Youth work courses continue to evolve

At the end of May, youth workers, youth work academics and students gathered at the University of Manchester Students’ Union. They were meeting to celebrate the positive contribution of community and youth work to the lives of local people. But the event was bittersweet, since it also marked the closure of the university’s youth work degree programme.

Manchester is not the only university to axe its youth work course. “The Russell Group universities have withdrawn from delivering undergraduate programmes – there’s something about community and youth work programmes that doesn’t match the brand,” says Martin Purcell, lecturer at the University of Manchester and organiser of the celebration event. “Our university was very clear about the kind of A/B students they want to recruit, and our students are very deliberately not that.”

The National Youth Agency’s latest – as yet unpublished – monitoring of youth and community work programmes found three fewer undergraduate courses in the 2011/12 period than in the previous year. Student numbers dropped below a thousand for the first time, to 951. Universities are finding it more difficult to recruit students – the percentage of students recruited set against the course target has dropped to its lowest ever, at 94 per cent. A third of courses recruited less than 90 per cent of their target number of students.

Fiona Blacke, chief executive of the National Youth Agency, says the figures are not as bad as had been expected. There were concerns about the impact of tuition fees introduced last year, but courses seem to be riding this out. “Tuition fees were introduced in 2012, but the number of new students has not dropped dramatically,” she says, while conceding that “fees are likely to make recruiting more challenging than before”.

Maxine Green, principal and chief executive of specialist youth work college YMCA George Williams, says: “The year before tuition fees, we saw a bulge in numbers, then a drop, but we hope that next year there will be a resurgence judging by the enquiries we are having.” Manchester’s Purcell says that some universities have tried to reassure students that loan repayment will only kick in on a higher income:  “You can say ‘don’t worry about the debt, you won’t have to pay it back as youth work is a low-income profession’, but that’s a rather negative way of promoting a course.”

One factor behind the closures is the relative expense of putting on youth work courses compared with more “straightforward” academic study programmes. Youth work courses require two examiners, one for fieldwork and one for the academic side, and emphasise “face-to-face” learning. There is also a strong tradition of support, says Green: “Youth work courses traditionally attract non-traditional students, so there is often a lot of student support needed. For example, there is a fairly high proportion of students with dyslexia in youth work training.”

Many courses report an increasing scarcity of suitable work experience for students, as councils are no longer able to provide enough general youth work opportunities to support the placements that are a required part of a validated youth work course. Courses traditionally do not pay for placements, whereas social work and teaching placements come with compensatory cash, so employers tend to favour the latter two courses. And as the sector diversifies, the placement experiences can become narrowed.

“If we went for a student placement in a hospital, for example, the opportunity of doing group work or different activities to broaden their experience becomes more limited,” says Green. “With the field changing so rapidly, it’s about how we work with placements to give students a wide range of learning experiences.”

Placement difficulties are not universal. Purcell says he has between 80 and 100 organisations he can call on, and the NYA found the number of placements rose in 2011/12.

The National Citizenship Service may prove to be a source of opportunities for some; De Montfort University allows students to count summer work with the service as a placement towards their professional qualification. But there are issues to be ironed out such as the short length of the programme and the availability of JNC-qualified supervisors. Indeed, Green says some students working for the National Citizen Service during the summer vacation have found that they are the most qualified people there.

Cuts also affect recruitment. The NYA’s most recent survey found fewer students working as youth workers. Ian Richards is chair of education and training of the community and youth workers section at union Unite. He says: “Where youth services have been demolished, and the youth work role has been reinvented as a youth justice or social work-type function, part-time youth workers are not finding vacancies. In the past, these people would have been the seed bed for universities to fill their courses.

“It is important that the degree remains the threshold for professional qualification, but the route to get there needs to be very accessible, and some of the cuts have made access difficult.”

Traditionally, many youth workers are “grown” in the community among the young people who benefit from open access youth clubs and other services, and their parents. “We don’t have young people coming through youth service provision seeing an opportunity for a career, they don’t see the role models any more,” says Richard Turner, senior lecturer at the University of Chester, which is in the process of replacing its Christian youth work course with a more general one.

