No such thing as involuntary youth work

The element of choice is about practice as well as principle. Effective dialogue requires all participants to enter a conversation in the hope of learning something. So if young people don't want to talk when they meet me on the street, I genuinely prefer them to tell me so.

Young people often tell us we are different from other adults, because they have more of a say. They decide whether to work with us, and to a great extent they decide when and how. Of course, things are never that simple, and I have had young people attending programmes because their parents told them to or their social worker recommended it. But voluntary participation remains a reality or at least an aspiration for most youth workers.

Increasingly though, the term youth work is being used to encompass other approaches. A young man told me: "I won't be here next Wednesday because I have to meet my youth worker". He has been assigned this worker since being arrested for possession of cannabis, and is compelled to see her every week as a condition of his bail. Whatever the rights and wrongs, this doesn't sound like youth work to me.

Another time, we were on a residential when someone rang and introduced himself as a youth worker. He said we had one of "his" young people on the trip, and wanted to know how she had been behaving. I didn't know this worker, and, in any case, I don't talk about young people without their permission unless it's an emergency. I offered to fetch the young woman so she could speak for herself, but the worker seemed to think I was being difficult.

Some of these professionals may be doing great stuff, but why do they call themselves youth workers? The phrase "involuntary youth work" is not just contradictory, it is objectionable. There is a sinister undertone of compulsory behavioural modification, like that other example of New Labour speak, "non-negotiable support". This kind of language dresses up authoritarian policy as nice, fluffy, uncontroversial.

I doubt young people will buy it, but it seems that some professionals already have.

From the Frontline is written by a London-based detached youth worker