Youth services find it hard to recruit staff - and once they've got them, they find it hard to keep them. Caspar van Vark finds out what can be done to help develop a stable workforce.

For people working in youth services, it will come as no surprise to hear that the Government's target of one youth worker for every 400 young people is not being met. In fact, the De Montfort University report An evaluation of the impact of youth work in England, published last December, found a mean figure of one youth worker for every 680 young people.

Clearly there is a problem of recruitment and retention in the sector.

Some people in the field point to a drain of workers into neighbouring professions such as social work or teaching, citing pay, training and poor employment structures as contributory factors.

Dee Hammerson, head of youth services at Doncaster Borough Council, says her department began experiencing a problem with recruitment a few years ago, at about the time that Connexions was created.

Different options

"People were encouraged then to try a different kind of youth work," she says. "I remember going to a sort of showcase event where various agencies had stalls, and I kept saying hello to my ex-youth workers. We'd trained them, and they'd got jobs elsewhere."

Peter Hatcher, community education co-ordinator at Warwickshire Youth Service, agrees that new agencies have affected recruitment. "Connexions, and funding for youth work through the lottery and voluntary sector, have made an impact," he says. "There are well-paid jobs out there that are predominantly nine-to-five, and people welcome that. Youth work generally involves evenings and weekends and, on balance, people prefer those other jobs."

It's not just the hours that are the problem, but also the stability and training structures. Many jobs in the youth sector are still part time, and might be for just a few hours a week. People are paid by the hour - often not very well - so it's difficult to earn enough to live on.

When Doncaster realised that recruitment and retention were becoming a problem, it set up a working group to address the issue. "We did a consultation asking people what would attract them to the service," says Hammerson.

"The resounding answer was proper jobs - not two hours a week. People need money and secure jobs."

In response, Doncaster restructured the youth service, moving from a 38-week to a 52-week year, and made a number of part-time jobs full time.

What this means in practice is that the workers get a salary rather than being paid by the hour, along with benefits such as paid holiday. Not everyone is full time, but at least part-timers are in a better position than before.

"Now we have very few jobs that are just one or two nights a week," explains Hammerson. "And we have no trouble recruiting, especially for the full-time jobs. We're now almost at 100 per cent staffing levels."

Doncaster also encourages young people to get involved and consider youth work as a career. "We're very keen on in-service training," says Hammerson. There is a dedicated training officer, and young people can get involved through youth forums or committees. "We can put them on an introductory youth work course and then they can do placements and go on to do NVQs," explains Hammerson. "It has made a difference, because it means we're not losing them at 15, and they get a career out of it, so there's a benefit for young people and the youth service."

Ted Le Riche, a consultant for Lifelong Learning UK, welcomes efforts like this, but points out that youth work still remains too unstructured in its training opportunities. He attributes the drain of workers into social work and teaching to the better service frameworks in those fields.

"Other professions are better organised," he says. "There is funding for youth work training, but it's the poorer relation of teaching. We need a much improved climbing frame, so that if you came from being a Millennium Volunteer, for example, you could get recognition and move up. That way, your work experience actually counts."

Skills versus training

Another tactic used by some youth services is to try to recruit workers with specific skills, such as IT or music. The advantage is that it opens up a wider net of potential recruits. On the other hand, it may not be a long-term solution, because these jobs tend to be part time. They can't be made full time without proper training in youth work, according to Warwickshire's Hatcher.

"For part-time work we've focused on special skills and interests, and not pushed the youth work aspect too much," he says. "But I'm not sure that approach is relevant to full-time youth workers, where you do need specific youth work skills. Otherwise we'll end up no different to the leisure centre."

Where part-time workers are found to be particularly capable, Warwickshire does try to develop them into full-time posts. At present, the youth service has 11 full-time vacancies out of 31 posts. But five of the existing 20 full-time youth workers are still going through training, which shows how desperate the need is to fill positions.

Recruitment days can also be an effective way of filling empty posts.

Last year, Leeds Youth Service used such a day to help fill a particular shortage in the city's West Area Team (see box). Andy Wilson, then senior area youth worker for that team and now working in the city's William Gascoigne Youth Club, organised the day.

"We wanted to fill the vacancies quickly," he says. "So we arranged an open day at a community centre where interested people could come along."

The event was promoted in the local media and with posters and flyers.

About 60 people turned up on the day, which ran from 10am to 4pm, and 15 new employees were recruited as a result. Young people helped out, and the workers on the stalls and panels gave their time for free.

"It was a success," says Wilson. "We also got volunteers out of it, and it gave local young people the chance to find out more about youth work."

Selling youth work is another important way of tackling recruitment and retention problems. Lots of money has been put into high-quality, national advertising campaigns for teachers, but nothing like that has happened for youth work, possibly because it is perceived that there is no budget for it.

Not enough vision

But Doug Nicholls, general secretary of the Community and Youth Workers' Union, says it's simply a case of priorities. "There are more than enough resources to promote youth work," he insists. "But the Department for Education and Skills and the workforce development group lacked the imagination they had with social work and teaching."

At a local level, youth services have been promoting themselves. Wiltshire County Council is running a campaign featuring pop stars and astronauts, with the words, "When he was younger, someone inspired him!"

Wilson stresses, though, that however desperate the situation may be, it's not a good idea to hire just anyone who shows an interest.

"It's important to keep in mind the importance of the role of the youth worker," he says. "Even if you need them, don't forget the ethics of the job. Be strict about who you take on."

LEEDS WEST SETS OUT ITS STALL

A recruitment day is most effective if it has a clear objective.

When Andy Wilson, then senior area youth worker for Leeds Youth Service, organised such an event last year, it was because there was a specific need for youth workers in the West area of the city. Recruitment normally happened centrally, with recruits being farmed out to other areas, but not enough were coming to that area so Wilson got permission from the human resources department to organise the day.

The biggest expenditure was for promoting the day, but even that only cost about 800, mainly for advertising in the local press. The venue was a community centre, which was free to use, and everyone involved gave their time for free - including young people - so the only other expense was tea and coffee.

Wilson says the key to the event's success was that it was more than just a few tables with leaflets. "There were stands about the different roles, but we also let people fill in application forms," he says. "And we had interviews on the day so that people could go through the process right there. It meant that by the end of the day we had real results."

The event was supported by local MP John Battle, who said: "I meet people of all ages who can still remember a good youth worker who inspired them."