Feature: Weekend working: the Friday night project

It's one of the hottest issues of the moment for the youth work sector: the increasing expectation that ever more youth provision should be open on Friday and Saturday nights.

Most senior managers seem to be in favour, but making the aspiration a reality may not be an entirely smooth process. As one angry youth worker recently put it in an email to Youth Work Now: "Who are these people demanding yet more delivery from a shrinking service with no acknowledgment of a maximum working week?"

He fears that youth workers' willingness to work at a time when others won't is being exploited: "Who are these people demanding we plan our own extended services contribution while watching other services contribute nothing? I have an answer but the possibility of being sacked prevents me from uttering the words."

Crime and antisocial behaviour

The emphasis on Friday night and Saturday working has several drivers, not least the desire to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour at weekends. In July, the government's crime and communities adviser, Louise Casey, said that although the public wanted youth provision at weekends, an audit of "a small sample of areas in 2007" found that facilities for young people were often closed.

If provision is made available in the right places and at the right times, it could help divert more young people into constructive activities, stated Casey's report Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime.

The guidance notes for Myplace, the £190m capital funding programme for youth provision, also indicate that the facilities funded through the scheme should be open at times that suit young people "including on Friday and Saturday nights, at weekends and in school holidays".

As part of the government's commitment to boost Friday night and Saturday youth provision, it last month allocated £25,000 each to 77 authorities specifically to fund youth activities in areas where crime and antisocial behaviour are a concern.

Unrealistic expectations

A manager of a voluntary sector project in the North of England, who also asked to remain anonymous, believes the expectations placed on youth workers are unrealistic. It delivers youth work in one particular ward on behalf of the local authority youth service and over the past 12 months it has been placed under increasing pressure to deliver weekend work, meaning seven evenings per week, plus Saturday mornings. "Only now, due to vacancies, have we been able to recruit specifically to deliver at these times, because existing staff were very reluctant," she says. "It could have meant shutting down successful pieces of existing work to reallocate the resources required, without additional funding."

She adds that she is aware that a number of staff in the local authority service have handed in their notice or gone off sick after being forced to work weekends. The service was relying on "good-natured" staff to work weekends, she adds.

Simon Antrobus, chief executive of Clubs for Young People, has little time for youth workers who aren't prepared to work weekends. "If you work in a restaurant, you expect to work evenings. If you work in a shop, you expect to work weekends," he says. "In youth work, you work the hours required. It's a nonsense that must be challenged to suggest it can't be done from a staffing point of view."

Proper pay

Doug Nicholls, general secretary of the Community and Youth Workers' Union, says that his union doesn't oppose weekend working. In fact, the sector has always worked when young people need them, he argues. But employers must be willing to pay staff properly in order for this to happen. "We strongly support the extension of provision - not just to Friday and Saturday evenings but late nights, after midnight too," says Nicholls. "But, frankly in the past, employers have expected too much, from too few, for too little."

Nicholls suggests that youth workers are bearing the brunt of new expectations. "The picture does get skewed because there are other areas of the workforce that are on five-days-a-week, nine-to-five contracts," he says.

The need for the wider young people's workforce to become more flexible is also backed by Susie Roberts, chief executive of the Association of Principal Youth & Community Officers. "Weekend working really needs to be done in partnership with other services, with the whole community," she says.

"There are some colleagues in what are supposedly integrated youth services that are only working nine to five - I think every Connexions shop in the country shuts at 5pm on a Friday - and there are some excellent resources that could be utilised."

Like Nicholls, she believes that adequate funding is the key to making Friday night and Saturday working a reality across England: "It is pleasing to see that the government is funding the stuff it wants delivered, but if 77 local authorities are being funded to do this, and it is so crucial, what happens in the other 70-odd authorities? Resourcing must be sustainable, not a one-off, and we have to ensure that we do not allow provision over the rest of the week to suffer unacceptably."

Time to adjust

Jean Davey, principal youth officer in Leeds, knows from experience the challenges weekend working throws up. The authority has been trying to ensure that at least as much youth provision is available on Friday evenings as other nights of the week. Davey admits this proved unpopular with some youth workers but adds the authority is trying to give people reasonable time to adjust. It is also trying to change the working culture by making weekend working part of employment contracts.

"All 30-hour contracts with Leeds youth service will include work until 10pm on Friday," says Davey. "I wouldn't say we've cracked Saturday night yet, though we are looking at running three or four big events in the city centre on Saturdays in the near future."

Her staff's reaction to the new working hours has proved encouraging. Some have told her that the reality of Friday night working was not as bad as they feared. "It seems like it's a time when you build good relationships with young people, which was what workers came into the job for in the first place," she says.

The type of provision young people want at weekends remains another question. After a week at school, do they really want to take part in accredited learning programmes or sexual health workshops, for example? Lee Hutchings, managing director of Parkguard, a company that is running activities on Friday night in a Hertfordshire park (see box), strongly believes that young people are attracted to the project because of its informal nature. Others who might usually advocate a more formal youth work approach appreciate there might be a need for a lighter touch at weekends. "There's this notion that unplanned activity is somehow bad for young people," says Roberts. "But it was not too long ago that, in youth work terms, Friday night was disco night, and you'd get 120 young people in and you'd do low-level but useful interventions, but that kind of work isn't measurable and doesn't produce accredited outcomes. But it was very popular and, I think, could be again."

But Antrobus stresses that the success of this whole agenda rests on providing desirable activities for young people. "It's not just about opening the doors," he says. "It's about having modern activities that young people enjoy and about quality too. If you go to a restaurant and it is freezing cold and there's a bucket in the corner to collect the rain, you don't go back, yet too much youth provision fits that description."

A PLACE TO HANG OUT WITH FRIENDS

For Lee Hutchings, managing director of Parkguard, it's a simple issue. "The point is to run the project when the problem is occurring. All our shifts finish between midnight and 2am."

Parkguard's Friday Night Project in the Hertfordshire town of Broxbourne is not, stresses Hutchings, a youth work project. Instead, it is about providing young people with something fun to do on Friday nights. In Broxbourne, large numbers of young people were gathering in a local park and there were high levels of antisocial behaviour and underage drinking taking place. So the project looked to set up diversionary activities.

After talking to the young people, Parkguard officers found they wanted somewhere to gather, but not a youth club. So the officers came along with a couple of footballs and a few other resources. And it has turned out to very popular.

According to Hutchings, up to 120 young people attend on Friday night. There's no drinking, antisocial behaviour has fallen dramatically and residents like it because young people are being kept in check.

"All of our staff are ex-police or services and we're not trying to be the young people's friends - we're saying here's something for you and behave, or we'll go back to enforcement," says Hutchings. "It is about boundaries. When you give young people boundaries, their behaviour improves."

The young people now have access to a community pavilion on the site and the council's youth service has provided sofas, Nintendo Wiis, disco equipment, a tuck shop and other equipment. "But there's no education, no youth activities - it's just their place," says Hutchings.

Hutchings says that it's only natural for young people to want somewhere to chill out with their friends on Friday nights. "The young people's parents work hard all week and on a Friday night they want to relax down the pub," says Hutchings. "It's the same thing for young people. In effect, this is their pub, but with no alcohol."