past my sell-by date, but I do know a little about the profound contradictions of being a so-called Chief Officer. Are we to believe that the Confederation simply glows with pride at its imposition of New Labour’s spurious, predictable outcomes-led agenda; that its members believe that their impact upon institutions across the country has been without doubt in the service of democratic and emancipatory youth work ‘on the side of young people; that they don’t have a reservation here and there about the present state of affairs?
Our position is plain. A critical, questioning, unpredictable Youth Work practice has been damaged deeply by the last decade and more of ‘new managerialism’. Our position is supported by the analyses of some of the most committed thinkers and practitioners of the last 30 years – from Bernard Davies through Jeffs and Smith to Janet Batsleer and Carol Packham.
Of course, in accord with Bertrand Russell, we maintain our conclusions with doubt. But if we are to be put right, we expect more than a sound-bite from our superiors. We look forward to the Confederation’s defence of what it considers to be Youth Work.
If the mood takes you, it would be useful to post your responses on the CPYN site. It would be brilliant to generate a wider debate, alongside creating more publicity for the Campaign.
IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK 
I would like to a agree with Susie Roberts comments and I do not want to take anything away from young people who attain positions and are catalysts for change within rigid institutions. However as a youth worker and educator I find this just another example of how the often tokenistic individualistic achievements of one or two outstanding young people are used in defence of the disempowering and demoralising accredited and recorded outcome target driven curriculum that currently pervades the profession of youthwork. This attempt to make youth work fit the extended schools and target agenda devalues the quality of a process that has for centuries been empowering, enabling and emancipatory. It also demonstrates a lack of respect for young people as free thinking individuals to see through the rhetoric and make choices accordingly.
Hi I write on behalf of CYWU members in North Tyneside.
I just thought that contributers might like to know that the senior managers of North Tyneside ISSS have delivered their judgment on in defence of youth work. In an email to youth work managers request to attend the North East regional event, the senior manager stated that he had had a couple of request from staff to attend this event, He stated that in his opinion ‘this is a campaign and if staff want to attend they can do so in their own time’. In a further request asking if this matter could be discussed at the next managers meeting he again replied that…”this is not a democracy, I have made a decsion” On behalf of CYWU members and youth workers in general I would like to know if workers who attended the London gathering or workers intending to attend one of the other planned gatherings have had the same negative response from their managers. Is this indeed the new managerialism that we are currently focusing on ? Thanx charlie
Charlie
The definition of a democratic and emancipatory youth work we put forward does pose dilemmas for senior management. Surely we might ask, a manager who talks the talk about participative work with young people recognises that their workers must also enjoy the fullest participation in the workplace? We might suggest that if you don’t have democratic structures in the organisation, it’s difficult to see by what miracle you encourage democratic work with young people. It seems to me that a senior manager committed to democratic youth work desires workers who are critical, creative and ‘bolshie’ and would be pleased for them to attend any of the regionals.
This said, I must confess too that we need to breathe fresh life into the tradition of meeting in our own time, under our own steam, to being autonomous and not reliant on the grace and favour of our managers or employers.
It would be informative if supporters could respond to Charlie’s pertinent questions. I have a feeling that some workers are being warned off.
Tony