Youth Work: Histories, Policy and Contexts

Graham Bright

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137434395
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350314221
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Youth work is a means of promoting learning, equality and inclusion with young people. It is an incredibly rewarding profession; however, state regulation means that youth work students and practitioners must continuously wrestle with the challenges of contemporary practice in environments that are complex and changing.

This book brings together a collection of voices to speak to these concerns. Drawing on the history of the profession, each chapter focuses on a different aspect of policy and practice. Chapters explore the impact of New Labour; the changes that came with the coalition government; youth work in the voluntary sector, and youth work in a digital world. Graham Bright concludes with a powerful reflection on what the future holds for the profession. Each chapter features 'Over to You' activity boxes which invite readers to engage collaboratively in developing and applying ideas, with case studies which link discussion to real life examples.

This is an important book for students, practitioners and lecturers in the field of youth and community work and related practice with children and young people.

1

THE EARLY HISTORY OF YOUTH WORK PRACTICE

Graham Bright

Chapter Outcomes

By the end of this chapter, readers will be able to:

• debate the nature of youth work

• appraise the importance of youth work’s early history to contemporary policy and practice

• trace and offer critical analysis of how particular value domains have shaped, and continue to shape, discourses concerning young people.

Introduction

This chapter seeks to unpack something of the early history of youth and community work, from its beginnings as a grass-roots social movement that sought to address the basic physical and educational needs of poor and working class young people, to a reframing of practice in the latter part of the nineteenth century which increasingly focused on meeting the social and leisure time needs of adolescents. The chapter argues the influence of particular historical and contextual themes in youth work’s emergence, and encourages readers to make connections between these themes and contemporary experience.

Framing Youth Work

Before considering youth work’s history, it is essential to engage in some ground-clearing in order to attempt to define youth work in contemporary terms. Jeffs and Smith (2010) argue that diversification of the way youth work is organized within apparently ever-widening contexts has diluted its nature, processes and practices. Defining youth work is therefore no mean feat (Jones, 2012); indeed, attempts to do so have engendered ‘fierce debate’ (Davies, 2010: 1). However, despite the changing nature and contexts of youth work practice, particular values and common principles have underpinned practice, and continue to do so. The National Youth Agency (2000) identifies these principles as: voluntarism, association, informality and education. Let us take each of these in turn.

First, enabling choice as an expression of democracy in young people’s voluntary relationships with youth workers has long been held sacrosanct. Voluntarism demonstrates a commitment to using young people’s experiences as the starting point for practice. However, changing contexts mean that some youth work is becoming increasingly located in ‘compulsory’ settings, including schools, prisons and Youth Offending Teams – a factor that appears to be undermining a treasured orthodoxy (see Ord, 2009, for further discussion). Second, association is concerned with the development of community and learning through shared life and experience. This associational ideal can be seen in the primacy given to group work as a pedagogical tool. Association fosters mutuality, diversity, respect, critical awareness and action. Third, we might think of informality as being concerned with place (where youth work happens; see Mills and Kraftl (2014)) and approach (methods used by youth workers; see Jeffs and Smith (2005)). Youth work is practised in a wide range of settings: youth and community centres, religious buildings, online, parks, skate parks, residential centres, theatres, street corners, sports fields, campsites and hillsides to name but a few. Youth work is premised on the principle that young people should lead and direct – or, at the very least, have a genuine democratic say in – what happens in spaces and places associated with its practice in order to foster inclusion, participation, community and learning. Youth workers embody genuine concern for young people, their learning, their personal and social development, and the fulfilment of each young person’s potential.

The starting point and fundamental vehicle for practice is the youth worker’s relationship with young people. Relational ways of working which utilize ‘everydayness’ in order to intentionally and critically foster learning, raise aspirations, challenge oppression and fulfil potential through engaging, fun, associative, inclusive, and democratic practices that enable young people more fully to ‘relate to themselves, others and the world’ (Jeffs and Smith, 2010: 3) are integral to youth work practice. Finally, we might argue that the culmination of these processes is education. Youth work is concerned with enabling young people to challenge ideas, to consider their own values and to engage in democratic action. Whereas formal education is product-driven with ‘success’ determined by knowledge and understanding of pre-ordained curricula, youth work retains equal interest in, and concern for, the processes and products of learning developed through informal and dialogical means, as shaped by young people themselves.

