RESOURCES: Review - Things are starting to happen in thecountryside
Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Similarly, the barriers to those organisations working with rural young people remain the same. These include inconsistent funding streams, difficult travel arrangements and the additional costs incurred working in rural areas. What have changed are the innovative, sometimes risky and often ground-breaking solutions to the problems associated with working in rural areas.
The research is based on eight case studies from Cumbria to Dorset. While these are representative of rural England in the main, coastal and former industrial and coalfield areas do not feature among the studies, but this in no way detracts from their usefulness. They are presented in a consistent and easily assimilated manner, giving context and background to the projects, focusing on practices employed, engagement with young people, and dilemmas and issues faced. The impact on young people is assessed, future plans are laid out and, most importantly, the original good practice has been carefully teased out.
Chapter five, "Learning from the practice", takes the innovative working practices from the projects and sets them into a number of common themes.
These range from traditional concepts such as partnership working, youth work approaches and engagement with political issues to the use of new technology and, most recently, the introduction of the Connexions service.
Nothing ever happens around here laid down a challenge to provide inspiration to a new generation of youth workers, support young people in their desire to participate in society, lead policymakers to see that effective solutions to rural problems can be attained, provide benchmarks against which future change can be measured and draw out important lessons for rural youth work.
This follow-up work achieves all these goals with conviction. I have no doubt that it will be looked upon as a salient piece of work: the new guide to rural youth work for the next 10 years.
Reviewed by Alastair Cox, a policy adviser for the Countryside Agency. He was responsible for the recent publication The Implementation of Connexions in Rural Areas
Who says nothing ever happens around here?; By Ray Fabes, Bob Payne and Jason Wood; Published by The National Youth Agency; Price 8.95; 74 pages ISBN 0 886155 303 9.