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Validating Young People's Experiences in Contemporary Youth Work

Updated: Sep 27


cobbled alleyway with bins
How Do We Understand Agenda and Needs?

The shifting experiences of young people has been a foundation of my learning and understanding and therefore practice in relation to young people's worlds over time. Whilst there are significant features that remain common threads, it is the developing societal, political, technological norms that become reforms, alongside change in agendas that can create a mismatch between youth work practice and the experience of young people.


This article (and a bit of a think piece), will consider how young people can be categorised by society in a simplistic binary basis, that of either 'threat' or 'victim'; and how youth work should remain vigilant in relation to sustaining a young person centred approach. If the youth work principle of working alongside young people to enable them to acknowledge/develop their strengths, and be aware of risks and challenges that they can overcome for themselves, then we should actively consider how the work of 'prevention agendas' and associated funding has the potential to reduce impact?


The fear 'for' and 'around' young people's involvement in anti-social behaviour (ASB), violent crime, substances and so on, can be manipulative tools that are applied to how needs, responses and policy are determined. Views on young people and their adolescence become applied agendas, and it is in this space that we miss a vital component; voice and agency of young people. The words young people have to define and describe their world are so important.


There is a connection to be made between the singular incidences that note 'youth as a problem' and arguably this should read ' the problem of youth'. The moral panics are now much more volatile than they ever were and it is increasingly challenging to meaningfully promote youth work and the value of young people's creativity, energy, talents and the regular positive outcomes we see. This against the raging torrent of social and political agendas that can demonise youth as a problem to be solved.


There is an evident cultural and generational division noting a dislike of music, fashion, identities that appear to be a catalyst for demonisation of young people; this is not a new phenomena. This obtuse focus that appears to demonstrate that young people and any potential counter-culture, centres around the power vs powerlessness of the groups involved. The scope of adultism is far reaching and has much to say and far less requirement to listen than young people. In this way, youth work offer a great deal in relation to understanding the experience of young people.


As a profession, youth work has a values set that aims to not exist in deficit thinking around young people, and yet there are prevention funding 'opportunities' around reducing ASB, Knife crime and a host of deficit agendas that focus the problem on youth as oppose to the wider social environment in which these facets exist. As an example, the College of Policing definition in itself around ASB does not mention age in relation to what this feature of society is, and yet strategies are devised and are focused on young people as the focus of the problem, that in some way the removal of young people from a park reduces ASB without a need to safeguard young people's right to use public space in a community.

The College of Policing website however does indicate that non-uniformed youth workers in Leicestershire have been piloted and whilst these partnership holds value; why the agenda to be able to fund the value of youth work? Where does the power lie in the roles on the street?


To secure an initial response, perhaps the key is to sustain an approach in youth work that does not view young people as a homogenous group, but rather as individuals and groups who have valuable experience of their community and society in a variety of different ways. Therefore, there is a complimentary and valuable view on 'right' and 'wrong' and what needs fixing. Young people do not always percieve themselves as victims or products of society, and in so much are not so different from adults. They equally come face to face with poverty, crime, lack of respect, indifference and prejudice. When pushed into conformity, there are some young people that will resist to learn, to gain, to stand and defend their right; much as adults do.


This leads me to open the question regarding young people's experience of contemporary youth work, and how agenda is perhaps not as shared as we might aspire to or imagine it to be.


I wonder if we are as inclusive and participative in relation to what agenda we must achieve upon, and do everything else in the margins (is this less valuable? and to whom?). How we measure success for valuable and positive youth work is to an extent now pre-determined and there is a risk of young people fitting into these agendas rather than creating them.


A real return to asking young people about their experience of youth work could be a key to unlocking enhanced delivery and partnership models where the 'issue' is not young people, but wider social issues such as crime, poverty and so on. Is this the space that connects and reduces adultism and shares the experiences in a community? We should encourage young people's voice and agency at every step of partnership development to ensure that responses are inclusive inside those adult spaces that are often by invite only.


As a quandry in youth work, i am keen to hear from colleagues on how this tension of funding acquisition to delivery is settled and how young people's interactions in youth work may have shifted? Please add your thoughts to the following forum on democracy and youth work in The Youth Work Common Room members area.



Steve Walker : The Youth Work Common Room (2024)










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