Over to You

Davies (2010: 6) argues that: ‘Good youth work can be seen as having some of the same qualities as great jazz. It is well prepared and highly disciplined, yet improvised.’

• How would you describe youth work; what analogy might you use?

Our Contemporary Need for History

Understanding the heritage of any profession is of key importance to critical reflection, and to shaping the direction of future policy and practice. Balthazar (2012: 245), however, contends that: ‘There are many still bent on ignoring the fact that a future without a past is like groping inside a blind alley.’ Despite attempts to define it, youth work remains a somewhat polymorphous activity, which has taken, and continues to take, on a variety of shapes and expressions. It is therefore difficult, as we have already noted, to pin down a universally agreed definition of the nature of youth work and what youth workers do. However, the strength which lies in this flexibility might also be considered its weakness. For that reason, youth work is highly susceptible to the changing tides of policy, which increasingly appear to marginalize it in the wake of neo-liberal drifts. As a result, it is viewed by its political detractors as a vague and disposable activity – which practitioners have often found difficult to defend rigorously. It is a profession that appears buffeted by competing agendas and caught up in an identity crisis (Coussée, 2008; Davies and Merton, 2009; Smith, 2009; Verschelden et al., 2009). The current policy environment, together with a lack of rootedness, undermines our connection to the underpinning values on which youth work is founded. This potentially leaves the profession cut adrift from the essential nature of what youth work is about. Yet, a growing body of literature indicates the desire to rediscover, reclaim and reframe youth work’s histories. This is a search driven not by academic questing, or a nostalgic pursuit of the past, but by youth workers’ need to understand their own place in that rich history. Such an odyssey not only pays tribute to the endeavours of youth work’s pioneers, it also signposts us ‘to a better understanding of what we do and why we do it’ (Gilchrist et al., 2001: 2).

Historical pursuit challenges us to reimagine lived assumptions; it enables us to gain different perspectives on issues of contemporary policy and practice (Coussée, 2010), and provides us with a source of wisdom with which to frame action and challenge hegemonic ideals (Jeffs, 2010). History gives us greater surety in a shared professional identity (Smith, 2009) and enables clearer articulation of youth work’s social value. In examining our professional histories therefore, we are able to interrogate the present and consider ways in which practice may be made better.

Over to You

• What are your thoughts on the challenges facing the profession?

• What do you feel history can offer to contemporary youth work practice?

Historical pursuit is not, however, a neutral affair. It requires the researcher to bracket off present-day assumptions and maintain a degree of empathy for its subjects. It is an interpretative endeavour which can easily become lost in translation. History, just like the present, is full of contradictions, which are somehow highlighted further by the strangeness of the past. There is a need to recognize that people, places, values and societies were different (L’Estrange, 2014). Tosh (2010: 13) argues that we need to learn to ‘reconstruct [history] in all its strangeness before applying its insights to the present’. Those engaged in historical pursuit might be tempted to iron out contradictions; to present neater, cleaned-up – yet, ultimately, distorted – versions of the past (Black and MacRaild, 2007). However, the richness of potential learning for us today is often found in the detail of apparent historical inconsistencies, of which the history of youth work is no exception (Davies, 2001).

