A Hunch about the future of youth work

November 2, 2011 by
Filed under: Fellowship 

Last night I went along to a great event at the RSA House organised by London Youth. They’re launching a report next week called Hunch, which makes a fiercely-argued case for the importance of youth work in the face of spending cuts. They’re better placed than most to argue the point – as a network of 400 youth organisations (from youth clubs to community centres) across the capital, they know what good youth work looks like, and the impact it has. They came to the RSA partly to share the findings with Fellows and leading voices in the sector, but also to issue a friendly challenge to this group for practical responses to the report.

The room was a lively mix of youth workers and people involved in charities and social enterprises, all of whom warmed to the theme that youth work should be seen as a way of supporting and empowering young people, not simply a tool for tackling social problems. Rosie Ferguson from London Youth (an RSA Fellow and member of our Fellowship council) gave an efficient demonstration of the logic behind this, asking: “How many of you here today are carrying a weapon? Is it because you went on a knife crime awareness course when you were 14?”

Rosie then invited Francisco Augusto, who has been involved with the DareLondon youth advisory board, to make the case for a more positive approach to supporting young people from his own experience. Having been in serious trouble with the police at the age of 13, he explained how a chance encounter with a committed local youth worker, Roger Jilal, set him on the right track. What made the difference? Talking to him later, he explained Roger’s knack for relating to the young people he worked with as equals, seeing their potential and sticking with them to provide support and reassurance. In Francis’ case, that meant persuading him to stay in school and get some qualifications – he’s now studying for a degree at Roehampton and setting up a social enterprise.

What became clear in the discussion that followed was the degree of consensus about what really helps young people develop and thrive, but also the challenges of gathering an evidence base to support that consensus. Individual success stories such as Francis’ are powerful, but there’s clearly a need (recognised in the report) for youth work organisations to build a better pool of evidence about what works and what doesn’t: a challenge for small, local, highly effective projects that they often lack the time or resources to carry out detailed research. What’s more, several people remarked that much of the value of good youth work is in its effect on young people’s self-confidence and social skills — not an easy thing to quantify.

Individual success stories such as Francis’ are powerful, but there’s clearly a need to build a better pool of evidence about what works and what doesn’t

If this is the friendly challenge, what was the response? Many in the room argued for better collaboration between practitioners, and hoped that this could happen within the RSA – both through making connections between Fellows involved in youth work, and initiatives such as our Social Entrepreneurs’ Network (which already features many businesses that support young people). Another proposal was to identify youth work ‘champions’, people who can persuade politicians and the media of the merits of their craft.

This echoed a point that our own Matthew Taylor made about the challenge of maintaining pride in good professional practice in a targets-led culture: he was clear about the importance of this for youth work, which he said should recognised as not just a means to positive social outcomes but “a public good in itself”. Hunch has its official launch next week at the House of Lords (I’ll add a link when it’s published) and will be a great rallying point for those who agree. The question, though, is what can the RSA do to support Fellows who want to work together to raise the profile of effective youth work initiatives – and make sure that the best and the bravest ideas and approaches are able to spread.

Sam is @iamsamthomas on Twitter

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Comments

  • Anthony Eldridge-Rogers

    Sam writes “……..The question, though, is what can the RSA do to support Fellows who want
    to work together to raise the profile of effective youth work
    initiatives ….”  The answer is obvious, a lot. Okay maybe this is not what was meant here. But I have a foot in both this piece by Sam and the piece below about setting up a network. To date my experience of the RSA in terms of trying to get some kind of coherent response of any kind on both a Youth Coaching initiative set up by fellows and trying to get a network off the ground has been astonishingly slow, riddled with contradictions, in many cases no response at all. In short it seems that fellows with some plans for rolling up sleeves and getting stuck in are safer assuming they are on their own……..when it comes to the fellowship support dept. When it comes to fellows there are of course 20 odd thousand to communicate with. Now if it was only possible to find a quick, clear and simple way to connect with a significant number of them.

    • http://twitter.com/iamsamthomas Sam Thomas

      Hi Anthony. Obviously it’s troubling to see the kind of feedback that you’re giving here – and it’s worth saying that with so many ideas that Fellows want to get off the ground we won’t always get the support right.  That said, one of the reasons for using a forum like this to talk openly about what we do is to try and understand where we can do more.

      One thing we’re doing is becoming more structured in the way we provide support. For instance, our Catalyst fund was set up as an efficient, easy way to help Fellows develop their ideas for small, practical projects. With more expansive initiatives, though, we’ll always be treading a delicate line between the ambitions of our Fellows and the capacity we have as a small team to help realise them. Sometimes that means we aren’t able to help to the extent we’d like.

      It’s our ambition that all RSA Fellows will be able to communicate with each other independently, and work together under their own initiative – as you recognise, that’s a bold (some might say foolhardy!) ambition for an organisation with 27,000 members, and not one we’ll realise overnight. I hope though that with the work the RSA is putting into better communication tools, the ‘quick, clear and simple’ way you’re looking for isn’t so far off.

  • Anonymous

    Hi Anthony,

    I really enjoyed meeting you earlier this week, and hearing about your idea for a coaching network that you’ve recently been working on. (Though I’m not a coach myself, I’m very interested in many of the models and approaches that coaches apply with their clients – and which I’m sure are very relevant to RSA Chief Executive Matthew Taylor’s focus on ‘human capability’).

    I hope to make it along to one of your coaches lunches at the RSA – http://thecoacheslunch.com – (which I believe are open to the rest of us).

    We were in particular discussing ways to promote an RSA coaching network, and its events, online and I’m very happy to continue to help with this.

    As you probably know, you can connect to RSA Fellows online in a number of ways, including:

    - RSA Fellowship online community (ning): http://rsafellowship.com/
    - RSA on Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=3391&trk=anet_ug_hm
    - RSA on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/theRSAorg
    - On Twitter, include the hash tag #theRSA in your Tweets
    - RSA Comment: http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/

    In fact, I hope in the next few days to get a fairly comprehensive page up on the RSA Fellowship online community which describes where all the RSA online communities are, what you can do with them, and much else…

    I hope you and many others will find it useful.

    Matthew Mezey
    (RSA Senior Networks Manager – Online & International)

    http://twitter.com/MatthewMezey

  • http://www.sparkandmettle.org.uk Eugenie Teasley

    A really interesting post and it highlights some of the issues that we currently face. My key concern (that in some way echoes that of others) is the disconnect between  the wealth of professional, inspiring adults who exist and the large numbers of young people who seek support and advice. The UK gets itself into little bubbles, and it’s hard to merge them. If there is a way for collaboration and communication not just between different youth organisations but also between businesses, employees, freelancers and others who are the ones in the places that the young people want to be: that would be huge. But how to do that? How do you keep it local? How do you keep it easy and hassle-free? 

    Just some quick thoughts!

    • Andy Kirk

      Hi Eugenie – it seemed to me many people at the event shared similar concerns.

      Rosie Ferguson used an example of a plumbing firm in south london teaming up with the young people from a local youth centre to refurbish their premises: The plumbers didn’t consider themselves to be doing “youth work”, but to a certain extent they were as they were showing the young people workplace dynamics and helping to build their inter-personal skills by interacting with an adult who isn’t a family member or guardian or a teacher. In return, the plumbers were exposed to young people that might have challenged their preconceptions. What ways can we encourage more of this type of mutually beneficial activity?

      One of the other side of the coin, was a discussion about the need to champion and celebrate youth work as a profession – how do we find ways to recognise its tremendous value (and thereby increase resources for it) when that’s hard to quantify?

      I hope that our Fellows continue to look at these problems and come up with ways to address them…