The residential red tape needs snipping

The recall of times when summer youth work programmes were not encumbered by relentless paperwork requirements will be instantly recognisable to a certain generation of youth workers - and completely unrecognisable to those who are more recent practitioners of the profession.

I thought back to the times when I would routinely do five or six residential or "away from centre" experiences between the end of June and the middle of September. There would be a residential for a younger group in June, often assisted by older members of the youth club, who themselves would want to go away during the summer holidays. Some were beyond school age and we would accommodate their availability. We went to cottages in Wales, on narrow boat trips, and on day excursions to Safari Parks and fun fairs.

The background bureaucracy was always there, of course. We needed to know who was going and to have parental consent. Risk assessments slowly crept in, though they were on the spot rather than requiring prior reconnaissance. We mapped out sketchy programmes to satisfy Notification of Visit forms, and we obviously had to comply with a range of minibus regulations. I informed young people of the wider rules, set out my own, negotiated others with them, framed some division of labour - and we were ready to roll. The necessary paperwork was limited and rarely seemed to impede planning and progress. The whole process was part of the young people's experience.

These days I feel I can detect, crudely, three types of youth worker in relation to the new-found heights of bureaucratic expectation: those who circumvent it, those who are accepting or resigned to it, and those who hide behind it. Not one of these positions is particularly satisfactory, either for the profession or the practice of youth work. It can hardly be motivating for practitioners, nor for the organisations that employ them, to be operating with any of those scenarios: watching your back because you have cut too many corners, buckling down to apparently meaningless form-filling when you would rather be engaging with young people, or ploughing through the number-crunching in order to delay the latest challenge in the club or on the streets. What we need is paperwork that is fit for purpose - and by that I mean ensuring the safety of young people and minimum standards of public accountability. We need a sensible review and debate about what is necessary.

Perhaps the old days were too lackadaisical and incorporated too many - sometimes tragic - risks. But there needs to be recognition of the ebb and flow of youth work practice priorities over the working year and the bureaucracy should follow it. The paperwork is all pretty pointless if it traps and inhibits capacity for regular and spontaneous contact and programmes with young people at the times when they both want, and need it.