A year in youth work

A year in youth work

A year last September I started a job in youth work working for an organisation based in Portsmouth aimed at engaging with young people and supporting them to access better life chances. The principle of the organisation and youth work in its most general form is to engage with young people, many of them in a disadvantaged position, to act as a guide and mentor and encourage them to achieve their potential and also to keep them away from offending behaviour. Youth work is a catch-all term meaning any type of work involved with young people but my role was to specifically work with young people aged 13-17 in a specific geographical location. Without getting down to the bare-bones of the location these areas are chosen because they have a history of youth offending, have a high ratio of young people entering the youth justice system for the fist time and the area has historically suffered from high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour. I don't want to concentrate on the location too much because that’s not what I want to focus on but it helps but this into context.Youth work has changed immeasurably over the last few years to cope with the demands of an evolving society. People have their own reasons why youth nuisance has become such a problem but youth work in its own right has had to become reactive to meet these needs and form a cohesive strategy to cope with the social problems that are related to it. Young people are more intelligent now than they ever have been and arguably ever will be but people have to steer away from this judgmental attitude that seems to have crept into society over the last few years. The public have this attitude where if they see a young person aged between 12-18 and they don't conform to the stereotypical vision of the youth in their childhood they are instantly judged to be thugs. I am not for one minute stating that all young people are angels and we are being misled by a moral-panic hungry media (ok, maybe) but what we are guilty of is stereotypifying a certain demographic and casting it upon the rest of the population just because they might be wearing a tracksuit or a baseball cap. Young people have evolved over the last few years mirroring the changes in society, they are disenfranchised, apathetic, bored and all too often being won over by the wrong role models who either know them personally or are a part of their lives through the media. Young people need the right inspiration and motivation just like the rest of the adult population by being diverted away from the corrupt.

For me it begs the question of stability. If a young person is from a stable background they are less likely to offend, obviously there are anomalies but in 9 out of ten of cases this must be true. Social deprivation and anti-social behaviour must be a significant judge of youth nuisance but if a young person has been brought up in a stable environment with a positive male role model then that young person is less likely to offend. Having a positive male role is absolutely key to that young person, more predominantly male, in ensuring that they steer clear of offending behaviour. This is why, and it’s slightly off the point, it is absolutely vital that more male primary teachers are attracted into the profession to have a valuable impact on young males from a very early age to procure these young minds. A lot of primary school children are without a dominant male figure within their lives and it is this along with the breakdown of the family group which is causing more and more young people to offend from a very early age which is why it is even more important that youth work becomes reactive both to the needs of the young people but more importantly the area in which they associate themselves.

My time in youth work has enabled me to gain a sound understanding of the needs of young people in a society that does everything in its power to provide for them but does absolutely nothing for them if they fail to take it. Neighbourhoods have to start taking responsibility for their own residents instead of blaming the very system whom they ask so much for. Parents and community members hold so much responsibility for the behaviour of the young people in whom they only want the best for. Having youth clubs and schemes in which young people can hang-out is great but these aren't generally the places in which youth nuisance is a problem. Parents and community workers have to be aligned in their objective and completely unified in their need to change the mentality of the young people from a situation where it is on most occasions ‘them versus us’. Germany, the States, Australia, Sweden, these countries place massive significance on civic pride and this is evident in the unity between residents and most significantly the attitude of the young people. We need to roll back the years to a time when we were connected to our youngsters, not enemies.

Youth work can be the most valuable weapon in the fight to curb youth offending and anti-social behaviour by bridging the gap between authority and the young people themselves. The last year or so has taught be some extremely valuable lessons through getting to know young people and how susceptible they are to influences from other people whether that be a family member, friend or worker. I guess what I am trying to get at is that youth work is extremely important, especially in inner-city areas where the need for intensive work is absolutely vital. The major paradox is this though; youth work is nothing without the shared responsibility and foresight of the wider community, it just doesn’t work. Working in places such as Portsmouth there is always going to be pockets of resistance to change and evolution and this will always be the major downfall of working in such a place. Youth nuisance will continue to be a major problem on our streets until we take it by the scruff of the neck and deal with it head on, taking away the reliance on the police as someone to blame.

This messed up and confused little isle is home to some fantastic young people with a massive amount of potential. Society needs to reinvent itself as a place where young people feel proud to be involved. Sport gives young people the sense of belonging, competitiveness and usually the ability to know how to cope with both winning and losing, but we should have so much more of it! The aforementioned countries treat sport with a massive amount of seriousness but we seem to see it more as a pastime rather than as a fundamental part of youth. This, and its no exaggeration, would go a massive way to solving some of the biggest questions that we have of young people and the problems associated with them. What a bloody great fifteen months….Tom Walters