Call for sector to back common purpose for youth work

The ‘Essence of Youth Work’ group, spearheaded by the chief executives of youth mutuals Vibe in Knowsley and Youth First in Lewisham, is asking practitioners and organisations to sign up to an open letter that calls for the sector to agree on a “clarity of purpose” for youth work.

The letter states that youth work is in essence “the expertise to support young people to develop and maintain healthy relationships across all areas of their lives”.

• Qualifications and training guide: youth work

• Feature: Investing in relationships to help young people thrive

Agreeing on a sector-wide definition for the aims of youth work would aid negotiations with the government over a future funding settlement, the letter states, adding that youth organisations urgently need additional funding to stave off further cuts to services.

“If this government were to fund the sector based on a relational model, it will lower the cost of all other support services for young people and only complements the formal education system,” the letter states.

A definition is needed because youth work can mean different things to different people making it difficult for policymakers to understand what it aims to achieve, it adds.

Paul Oginsky, chief executive of Vibe, said: “We are not coming to the government asking them to fix a problem, we are offering them a very clear solution – fund professional youth workers to support young people to develop healthy relationships.

“We accept that it’s possible the government have not fully understood the purpose of youth work, and that’s no surprise when youth work can be many things to many people.”

Oginsky added that there has been too much focus on where youth work takes place rather than what the youth sector aims to achieve.

He said: “The golden thread is that all youth organisations believe in using relational practice to supporting young people to develop and maintain their relationships, with themselves, with other people and with society and this is an enabler for life chances.”

Mervyn Kaye, chief executive of Youth First, said: “Although youth workers support young people in many diverse and brilliant ways, we do so without coalescing around a clear simple statement of purpose which those outside of the sector and especially those holding the purse strings understand. Having this would greatly enhance the case for funding now and in the future.”

The Institute for Youth Work, social enterprise Community Court Yard and youth mutual Space Youth Services have also backed the initiative, and have called on others to join them.

The call to action follows the publication last week of a report by the National Youth Agency and YMCA England on the extent of the cuts to youth services over the past decade. It found that average net spend per young person had more than halved since 2011, and as many as one in four youth centres were under threat of closure.

They called for the “immediate release” of the government's £500m Youth Investment Fund, that was first pledged by then Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid in September 2019, but has since been blighted by delays.