So, what is "youth work"? And is it any good? Is it possible to lift the miasma of the much-vaunted 'youth work approach' to reveal the purposes, values, tasks, methods and skills that make up this form of professional intervention?
I have tried to do so in a slim volume published by The National Youth Agency called Good Youth Work. I had wanted to entitle the book Excellent Youth Work, but changed my mind for two reasons. First, I became tired of the over-use of the superlative used by public service policy wonks to talk up the ordinary in the hope that exhortation, as much as resources, would transform an under-funded, under-valued local service into world-class provision. Second, I take the view of psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim that if youth work is good enough to ensure young people's development, it should be replicated for all those who want and need it, preferably near to where they live.
I was taught that youth work consists of practices that have some theoretical foundations concerned with how young people learn and develop, in particular in groups. I was hoping, if not expecting, to find remnants of that tradition surviving. Well, there are glimmers, but the group work skills in evidence are derived more from instinct and experience than anything else.
I wrote the book on the back of visits to observe and talk with practitioners at work and, overall, I was impressed. They have energy and dedication, they are patient beyond belief and they are making a difference. The young people they work with are not easily biddable: some are like dry wood awaiting the smallest spark to provoke conflagration. Many have been abused or ignored, much like the 'social orphans' I once visited in Russia. These are young people that many of our well-resourced universal services cannot deal with, and they turn up either by choice or referral at the youth project.
Here, hard-pressed youth workers draw on their resourcefulness, resilience and resolve to inspire the same characteristics in the young through the fourth 'r' of relationships.
It's the kind of youth work you respond to with awe and wonder, asking yourself "could I do that"? And, ultimately, these youth workers make a stand alongside young people, striving to secure a better deal for them and remaining concerned with social justice. That is a prize still worth winning.
