On their turf

In parks, on estates, in shopping malls and outside chip shops, wherever young people gather, that is where the detached youth workers go. While their colleagues may take advantage of the climbing walls and video suites of youth centres, the detached worker holds their resources in their head, or their rucksack. 

Detached youth work uses traditional youth work skills to deliver a programme of social and personal education to young people who are less likely to visit other forms of provision. Once in contact, they can then support these young people to access the services they need.

Graeme Tiffany, of the Federation of Detached Youth Work, describes such work as “low threshold”, meaning that detached youth workers seek to minimise the barriers that prevent some young people from reaching the provision aimed at them – including inflexible opening hours, the need to make appointments, inconvenient locations, and the rules and regulations surrounding building-based work.

But practitioners fear the tradition of detached work, with the emphasis on voluntary engagement and informal education, is being threatened by government policy and by the adverse economic climate.

While last summer’s riots may have fuelled the fear surrounding groups of young people hanging out on the streets, such groups have long been the target of policies that try to move them on, whether punitive as with the Asbo, or benevolent, such as the offer of new youth facilities.

Detached workers, however, do not want to move young people on, neither do they view them as a problem to be solved – instead they want to work with them wherever they happen to be. “We are not policemen,” says Jackie Porter, chair of trustees at the Street Reach charity in Winchester (see case study). “That is a very common misconception that the public has.”

Angela McArthur, youth development worker at Medway Council, says: “My role is not to stop antisocial behaviour – that is the police’s job. I make that clear to the community.”

But it is not just the public that harbours a misconception of the detached youth worker’s role. Increasingly, workers are finding that they are being asked to deliver specific outcomes to receive funding. “Typically, this will be about diverting young people from crime, making them ‘work ready’ or ensuring they take account of messages about sexual health and the like,” says Tiffany. “In this sense, the work is based more and more on getting young people to behave in certain ways.”

Helen Gatenby, founder and manager of the M13 Youth Project in Manchester, says the funding offered to the project by the council came with an expectation that youth workers would help drunk young people get home safely late on Friday and Saturday nights. “For me that is not the job of youth workers,” she says. Instead, her team is careful to allow young people to set the terms of their contact and work with them based on that trust. “Some of the most important work we do comes out of unexpected big community incidents and isn’t often visible. When a young person was shot dead, they did not say ‘give me bereavement counselling’; we just hung around with them. We have to understand where young people are emotionally when these things happen. When it feels that a young person has given us permission, we’ll sensitively open up communication.”

It is this relationship that defines the work and so allows detached workers access to some of the hardest-to-reach young people. Several government agendas and council initiatives stress the need to target these groups, which would surely put the skills of detached youth workers at a premium.

But Tiffany says: “Just because detached youth workers have good relationships with those who others consider ‘hard to reach’ doesn’t mean they can simply ‘deliver’ these outcomes,” he says. “Their capacity to engage young people is based almost entirely on their preparedness to listen attentively, negotiate everything and work flexibly – which is the antithesis of the prescriptive agenda now demanded of them.”

Reducing youth violence
While an overly rigid focus on outcomes can hamper a youth worker’s ability to react to the needs of young people, it is the relationships they have developed that can play a role in reducing youth violence or antisocial behaviour. Tower Hamlets’ Rapid Response Team was established in 1999 to tackle growing youth conflict in the borough. It has now been reconfigured as the Detached and Response Team, with a remit to deliver social education, including leadership and decision-making programmes, workshops about the youth justice system and cinema trips. Tower Hamlets was relatively untouched by the rioting that spread through neighbouring borough Hackney last summer. Senior youth worker Soydul Uddin says this was in large part due to the dedication of the detached youth workers, who were on the streets until 3am. “If there hadn’t been youth workers working to keep young people and the public safe, there would have been a lot of problems. The young people were hyped up and energetic, especially when the English Defence League came in,” he says. “Because we work across the borough, we know where young people are.”

The government’s Positive for Youth policy paper, published at the end of last year, did not say much about detached work. But there was a palpable emphasis on prevention and early intervention. “Worryingly, detached youth work becomes more and more about stopping, rather than creating, things,” says Tiffany. “We need a more positive agenda.”

Economic pressure is also having an effect. While some detached teams are struggling, others are expanding. M13, for example, is looking to recruit a female worker, while Street Reach is considering employing a full-time manager. In some areas, councils are turning to charities to deliver their detached work. “We may end up with more detached work because the economic logic in the minds of some councils is ‘getting rid of the youth centre can save a lot of money’,” says Tiffany. “But different kids are at different levels of social inclusion.”

South Gloucestershire Council’s team works with communities with poor access to youth provision and other services, such as Traveller groups and those in villages. “Last year, more than 3,000 young people were contacted through our detached work,” says Margaret Lamb, practice manager of integrated youth support at the council. “We have two Urbi’s – customised youth vehicles – which we use for discussions, advice and information, cooking, craft, supporting festivals and outdoor events.”

But she insists that the input of young people must dictate local provision. “In the current climate, detached work is attractive because of its potential to give wide coverage without the high costs associated with buildings,” she says. “This must be balanced with strong views from young people about the need for attractive and youth-friendly places to socialise.”

A challenge cited by many is the retention of staff in a field that often employs workers part-time. M13 is unusual in that it employs staff full-time to give it the flexibility to work with young people outside sessions if the need arises. But for Medway’s McArthur, retention of part-time workers is an issue. “Part-time staff retention is very low, they move on and up,” she says. “Full-time workers cost, but they bring benefits.” And because detached youth work requires a long-term commitment, a high turnover of staff can be detrimental. McArthur, who has been involved in community work for the past 10 years but moved to Medway two years ago, says she is still building relationships in the area.

Surviving and thriving
Despite these challenges, detached work is surviving and in some places thriving, delivered by charities and councils. McArthur delivers detached work in a former dockyard area where unemployment is rife, and where the community is divided between English and Eastern European communities. Bethanie Philpott, 13, met McArthur in the local park. “I was out with all my mates and she was just out,” says Bethanie. “She told us about the youth nights she does in the park, because we haven’t got a youth centre. We are now raising money to build a shelter. We haven’t got anywhere else to go, so it is good to have someone to talk to and help make the place a bit better.” McArthur says in good weather she can find 100 to 150 young people in the park. “I take a big bag of equipment – sports, careers, education on drugs and sexual health, and they choose what they want to do.”

Detached workers often link in to other youth provision. M13 has run fashion shows, football sessions and young parents’ groups in addition to its core detached work. “Some projects are self-perpetuating – a group of young men wanted to run a group for younger children,” says Gatenby: “They heard we had run a similar project with a group of older young people on a neighbouring estate; training them in basic youth work and supporting them to run a youth club for local, younger teenagers. They asked us to help them do the same for their estate.”

Such an example makes it look likely that the tradition of detached youth work will continue regardless of the threats it faces. As Tiffany puts it: “Detached workers will continue to bear witness to the desperate social realities that many young people face, and work with them to support their creative endeavour in overcoming these challenges and building a better society for all.”