At the Preston meeting on Friday we touched briefly on the need for workers to tell their own stories of practice. We mourned the lack of material. However God’s Lonely Youth Worker has come to our rescue on the Children and Young People site. Their piece begins:
I’d worked hard with the “ASBO” group. They’d been identified by the Anti-Social Behaviour Team as being at risk of becoming entangled within the criminal justice system. I liked them. They were quite an elusive little group but they had an interesting collective character.
God, did they think they were hard. Proper little tough-nuts who were afraid of no one or no thing but terrified of showing any trace of vulnerability. I had to use a lot of reverse psychology to get them to believe they wanted me more than I wanted them. I would dangle carrots but never directly in their direction. I would never, ever outstay my welcome when I met them on the streets and would always leave them wanting more.
It goes on to recount the Youth Service’s response to the development of the relationship. Already it has provoked a cracking discussion. Basically I think we should muck in and contribute our pennyworth. Excellent stuff.
IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK 
FAO – Tony Taylor
I read with interest your letter in The National Youth Agency’s ‘The Edge’ (Issue 25) and would like to add to the conversation.
Our Charity began as an Outreach Project in 2001, delivering arts education for the purpose of rehabilitation of eight young offenders in West Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. I engaged as a volunteer until 2005 and we raised £360,000, to transform derelict factory premises in East Gateshead (Pelaw) into a facility where alternative education methods could be used to work with a range of young people.
By 2009, we were engaging an average of 1,000 young people per year, using visual art, performance art, environmental volunteering and social conscience development as our methods of involvement. I use the word ‘involvement’, as the young people arrived at the facility either through their own choice, or by way of referral from a youth project or organisation. Our stipulation from the beginning was that the projects and organisations representing the young people ask the young people what they want to become involved in (as this was often not the case). We then acted as the next step and engaged a large number of volunteers and Freelance Tutors/Positive Role Models.
Our next step initially involved engaging the young people in a workshop that lasted one day. The project or organisation would buy into our service, having entered a funding bid (generally) to allow this to happen, or where Local Authority funds were made available.
What became apparent to us, in 2006, in direct relation to your letter in The Edge was :
i) Where young people were being ‘looked after’ by services, often overseen by Local Authority, there was little focus towards encouraging young people to advance themselves beyond a single day of activity, i.e. focus on stabilising but no focus toward progression routes
ii) Where staff were in place to look after the young people, i.e. to encourage them to progress in their lives, we found that a large number (70%+) of staff in these roles were not capable of seeking ‘real’ solutions in terms of motivating the young people because they had not received the training themselves to advance the young people in ways that would fully benefit them
Our Charity has personally worked with hundreds of organisations and has day to day contact with the supervisors and youth workers. We feel that society in general has little understanding of what youth work actually is (or should/could be), where becoming a Youth Worker can, quite often, be regarded as a role to take when no other route to employment is available.
iii) You mention “conversations with young people which start from their concerns” in your letter. We started to put this into effect in 2008 and we created a ‘Types File’. The file contains a number of study papers into :
Types of young people
How effectively they are being managed/engaged
What their aspirations are
What system is in place to assist their progression
The progression routes being sought on their behalf/or where they are being encouraged to seek
The views of the young people in relation to where they’re at and where they want to be
The steps our Charity can take towards meeting their needs
We have identified more than 30 ‘types’ of young people. And whilst it was neither our intention to categorise nor seek to engage every ‘type’, we did this as our service was approached by the individual or the organisations representing, of where we targetted specific ‘types’ we felt the need to engage. This allowed the Charity (2008-2009) to gain a real perspective as to the level of who we were dealing with (and who wanted dealt with), what their needs were and what methods we could use to assist toward meeting these needs.
To return to your “conversations with young people starting from ‘their’ concerns”, what we found most alarming, was that simple questions had not been put to the young people, whose ‘types’ ranged from : Potential Young Offender, Young Offender, Homeless, Sexually-Abused, Autistic, ADHD, Dyspraxic, Dyslexic, Less-able-bodied, Tourettes, Mentally-unstable, Not in Education, Employment or Training.
We then devised a series of questions that started with :
1) How are you ?
2) How do you feel about your life ?
3) What difference do you feel you could make in your life ?
4) How can we assist to the point of helping you to believe in yourself ?
In January of this year we engaged a number of young people from the Local Authority ran Behaviour Support Service. Two youth workers (supervisors) turned up at our premises with seven young males. The young people were said to be extremely disruptive and all excluded from mainstream education.
