Youth work is more than mega-centres and streets

But CYP Now’s interview with Jeremy Glover alongside the special report on detached youth work smartly captured two of the extremes, in the same week as the Prime Minister hosted a reception celebrating both the contribution made by young people to society and the work of those organisations that have supported and inspired them.

It is strange that, at the very time when centre-based youth work is often under threat because of the punitive costs of buildings, Glover maintains that there is money in the private sector ready to be tapped to construct super-centres on the lines of the prototype Bolton Lads and Girls Club, where he worked for 32 years, modernised and refurbished, and made his name. Thousands of young people attend these superbly equipped multimillion-pound youth zone clubs, which offer diverse activities and projects for young people.

By contrast, the sole resource on the street is the detached youth worker, reliant on his or her character and skills alone to engage with young people. Eager to work with young people on their turf and on their terms, such low-threshold activity has no obstacles between the human encounter of worker and young person, just a fear that such an approach is under threat in the brave new world of targets, structures and outcomes.

Different needs and objectives
I worry that different “sectors” of classical youth work provision – whether big centres or forging links through hanging around and conducting educative conversations on street corners – will end up being pitched against each other, when in fact they serve different constit-uencies, needs and objectives. Glover’s provision may be seen as an oasis in hard times for many young people who want somewhere to go and something to do, but street-based work specifically supports young people who are still in the desert of disadvantage, marginality, exclusion and, often, resistance. Both forms of youth work activity lie on a continuum of practice and progression – young people who participate in Glover’s centres have no real need for detached contact and intervention, just as those who won’t frequent youth zones almost certainly do.

Evidence across Europe suggests that whatever form youth work provision takes, it always has to strike some balance between providing a forum for young people’s self-determination and extending support and direction in their transitions to adulthood. The balance shifts over time, as relationships develop, experiences are shared and horizons ?are adjusted.

We are living in a time when there exists a dreadful paradox around our approach to young people. On the one hand, we are talking about the importance of their participation, voice, autonomy and self-management; on the other, we seem to believe they are infinitely malleable and can be manipulated towards definable outcomes. The best path forward for the majority of young people, rather like all that youth work practice that is neither mega-centre-based nor dependent on a solitary practitioner on the street, is at neither one extreme nor the other and lies somewhere – through dialogue, negotiation and agreement – in between.

Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of Glamorgan