The voice of frontline youth workers

A project to help youth workers so they can better support young people. By Clara Freixes Ramoneda at Charlton Athletic Community Trust.

Thousands of participants a year. A borough-wide youth service and their participants completely affected by the pandemic. High levels of deprivation. Risk of exclusion. Social isolation. Missing out on education. Digital poverty. Screen overload. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.

Whose needs do I focus on? How can I find a solution that suits them all? How can I identify the main problem they are facing? How to pick the ‘right’ problem to address? How can I identify a solution that would help the majority of participants? I can’t interview thousands of participants. How will I figure out their needs/problems? What problem do I focus on? How can I …

These thoughts were endlessly and continuously going through my brain on loop. I felt stuck, I felt like I wasn’t moving forward, like I was never going to manage to narrow it down and find a clear solution to a clear problem. Then I had what was probably the simplest and best idea I had in the past 10 weeks: to interview the youth workers!

I almost didn’t even have to ask one single question, and the result: a full-hour recording with the most invaluable information and a 15 page interview transcription which has become my ‘holy grail’.

They didn’t only know the hundreds of issues, needs and problems faced by the young people, families and local communities over the past year. But they had also tried nearly everything to sort it. They had delivered online, face to face, over the phone; they tried almost every single social media platform, distributed laptops, provided vouchers and food; they helped families and young people to access the internet; they regularly texted young people to remind them of any sessions going on; they did regular ‘chat and check in’ calls with young people and their families; they created further links with social services, police and other local organisations,…

They work and work and work to do their best to keep supporting young people and to try and minimise the devastating effects of this pandemic on the young people and their families.

The question for me then was… who supports their needs?