The Contextual Backdrop to Youth Work’s Emergence: A Critical View

The Changing Experience of Youth

People have always experienced being young; however, the meanings and discourses attached to ‘youth’ are socially constructed and change over time (Gabriel, 2013; Kehily, 2013; Talburt and Lesko, 2012). Although it may be considered somewhat arbitrary to select a specific period from which to contextualize the development of youth work as a social and educational movement without giving particular credence to its forerunners (see Davies, 2009; Dobbs, 2013 [1918]; Howlett, 2013; Silver, 1965), for example Robert Raikes and Hannah More and the Sunday School movement (Smith, 2002), the sheer force exerted by the industrial revolution in changing the social and economic landscape of the United Kingdom cannot be ignored. This idea is further illustrated by the number of youth work organizations that developed in its wake. The close-knit, geographically-bounded families of the UK’s pre-industrialized, agricultural societies adequately prepared young people to follow in their footsteps. Intergenerational interdependence was essential for survival and, although there would have been some form of labour division within families, the working agricultural classes would not have enjoyed what we understand today as leisure time (Leighton, 1982). Less emphasis was placed on formal education, which was the preserve of the gentrified classes who could afford it. For most, it was the extended family who acted as the young person’s principal educators. Davies and Gibson (1967: 24) note: ‘Nevertheless action was taken, frequently through the community, to protect, regulate, and even enlighten and develop the young when they were not at work’ (emphasis added). It was therefore very much the role of the family and the wider community to socialize, educate, integrate and ensure the wellbeing of its young. However, much of this was about to change with the arrival of mass industrialization. New power sources, industrial mechanization and the advent of globalized markets led to mass urbanization. Within just a few decades, vast swathes of the UK population had moved to sprawling towns and cities (Harris, 2012) where population growth led to a range of social issues including poverty, squalor, crime and poor health. For the first time, as Davies and Gibson (1967: 11) emphasize, increasing numbers of parents (both fathers and mothers) were forced ‘out’ to work – an experience which was in stark contrast to that of previous generations who had worked on their tenanted land. Many children and young people were also forced to work in harsh conditions; these were largely unregulated until the advent of the various ‘Factories Acts’ which gradually improved the lot of young workers over the course of the nineteenth century. This, together with the development of universal education for children aged 5–12 under the 1870 Forster Education Act, and subsequent compulsory attendance (for 5–10-year-olds) under the 1880 Education Act (which were designed to retain Britain’s edge in an increasingly competitive global economy) brought about significant changes in the nature of childhood, youth and family relationships. The Education Acts of 1870 and 1880 were propelled not only by progressive thinking, but also in response to economic and moral crises. Overproduction in the middle of the century led to economic boom, and recession inevitably followed. The resultant quandary that concerned politicians and society alike centred on what was to be done with the many young people who found themselves surplus to economic requirement. Young people’s increasing free time, together with its ‘anti-social’ utilization, had become the material of moral panic. These factors signalled a sea-change in youth work, which to this point had been concerned with the basic physical, social and educational welfare of poor and working-class young people (Booton, 1985). Jeffs (1979: 1) argues that the Education Acts changed emergent youth work practice from:

rescue and basic educational work such as the teaching of literacy and numeracy … [towards] meeting the leisure time needs of young people, and in doing so trying to overcome that what they discerned as the deficiencies of the elementary school system.

The lessening in working hours for adolescents meant that those who were employed had increasing amounts of leisure time and money to spend. Thus, by the 1870s, the landscape of adolescence was very different, with youth work becoming increasingly diversionary. The social progressives who had become aware of these issues decided to act (Davies and Gibson, 1967). Many of them believed the state would no...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrative Material
• Acknowledgement
• Notes on the Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Early History of Youth Work Practice
• 2. State Beneficence or Government Control? Youth Work from Circular 1486 to 1996
• 3. In the Service of the State: Youth Work under New Labour
• 4. Volunteers and Entrepreneurs? Youth Work and the Big Society
• 5. Local Authority Youth Work
• 6. Youth Work in the Voluntary Sector
• 7. Uniformed Youth Work
• 8. Youth Work and the Church
• 9. Questioning ‘Muslim Youth’: Categorization and Marginalization
• 10. Re-locating Detached Youth Work
• 11. Youth Work in Schools
• 12. Youth Work in Digital Spaces
• 13. In Search of Soul: Where Now for Youth and Community Work?
• Index