Youth Workers Deserve Safe Spaces
Youth Work. A space for young people to hang out, socialise, kick back and play a game of pool. Taking space in run down community hubs with low budget, cheap activities. Facilitated by the youth worker; who struts into work in a hoodie and jeans to run such low skilled activities and make sure none of the teenagers fight. That’s it. That’s youth work.
First of all - I’d just like to point out that I do not agree remotely with the above statement. Writing those words made me feel hurt, incompetent as a student, arrogant as an educator, and hypocritical in every sense of the word. The statement I just made is sarcastic, stemming from a conversation I had with a group of professionals from other roles within the education sector (schools and formal) when discussing youth work a couple of years back. The hypocrisy for other educators to talk about the informal sector in such a negative way when they clearly have no clue about its outcomes nor impact is uneducated and damaging to say the least. When I raised my voice and told them I disagreed, and that I thought youth work is a very important service, I was told that youth work “clearly isn’t a viable source of education for young people” with their reasoning being that youth work funding wouldn’t have been rinsed to the abysmal levels that it’s at today in 2023.
The truth is, that youth work is a vital service for young people that should be funded properly and taken seriously. It gives young people opportunities, safe spaces, and a space to call their own. A space in which they can explore their curiosity, learn in a different way, and develop important life skills. In my TEDx Talk ’Youth Work Works’ I discuss this in greater detail and provide the case of a suicidal LGBTQ+ young person who found youth work and was ultimately ‘saved’; giving them a path in life that they were in control of. The young person featured in that study was me, and there are thousands more adults out there who have had similar experiences to mine in the fashion that youth work saved our lives and got us on the right path.
“That game of pool? We’re discussing racism in sports. See us sat, chilled out, listening to music? We’re discussing abuse and consent in music. Find us playing a video game? Well the young person we’re with needs our support right now, she recently came out as LGBT and sadly her family have not taken lightly to the news… Youth work works.”
— A quote from my talk at TEDx Doncaster, 2022.
Informal education is at the heart of youth work. There is a sense of joy when young people realise that learning doesn’t always have to be the same as it is in the majority of schools and academies. Studying science outdoors and geography up in the peak district. Challenging stereotypes and stigmas surrounding sexuality, gender and race amongst other intersectional features of the person in a way that is much more conversational, youth focused and relaxed. Giving young people tools to create art and express themselves by enabling them to take over the space that youth work delivers to them - youth work environments aren’t exactly spaces made for them, they are spaces made by them. Then we get into the informal learning provided in youth work practice. Social action. Education and employment. Political education. Facilitating debates. Breaking down barriers. Physical education. Needs focused mathematics. Empowering our peers. These are just some basic examples of the learning going on behind those “cheap, low skilled, low budget activities” we are told of.
Speaking for myself, my motivation to be a youth worker ultimately comes from a passion inside to ensure that no young person had to go through the difficulties I had to - however unrealistic that motivation may be; I am after all only one human, and can only be in one space working with only the young people that choose to access the service at one time. But I know that motivators similar to mine are shared across our workforce. That’s why we keep on delivering youth work, campaigning for youth work and fighting for youth work.
However, there comes a point when the unnecessary scrutiny that youth workers face gets too much. Where you are faced with narrow minded judgements on your professional identity. Knowing that definitions of what youth workers are and youth work is are being contested. You hold on to your passion, ethics and morals and keep reminding yourself of your motivators to do this work and push through the inter-professional barriers in front of us.
After well over a decade of government and local authority spending cuts, it seems as though there are less of us by the day. For every season that passes I hear or read of a youth work organisation that has either reduced its workforce or closed down. We’ve lost over 800 youth clubs, and over £1,000,000,000 in spending since year here, citate here. I’ve had conversations with plenty of youth workers that have told me that they feel isolated or alone in their work places, or just in general. These discussions lead us into worrying about the issues that lie ahead for the organisations we work at and the young people we work with.
And then the pressure amounts on us again the next day because of the budget cuts and lack of youth services and in turn youth workers. I’m sure professionals from other sectors can resonate with this too as the issues our young people face do not go away with the budget cuts, they only heighten. We’re breaking records for knife and violent crime, young people participating in gangs and young people being diagnosed with ill mental health citate claims here. In turn your case load will increase, along with your expectations and the amount of scrutiny you are put under. Then the cherry on top is just as it seems with every other public facing workforce at the minute: your wages go down.
So what am I getting at here? Well, I think that we should be more compassionate and kind when working inter-professionally. Be open to educate ourselves and our colleagues on methods of working with children and young people used in other sectors, and maybe even train ourselves up on those methods ourselves. Acknowledge and discuss different professional identities we are not aware of or have a lack of proper knowledge towards. I’ve reflected on the stories of burn out that people have shared with me, where it has resulted in them being off work for a couple of weeks, mentally exhausted and incapable to deal with the ever growing list of pressures we face in our sector. Youth workers deserve safe spaces, and it starts at work, it starts at home, and it starts in our communities.
By doing this, we can create the safe spaces that we deserve. Not just for youth workers, but for social workers and teachers, community nurses and youth offending teams, and all professionals who work with children and young people.
The take home message for youth workers is that you are not alone - you are necessary, you are vital and you save lives. So let’s share our stories and show the benefits of youth work. Let’s educate those who don’t know anything about our method and end any stigma surrounding our professional identity that there may be. Let’s work inter-professionally to create those safe spaces and get along - when we strip back the differences in our methodology and work it is so simple, we are humans with a common goal.
In doing so we can play a part in giving young people the spaces and services they have lost back, we can prioritise youth work, we can send a simple message that the work we do should be respected, and we can be responsible for children and young people who need us now more than ever before.
References and Further Reading :
Article:
Report: NYA report
Website:
Book:
Book:
Journal:
J
J
Comments