Youth Work: A Mechanism of Systems Change

When first joining The Children’s Society back in 2016 I was asked how I would define my professional identity. Without hesitation, I responded proudly: ‘YOUTH WORKER!’. I don’t recall it being questioned at the time what this meant or what exactly a youth worker does, so I went about my day thinking everyone was in the know.

In April this year; I joined a different, non-practice team (so one that is not directly youth facing) and continued to carry my youth worker identity. This new team, also known as the Accelerating Impact team, focuses on innovation involving service design, research, systems change and now youth work. During this transition, I reflected that my new team may need a clearer explanation of what youth work is. Over two short digital sessions with them, I talked through the definition of youth work and a (pretty awesome) timeline of the profession. I was then encouraged to share it more widely and open up a conversation of what this meant for others.

But before you see the timeline, I dare you to have a guess at how long ago the term youth work was ‘coined’?

No, it wasn’t when the ping pong table was invented.

Nope, it wasn’t even when ‘community centres’ were a thing.

And definitely not when the government decided to take the term seriously.

Given up yet? Well here it is for you to take a look:

Did you guess it was all the way back to the 18th century? Pretty cool right!

So, what is youth work?

Visible in my timeline, the nature of youth work has adapted over centuries to suit the needs of young people. It has had changes both positive and negative, some of which were shaped by politics and trends. Most recently, youth work has seen a huge transformation in delivery and the role of ‘digital’ youth work has come to the forefront after the ceasing of face to face services during the Covid-19 pandemic. Youth work has shown innovative approaches and always worked on the side of young people to create change which then benefits future generations.

When we look back at over the timeline, ‘Sundays Schools’ were what youth work may have been recognised as back in the 18th century. Now you’re thinking “‘Sunday Schools?’, surely they were the extra schools set up by the church, right?”. Well technically yes, it was a school environment, but mostly they were set up by local people who witnessed the damaging effects for children who couldn’t afford to attend regular school. These people rallied together and asked those that were willing to use one of their days off to help the community to provide some sort of education. It just so happened that this was on a Sunday. These schools didn’t start off in fancy buildings, it was more like underneath railway arches — a great example of the innovation and change they shaped!

However, this isn’t always how we remember ‘youth work’; we think of the youth clubs, the ping pong tables, the work with ‘troubled youths’. That did all come too but it took a good two centuries to get people using the term seriously; governments taking responsibility for making sure the work happened, and youth work to be professionalised with training and quality standards. Two centuries for the change to be championed and celebrated.

So what does Youth Work look like now?

Throughout the years there have been many developments on what youth work is and what it should look like. It’s not confined to ‘educating’ and it’s not just in a club, it is a professional response to work with young people that implements opportunity for change and holds a safe space for the voice of young people. This is what National Youth Agency defines as the purpose of youth work today:

“Enable young people to develop holistically, working with them to facilitate their personal, social and educational development, to enable them to develop their voice, influence and place in society and to reach their full potential.”

On a recent webinar with In Defence of Youth Work, Sue Atkins reflected on the theme of Resistance in Youth Work. Whether it be the professional resisting the ‘right’ work to be done, or young people resisting to the ways we want to work with them (we may see this particularly through some digital youth work currently). Sue stressed we should never stop responding to this call.

So with this term ‘youth work’ in mind, we may share different definitions of what this means to us. However, I think we can all agree that youth work is still needed now, just like it was when it was delivered under those arches. The pioneers that came before us to set this up did so with passion and purpose and despite what we call it, we should recognise and celebrate the achievements in our work to date. We have standards, we have a network (many in fact), we create change and we even have ongoing actions towards the future of digital youth work set up (https://www.digitalyouthwork.eu/).

Let’s keep this conversation going and develop what we define youth work as today and how we plan to celebrate this going forward. Comment below with your thoughts or get in touch on twitter @clo_dg

This blog is part of a series-opening up a discussion on youth work as a profession. It aims to reflect on the journey of youth work celebrating it, looking at the quality of the work involved and draw some links for The Childrens Society.