WORKSHOP
IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK
FRIDAY 12TH JUNE 2009
12 NOON TO 3PM
THE FOXTON CENTRE
KNOWSLEY STREET,
PRESTON
PR1 3SA
Website www.thefoxtoncentre.co.uk
If you are planning to attend, please email kev jones
(getkev@gmail.com) or j.richardson@preston.ac.uk
Also see the blog on : http://indefenceofyouthwork.wordpress.com
The following Open Letter will kick off the discussion:
IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK:
Thirty years ago Youth Work aspired to a special relationship with
young people. It wanted to meet young women and men on their terms. It
claimed to be 'on their side'.
Three decades later Youth Work is close to abandoning this distinctive
commitment. Today it
accepts the State's terms. It sides with the State's agenda. Perhaps we
exaggerate, but a profound
change has taken place.This shift has not happened overnight. Back in the
1980's the
Thatcherite effort via the Manpower Services Commission to shift the focus
of Youth Work from social
education to social and life skills was resisted. In the early 90's attempts
to impose a national
curriculum on the diverse elements of the Youth Service ground to a halt.
However with the accession of New
Labour the drive to impose an instrumental framework on Youth Work gathered
increasing momentum.
With Blair and Brown at the helm youth workers and managers have been
coerced and cajoled
into embracing the very antithesis of the Youth Work process: predictable
and prescribed
outcomes. Possessing no vision of a world beyond the present New Labour has
been obsessed with the
micro-management of problematic, often demonised youth. Yearning for a
generation stamped with the State's seal of
approval the government has transformed Youth Work into an agency of
behavioural modification.
It wishes to confine to the scrapbook of history the idea that Youth Work
is volatile and voluntary,
creative and collective – an association and conversation without
guarantees.
For many within the work this has been a painful period. For many there
has seemed to be no alternative to making the best of a bad job. But History
is an unruly
character. In the space of only a few months everything has been turned
upside down. Capitalism is
revealed yet again as a system of crisis: 'all that is solid melts into
air'. Society is shocked into
waking from 'the deep slumber of decided opinion'. The arrogant confidence
of those embracing the
so-called 'new managerialism',which has so afflicted Youth Work, is severely
dented. Against this
tumultuous background alternatives across the board are being sought. We
believe this is a
moment to be seized.Our contention is that we need to reaffirm our belief in
an
emancipatory and democratic Youth Work, whose cornerstones are:
• The sanctity of the voluntary principle; the freedom for young people
to enter into and withdraw from Youth Work as they so wish.
• A commitment to conversations with young people which start from
their concerns and within which both youth worker and young person are
educated.
• The importance of association, of fostering supportive relationships,
of encouraging the development of autonomous groups and 'the sharing of a
common life'.
• A commitment to a democratic practice, in which every effort is made
to ensure that young people play the fullest part in making decisions about
anything
affecting them.
• The continuing necessity of recognising that young people are not an
heterogeneous group and that issues of class, gender, race, sexuality and
disability remain
central.
• The essential significance of the youth worker themselves, whose
outlook, integrity and autonomy is at the heart of fashioning a serious yet
humorous,
improvisatory yet rehearsed educational practice with young people.
Such a definition is at odds with much that passes for Youth Work
today. But, as we have suggested, this is the time to challenge anew the new
managerial
attempt to make Youth Work the servant of the Market. To give some examples,
we need to question:
• The shift from locally negotiated plans to centrally-defined targets
and indicators.
• The growing emphasis on identifying the potentially deviant or
dysfunctional young person as the centre of Youth Work's attention.
• The increasing incorporation of youth workers into the surveillance
of young people, perceived as a threat to social order.
• The insidious way in which delivering accredited outcomes, even if
only on paper, has formalised and thus 0undermined the importance of
relationships in the
work.
• The distorting effect of identifying individuals as suitable and
urgent cases for treatment and intervention, 'to be worked on rather than
worked with'.
• The changing role of the youth worker, from being a social educator
to a social entrepreneur, submitting plan after bid after plan, selling both
themselves and young
people in the marketplace.
• And finally, but not exhaustively, the delicate issue of to what
extent professionalisation, hand in hand with bureaucratisation, has
assisted the suffocating grip
of rules and regulations upon the work and played a part in the exclusion of
the
volunteer, once the lifeblood of the old Youth Service [see Jeffs and Smith
2008: 277-283].
Of course it is easy to spout rhetoric on paper. Doing something solid
with this analysis is another matter altogether. This is especially the
case, given the very
different settings occupied by youth workers today. Without doubt the space
to duck and dive, to argue and
criticise, varies enormously.
Yet this very diversity lends weight to the proposal we would like to
make, which is quite simply that we must come together to clarify what is
going on in all its
manifestations; to understand better how we can support each other in
challenging the dire legacy of these
neo-liberal years.
If we possess the wit and energy to do so, we will not be alone.
Organised, dissident resistance is growing. Adult Education, devastated in
the name of vocationalism, is
reviving at the grass roots.
The Social Work Action Network opposes managerialism and marketisation,
the stigmatisation of service users . Closer to home the Federation of
Detached Youth Work
describes its members as neither social entrepreneurs nor social spies, but
democratic
educators. The National Coalition for Independent Action campaigns to
reassert the autonomy of voluntary
groups. The Youth Work unions are having to counter savage attacks, as in
Coventry, upon young
people's provision and workers' conditions. All such opposition offer the
chance to 'join up
services' under our own steam, under our control, on our and young people's
terms.
If you sympathise with and support the position set out in this Open Letter,
we ask you to join with
us and sign up to its intent. In doing so, you are not agreeing to some
party line. There is so much to think through together. However, in doing
so, you are lending your
voice to what might be a radical revival of a form of Youth Work that
wishes to play its part in the
creation of a just, equal and democratic society.
Criticisms welcome, but if you feel able to put your signature to this
Open Overture, please inform
Tony Taylor mailto:tonymtaylor@gmail.com
Reference
Jeffs, A and Smith, M. [2008] 'Valuing Youth Work', Youth &Policy,
100:277-302.
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