Keeping Them Off The Streets: A Youth Work Story

by Tim Caley

I think youth workers are a unique and idiosyncratic breed who bring special skills and talents to helping, cajoling, challenging and supporting teenagers – in ways that no other professionals can.

We needed to remind ourselves that encountering an interested adult and a sympathetic listener willing to take teenagers as they found them was not a common experience for many young people.

The presence of an understanding adult who had become a significant person in their lives and with whom they could feel free to talk about anything at any time was undoubtedly one of the best services that could have been offered to them.

how young people standing around doing nothing much seemed an affront to social order, and yet adults propping up the bars of every pub in the city were no problem at all.

This is an age-old theme – swathes of ordinary, working-class young people being branded, corralled, herded, moved on, labelled as ‘trouble’ simply for passing their evening leisure time in unremarkable, un-troublesome friendship groups.

Now, simply being on the streets presumed an antisocial agenda or criminal intent that required police intervention.

We know that our armoury of professional skills is perhaps small – often we use ourselves alone: our personality, our sensitivity and listening skills, our non-judgemental attitude, our acceptance of youngsters. And this is possibly our greatest strength, especially in inner-city areas where we have singular and substantial experience in permeating the informal social networks of frustrated groups of young people and forging positive relationships with them.

Marilyn described the young people she worked with as seeing her as a friend, an adult they could talk to and someone who would make no judgements on them. ‘I do not have all the answers to their problems,’ she said, ‘and, more importantly, I do not pretend to.’

There is a school of thought that acknowledges the similarities in working with young people and managing youth workers. The latter retain that youthful independence and autonomy of spirit, and (from time to time) that degree of bloody-minded obstinacy that is not dissimilar to the testosterone-fuelled behaviour of some fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds.

Youth workers are not teachers, parents, police officers or social workers. Their role as adults has no statutory authority or official power. Youth workers operate on young people’s terms: the nature of the relationship is entirely voluntary. The best practice includes that ability to engage with many young people – especially those most marginalised or alienated or at risk – to gain their confidence and work alongside them. It is that unique approach that can give a skilled youth worker tremendous strength in developing relationships with young people, which other professionals may not be able to adopt.

Youth work changes lives… it helps young people to develop the personal skills they need to make a success of their lives. It allows them to influence and shape their lives and the services available to them. There are few better ways… of delivering change than through good youth work.

Still, that smile is so important: a real achievement, a triumph of good youth work.

youth work has many rewards: moments of rare pleasure and elation, potent examples of good practice, stories of significant successes and achievements for young people.

I’ve always been a bit suspicious of people who are constantly certain about things – convinced of the efficacy of their simple solutions; especially when they express those convictions with an unshaken or messianic fervour.

…help young people to develop the personal skills they need to make a success of their lives; there are few better ways of delivering change than through good youth work.

Our advocacy for our craft needs to reflect a much smarter approach: one that avoids overtly politicised polemic, but argues compellingly – on the basis of evidence, confidence and strength – for the benefits of good youth work.

Remarkably, young people are certainly more open, more honest, more aware, more sensitive, more ambitious, more generous and more confident now.

Youth work complements the formal education system by aiming to support the personal development of young people through programmes of informal or social education. Uniquely, it works with young people on their terms to help them face and respond to issues in their own lives. It is an educational process – it gives young people access to learning. It works positively with many partners to enhance the range and variety of services for young people. It can act as an advocate for young people, but prefers to enable them to speak for themselves. It starts from the position that developing the abilities and confidence of young people as an investment in the future should be a cornerstone in the development of a national youth policy.

…it is the great task of youth work to see injustice and try to end it, to see prejudice and strive to overcome it, to see potential and seek to nurture it.