Hospital youth workers seek to create network
Joe Lepper
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Hospital-based youth workers are to launch a national networking group to lobby for improvements in training and funding.
Around 30 youth workers in hospitals are to meet at a National Youth Agency (NYA) event in Birmingham on 8 December with the aim of forming the specialist sector's first national group.
"We hope it will provide a national voice," said Richard McKie, NYA national programme manager for health.
Lack of central government funding is a key concern. Nottingham University Hospital's youth service manager Donna Hilton, said: "At the moment we get just £500 from the hospital and have to find another £30,000 a year through grant applications, fundraising and charities. What is needed is definite funding from central government."
The service won the youth work category in last week's Children and Young People's Services Awards.
Training is another worry as youth teams in hospitals have to rely on their own in-house programmes.
The NYA is pushing for a hospital youth work element to be added to youth work diploma and degree courses. It is also hopeful that youth workers will be able to access elements of a Department of Health-funded course.
A spokeswoman for the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which runs the course, said that the college had had talks with McKie and was looking to tailor parts of the course for youth workers, which is currently only for clinicians.
