Letters to the Editor: Youth work courses still championed in Derby

As a strong and well supported youth and community work degree programme at the University of Derby, we have been saddened to hear of programme closures in other universities (cypnow.co.uk, 31 March). However, this is not the only perspective of degree programmes and certainly not the whole picture. We are celebrating huge graduate achievement, not just in final degree classifications, but also in terms of graduate employment in agencies around the country. Our graduate employment for 2014/15 was 100 per cent and the statistics for 2015/16 are heading in the same direction.

We realised very quickly that many people intrinsically linked the demise in local authority funding of youth services to the demise of youth work as a profession. As a result, we changed the name of the programme based on the changing face of employability and sought to create strong external links with employers, which we developed through a strategic outreach programme and a committed placements team. Now these employers not only offer placements that were traditionally only available to social work, health or education students, they also offer and even create jobs for our graduates because they have seen and understand the value and skills of youth workers in a range of environments. In addition, we created a Youth Work Alliance covering Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire that looked to support employers of youth workers by offering continuing professional development, strategy and a united front in which youth and community work is being championed.

Youth and community workers have never worked in isolation - they encourage change, challenge inequalities and work alongside other professionals. Consequently, we take advantage of robust inter-professional learning within the University of Derby. This means that our youth work students discuss case study scenarios with student nurses, occupational therapists, counsellors, midwives and social workers. We promote the view in other professional arenas that youth work is an individual professional skillset that the professional practitioner takes with them into any scenario.

Of course we have challenges: we have applicants with all levels of experience who we need to accommodate; we have agencies who lose funding and withdraw placements; we have fewer recent core texts and less policy to inform learning and guide practice. But by mirroring youth work skills in our own practice as academics, our adaptable and challenging approach to these and many other issues means we don't just survive, we learn, change and grow. After all, as Darwin suggested, "it isn't the most intelligent of the species that survive, it is those most adaptable to change".

Working with Young People and Communities team, University of Derby