Rather than take the suggested route of engaging them in DJ’ing/Aerosol, we decided to engage them one on one and start the ‘conversation process’, taking them away from both their supervisors and the group itself.
The result was that, within fifteen minutes with each young person, we had all the information we required, i.e. it was evident that all had reasons why they were not ‘connecting’ with society. One of the group was in Foster Care, having been thrown out of his family home. His Father was a drug dealer and his Mother was an addict. He broke down crying (in the 15 minutes) and revealed “None of them know what goes on in my head even before I’ve left the house. Nobody gives a f**k.”
Focussing on, as mentioned in your letter, “attending to the here and now”, we continued with our ‘isolation method’, i.e. removing the young people from the group and from supervisor contact, where we engaged them one on one. We found, within three sessions (one day per week over three weeks) that each individual did aspire to be something and create something with their lives, but ALL were :
a) Uncertain
b) Lacking confidence or support
c) Feeling like cattle within a system where they felt worthless
d) Had no respect for their supervisors and no confidence in their ability to improve their life situation
e) Felt there was no option other than turn to a life of mispect activity
f) Pressured and confused
By Week Four of working with the young people from Behaviour Support, our (two) staff found each of the ‘seven’ a traineeship with an employer that they identified as wanting to work with. Note, if we had followed what the young people were ‘supposed’ to be booked in for, we would have been left with seven young males with a greater knowledge of DJ’ing or how to spray an aerosol, with no productive direction gained from the money spent or the time wasted engaging them.
Whilst alternative arts education is used by our Charity to ‘unlock potential’, it was completely irrelevant to the ‘real needs’ of these young people. And a vast amount of funds are being wasted in this area, where activity is used for the purpose of ‘improving lives’ where it does little towards creating solutions in the long term.
You mention in your letter “the essential significance of the youth worker themselves”.
We feel that it is time that Local Authorities begin to think seriously about their recruitment process and perhaps redefine the term ‘Youth Worker’ to become ‘Young-people Motivator, Life-planner, Mentor or Guide’, where the focus is more towards encouraging the young person to get towards A to B, rather than supervise them playing pool at a local amusement arcade, or taking them to the cinema and filling their bellies with McDonald’s, just to keep them happy (actually fuelling their often confused and hyper-frustrated state of being).
Young people require youth workers who are trained counsellors. As well as requiring youth workers who have a knowledge of society, i.e. to be able to pick up a telephone and signpost them towards College, or towards a mentoring scheme, or potentially into training or employment.
You mention “the changing role of the youth worker from being a social educator to a social entrepreneur” and that we need to question “the increasing incorporation of youth workers into the surveillance of young people, perceived as a threat to social order”. It seems ridiculous that funds are being used to ‘supervise’, like a shepherd watching over goats, where the emphasis ‘should’ be towards creating ways of motivating young people and really getting on their side and providing them with tools that apply as being relevant to their lives, not somebody elses.
Our Charity has a range of study material that we are still developing. As we advance towards 2010, we are developing a brochure (funded by Awards For All £3,388) that is as much a best practice education tool to share our views on how we feel the picture should developing, as it is a marketing tool to promote the service we provide. The brochure contains our findings for 2001-2009 and will be released in January 2010.
As an independent Charity, we perhaps have greater freedom to explore, as we’re on the ground day to day and we’re influenced only by those we engage on a day to day basis, i.e. the young people.
We feel that with simple communication methods as the starting point, great breakthroughs can be achieved. And if this can become a shared opinion, from the ground up, then youth work could take on a whole new focus and be taken more seriously. Society seems to be unnaccepting of the fact that by supporting young people in the right way will lead to a much improved society in the future. In saying that, perhaps if we sought to control less and hand over the reins of so-referred power and listened to young people at a greater democratic level, we could vastly improve society in general, again, from the ground up.
As I feel that local authorities and funding bodies need to raise their own awareness of what is going on ‘on the ground’, so they can make clear decisions in relation to how their funds are being allocated, I’ve copied a number of third parties in on this email. If this could encourage greater levels of communication that would be fantastic.
I would like to offer my signature to the Open Overture, on behalf of our Charity. I feel that our Trustees would do the same. As well as a number of our Tutors and regional partners.
Our website is available at http://www.eyeofthefly.co.nr (developed by a young-individual called Nathan, because it’s what he chose to do and we supported him in that).
Kind Regards
Tor Bruce
Chief Executive
Eye Of The Fly