Professionalisation can transform youth work
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
The finding from CYP Now's state of youth work survey that 96 per cent of respondents think the public don't understand what youth workers do is disappointing yet unsurprising.
For too long now there has been a general disconnect between youth work, parents and society in general. The 45 per cent of survey respondents who felt the public were neither favourable nor unfavourable in their view of youth workers highlights the key issue: most people, whether because they haven't had a personal experience of youth services or never been moved to enquire about them, are simply unclear about what youth workers do, the roles they play in young people's lives and how they link into other services.
There is no tangible concept of youth work for the public to hold on to, as there is for, say, nursing, teaching and social work. This is unsurprising when you add to this the lack of coverage of youth work in the mainstream media. The irony is that so many things that youth workers do make a tangible difference to the lives, wellbeing and future success of young people. It just needs to be packaged in such as way that people will understand.
It is about time the youth work profession – that's right, nine out of 10 survey respondents referred to themselves as "professionals" – started shouting more loudly and clearly about the positive impact it has. One way of doing that is to turn what youth workers instinctively know about what works into hard evidence on inputs and outcomes.
This is something the Institute for Youth Work could take a lead on. The institute's code of ethics should also raise the bar on professional standards of practice and training.
The fact that 60 per cent of survey respondents are in favour of introducing a licensing system to practice suggests there is an appetite among the majority to professionalise the workforce in this way.
That could be a great starting point for exploring whether youth workers could be given the same protection of title that their social worker counterparts achieved in 2005.
Comparing youth work with where social work was a decade ago is striking – degree-standard entry, a national approach to post-qualifying training and a professional social work college have all since followed the protection of title.
Another key element to the transformation of social work in recent years was a major government-funded TV advertising campaign that focused on the everyday things that social workers did for their clients. Youth work needs something similar.
But that was all done during a time of economic boom. It would be much harder to implement in the current funding climate that is so decimating youth services. The survey respondents that report the rise of "zero hours contracts and minimum wage terms" highlight worrying trends in employment conditions that are anathema to professionalism.
These must be stopped if youth work professionalism is to take root across the sector and a clear identity about who youth workers are is to form in the minds of the public.
