Youth work and youth workers can play a central role in integrating young people and their communities. Critically discuss this statement with reference to your experience and practice.

Authors Avatar

Youth work and youth workers can play a central role in integrating young people and their communities. Critically discuss this statement with reference to your experience and practice.

In this essay I will outline how Youth work and youth workers play a central role in integrating young people and their communities. Critically discussing my own practice and experiences. In this essay I will start by writing about youth work bringing in the concept of community work and its emphasis in integrating young people and their communities. I will start off by writing about youth work and then write about the importance of youth workers critically discussing the two as I believe Youth work plays a central and important role in integrating young people and their communities but for this important and vital development it is important to point out the one who is the conveyor of this message in this case the youth worker.

‘It is clear that the youth service are playing a key role in helping young people make a positive contribution to their communities, through supporting their involvement in decision making and shaping local services, volunteering, and reducing anti-social behaviour’ (NYA,2007)

Youth work has been around for a long time the identity of early youth work was when young men left their homes to go to big town from this emerged youth culture in urban areas in later years the YMCA and Scouting was formed and the main aim of YMCA and other organisations was to address issues concerning young people and always providing for them

‘By 1959 British government looked in to youth work and the national response to catering for young people led to the government producing a report called the Albemarle report’ (Ewen J. 1975)

Which outlined the need for local government agencies to take responsibility for providing extra curricular activities for young people and out of this report the statutory sector of youth work was born.

Today youth work  (as outlined in the Transforming Youth Work document released in 1998 by the ) it is the statutory duty of all local government organizations to provide a youth service in their region. Also for the first time the youth service has national targets that have to be met with regard to the reach (initial contact) with young people, the number of relationships developed with young people and the number of accredited learning programs achieved through the youth service. (www.infed.co.uk)

 Thus referring to the question if  how youth work integrates young people and their communities I would say it integrates young people and their communities on various levels with the scale of the shift, towards accreditation and curriculum delivery set out in the transforming youth work document and every child matters framework.  (Every Child Matters, or ECM for short, is a   initiative that was launched in 2003, It has been the title of three  and led to the . Its main aims are for every child, whatever their background or their circumstances, to have the support they need to:

  • Be healthy
  • Stay Safe
  • Enjoy and Achieve
  • Make a positive contribution
  • Achieve Economical Well Being

This means that the organizations involved with providing services to children - from hospitals and schools, to police and voluntary groups am so on - will be teaming up in new ways, sharing information and working together, to protect children and young people from harm and help them achieve what they want in life.

 Making reference to (Ledgerwood and Kendra, 1997) ‘Educative-enabling young people to gain skills, knowledge and attitudes needed to identify, advocate and pursue their rights and responsibilities as individuals and as members of groups and communities locally, nationally and internationally’ this shows youth work plays a important role in integrating  communities and its people.

However being critical and talking about the every child matters agenda and its emphasis on youth work some may argue that they is no or little emphasis on how youth work practice can integrate communities and there is no mention on community. Butters and Newell (1978) who suggested that there were in fact three main perspectives in youth work. The first they stated was character building where the thinking behind this approach was to integrate young people into society through adequate ideological training. The second approach was the social education repertoire mainly through community development where if young people were given more of a say in what happens in a community then they would feel more part of it and hence less crime would be occurring as a result. Finally they stated that institutional reform was important as it involved mobilization of individuals and groups to work for structural changes and the extension of rights. All of these things may have been said over thirty years ago, but have come into fruition now especially with the third element where the youth parliaments have allowed young people a voice in which to connect with the governing bodies and more importantly with those making the decisions that affect young peoples lives.

Join now!

An example of a this is the BKYP, Bradford-Keighley Youth Parliament. BKYP aims to give young people living in the Bradford Metropolitan District, between the ages of 11 and 21 years old a voice, young people are heard and listened to by local and national government, service providers for young people and other agencies who have an interest in the views, needs and concerns of young people. Young people elect members from their area where they reside to present them and voice they concern and views from the young people elected a group is formed. Ideas and suggestions are put ...

This is a preview of the whole essay