The demographic of youth work students has been diverse, with a greater proportion of older students than for courses in general, and students with a less academic background. But the typical youth work student is increasingly difficult to distinguish from the typical university student – more come fresh from school with a bundle of A-levels. Turner says: “We have one of the youngest years we have ever had on our Christian youth work course – the oldest is 23.”

While there are three fewer undergraduate courses than last year, there are four more post­graduate courses, so those who already have degrees are in a better position to access youth work training. The NYA’s Youth Work Foundation, set to launch during Youth Work Week, will offer bursaries to non-traditional students.

Evolving with the times
Courses are adapting their contents for a new policy and economic landscape. “If you don’t recognise the world students are working in and only communicate the pure concepts of youth work, students will run into difficulties,” says Turner. “It is about how you incorporate the pure ideals of youth work, like empowerment, on whatever job you are doing. If you go into careers guidance, that might be quite classroom-based – how can you implement the core values of youth work within these schemes?” Fundraising and management skills have become key elements in youth work courses. “It is inevitable that youth workers will have to fundraise,” he says. “We look at how we can involve young people in decision making around that.”

Derby University’s revamped BA in Working with Young People and Communities offers two pathways: youth work and community development, with new modules on resourcing services and social enterprise; and working with children, carers and families – all skills that will be required by youth workers in the current climate.

“We have always equipped youth workers to fundraise, but this is going back to a deep radical tradition of community-based funding,” says programme leader Vicki Millward. “The policy direction is towards integrated services, where you are working not just with young people but with families. Our aim is to be nimble footed and scan the horizon to spot change, but to always anchor that in the values of youth work.”

YMCA George Williams College offers three programmes for different destinations: a social pedagogy course for students working in group settings with more vulnerable young people such as community projects, hospitals or youth offending teams; an education and learning course for those wanting to take up informal learning posts in schools; and a core programme to equip those wanting to work with young people in a diverse range of settings.

“Generally in youth work, graduates will have to do more management and leadership,” says Green. “Twenty or 30 years ago, you would leave as a qualified youth worker and probably work with a centre manager, during a probationary period while you qualified in your post. Someone who qualifies now could find themselves immediately managing a team of part-time youth workers or a string of venues. Our courses recognise this development and have input on management and leadership throughout the course.” The National Youth Agency’s last monitoring report found that even some students on placement were being required to undertake management tasks, with one student asked to take on the management of a youth facility earmarked for closure.

Short courses available
Short courses too are developing content to meet new needs. UK Youth, for example, offers a menu of training days and half days to meet the needs of organisations delivering the National Citizen Service, including Organising a Residential Experience for a Diverse Group of Young People, Supporting a Youth-Led Social Action Project and Making the Most of Social Media. This year it is offering five new courses including Solutions to Bullying.

In an increasingly diverse sector, it is difficult for youth workers and potential youth workers to identify a clear qualification pathway showing how they can progress in their career and learning. The establishment of such a pathway has been mooted as a potential role for the new Institute for Youth Work when it launches in September, although the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services launched a Youth Sector Career Pathways website earlier this year (youthsectorpathways.org). This aims to inform users of the appropriate qualifications at four different levels within 15 careers.

The NYA has been consulting with the sector on how the institute might provide guidance and information around continuous professional development, and has also said the body could validate professional youth work qualifications in England. Continuous professional development includes work-based activities, presentations, seminars, conferences and meetings, as well as traditional training courses. The institute will require members to show a commitment to CPD, but the form that commitment might take is still under discussion.

Not everyone is behind the institute. Unite’s Richards says the union does not support it: “We don’t believe it goes far enough delivering on things like a revocable license to practice.”

But Maxine Green at YMCA George Williams believes one of the roles for an institute would be to “keep the profession active and interesting, as well as looking at standards”. She believes it is important to keep youth workers in touch with theory as well as practice. “We talk to people in local authorities who have to make decisions with no time to reflect on that very important theory they remember from their youth work training – power dynamics, equality and diversity issues, and so on. Keeping the theory articulated in the practice is important.”

This is the first in a three-part series on training developments across the sector. Part two on social work appears in the next edition (9-22 July) followed by part three on early years (23 July-5 August)